Trade Warfare

Can sanctions ever work?

While no American troops are currently in combat, the Reagan Administration is waging war on several fronts. Rather than bullets or missiles, the weapons are economic sanctions. In response to the Polish government's outlawing of the Solidarity trade union, the Administration last week took steps to raise tariffs on imports of manufactured goods from Poland. Over the past two months the U.S. has also banned the sale of American energy technology to several European companies that are supplying such equipment to the Soviet Union for its $10 billion gas pipeline.

These actions have shaken the Atlantic Alliance and stirred anew the long-running debate on whether trade sanctions are wise or even effective. Outspoken criticism of the President's policy comes not only from Europeans but also from many American foreign affairs experts. Said George Kennan, former American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, in a speech in Frankfurt last week: "We must immediately and completely stop every type of economic warfare. The attempt to prevent or set back the entire economic development of another people has no place in the politics of a democratic state in times of peace."

Opponents of economic sanctions argue that such measures have been ineffectual and often counterproductive in the past. Much evidence to support that view can be found in Economic Sanctions (Harvard University Center for International Affairs; $9.95 paperback), a timely new historical survey by British Diplomat Robin Renwick. The book dispassionately examines numerous episodes of economic warfare, including the League of Nations trade restrictions against Italy following its 1935 invasion of Ethiopia and the U.S. embargo of Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959. As a former head of the Rhodesia department of the British Foreign Office, Renwick brings particular insight to his discussion of the 13-year United Nations effort to topple Rhodesia's white government through a trade embargo.

Renwick's study shows that sanctions can seriously damage the economy of a target nation. Italy's exports fell about 35% after the League of Nations action. Rhodesia's tobacco farmers, heavily dependent on sales abroad, suffered a two-thirds cut in their income. Cuba's economy stalled in part because the country could not obtain spare parts for American-made machinery.

Nonetheless, these countries displayed impressive adaptability and resilience. Because the sanctions were never imposed uniformly by all nations, the target countries evaded the embargoes and avoided economic collapse by rerouting their trade through sympathetic allies or neutrals. Italy bought vital oil supplies from the U.S., which was not a member of the League of Nations. Rhodesia funneled chrome shipments and other exports through South Africa and Mozambique, where they were resold to other countries. Cuba eased its economic troubles by accepting aid from the Soviet Union.

Whatever punitive economic impact sanctions may have, they have almost invariably failed to achieve their political goal: to change the conduct of an offending government. The League of Nations embargo did not force Italy to withdraw from Ethiopia. Instead, as Renwick notes, the pressure "stiffened Italian resolve."

Rhodesia was ultimately strengthened in some ways by trade sanctions because the country was forced to develop its own industry to manufacture such essential products as railway cars and steel tubing. "In the decade from 1965 to 1975," writes Renwick, "the Rhodesian economy was transformed from virtually total dependence on the importation of manufactured goods in exchange for raw materials to a remarkable degree of self-sufficiency in most areas except oil and industrial plant and machinery." It was a spreading guerrilla war, rather than trade warfare, that finally forced the white regime of Prime Minister Ian Smith to step down in 1979.

Despite the lackluster record of embargoes, Renwick argues that they have a useful, if mainly symbolic, purpose. They are often the only way, short of war, for one nation to express its outrage at the conduct of another. Concludes Renwick: "To abandon altogether the idea of recourse to sanctions in response to acts of aggression or other flagrant violations of international law would be to reduce the choice of response to one between military action and acquiescence--an unattractive choice at the best of times and particularly so in a nuclear age." That said, Renwick cautions against any great expectations about what sanctions can accomplish.

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