Evaluation and Measurement of the
Effects and Effectiveness of Targeted Sanctions
Neta C. Crawford
Boston University 24 September 2009
For the Workshop
"Assessing the Effects and Effectiveness of UN Targeted Sanctions," Geneva 1-3 October 2009
On 23 September 2009, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that he would support an
American request for tougher international sanctions against Iran, aimed to "help Iran take a right
decision" with respect to developing nuclear weapons. He continued, "sanctions rarely lead to productive
results, but in some cases, sanctions are inevitable." Medvedev articulates the conventional wisdom:
sanctions are used when the international community finds persuasion ineffective and military force
impractical. In this view sanctions are, at best, ineffective and, at worst, counterproductive; sanctions may
just cause a "rally round the flag" effect. If sanctions do "work" it is only under narrow circumstances over
a long period of time. Much of the academic literature supports the conventional view (see Hufbauer,
Schott and Elliot 1990; Pape, 1997 and 1998. etc.). Crawford and Klotz (1999) offer a different reading of
the effects of sanctions based on the South Africa case. But many dismiss the "lessons" of that case with
the argument that South Africa was uniquely vulnerable.
My questions are: What are the effects of sanctions (whether broad or targeted) and how should they be
measured and evaluated with respect to their goals? Can sanctions have the effect of getting a target to
"take a right decision"? How would we know that it was sanctions by themselves or sanctions in
combination with other factors that had caused a target to change its behavior?
This memo offers first, a typology of sanctions, a discussion of the potential effects of targeted sanctions,
a review of three targeted sanctions against South Africa, and suggestions about how these effects can
and ought to be measured in terms of their effectiveness. The conclusion raises some ethical issues and
suggestions for research design.
Models of Influence for Broad and Targeted Sanctions
When individual states, coalitions of states, or international organizations sanction another state they are
denying customary transactions as an attempt to a) directly affect the capacity of that country to act; b)
change the minds of key decision makers; c) punish the country for past or anticipated infractions of a law
or norm. These aims are essentially the same whether the sanctions are broad or targeted.
Broad sanctions do not discriminate in their intended or actual impact between those who are in a
position to make a policy change and those who are not. In other words, broad sanctions target elite
decision makers (whether formal members of the target government, or members of a political and
economic elite) and the public at large.
Targeted sanctions are intended to discriminate in their effects — they are supposed to precisely target
individuals or activities. Yet the effects of targeted sanctions may not discriminating — e.g. financial
sanctions can affect the ability to borrow throughout an economy; an oil embargo can slow the military,
but also hurt civilian transport, decrease the production of fertilizers, and lead to deforestation as the poor
seek an alternative for fuel; a ban on chemicals might effect water treatment even as it impedes the
development of chemical weapons.
All of these effects have been seen in recent cases — e.g.
respectively in South Africa, Haiti, and Iraq.
Often implicit in the threat and use of both broad and targeted sanctions are theories of change/effect.
For example, there are what Newell Stultz (1982) called the "revolutionary" models where the regime is
weakened by sanctions and more easily overthrown from within (Galtung in 1967 called this the "naïve"
theory of sanctions); the "thumbscrew" model of steadily ratcheting up the pain; and the "evolutionary"
model, where the pain of sanctions is paired with positive incentives.
1
Note that the revolutionary and thumbscrew models are similar to theories of compellance in war. For
example, strategic bombing, it has often been thought, could escalate to such an awful level that the
civilian population might overthrow the leadership or civilian morale might plummet under the assault of
airpower to such a low level that the government could no longer prosecute its war. This is merely a
restatement of American Civil War General William T. Sherman's views about targeting the population:
"we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and
poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as the organized armies."1 The deterrence and compellance
theories of sanctions are essentially the "hard hand" view.
Crawford and Klotz (1999) offered a typology of four models of influence including the compellance
theory, but also adding normative communication, resource denial, and political fracture. The
compellance and normative communication models focus on changing elite minds. The resource denial
model focuses on changing elite capacities to act. And the political fracture model focuses on breaking
the elite and popular consensus that sustains a policy, recognizing that the broader population is often
deliberately targeted by sanctions regimes on the view that it takes some amount of popular support to
sustain even the most brutal authoritarian government.
The idea of using sanctions as a symbolic gesture or as a signal of commitment depends in the former
case on a normative communication model and in the latter case on the real capacity of the sanction to
compel by causing harm the target through resource denial or political fracture.
As suggested above, the main difference between broad and targeted sanctions is not in their potential
pathway to influence a target, but in the fact of the intention to focus effects on either particular individuals
or a narrow sector of the economy. A targeted sanction that focuses only on the perpetrators of a crime or
on elite decision makers meets the just war criteria of "discrimination" in the sense that the perpetrators
and elite decisionmakers are analogous to combatants and the general population is analogous to noncombatants. Indeed, the move toward targeted sanctions during the 1990s was arguably motivated more
by a concern to discriminate decisionmakers/perpetrators from bystanders than with any evidence that
targeted sanctions were more effective or efficient in changing elite beliefs or state behavior. If we are
concerned with the ethics of sanctions, then on normative grounds, targeted sanctions are to be preferred
regardless of their actual effect on the target.
Characteristics
of
Targeted Actors
Decision
Making
Elite
is
Instrumentally
Rational
Decision
makers
care about norms
Mechanism
of influence
Increase
Costs and/or
Decrease
Benefits
Persuasion
Resource Denial
Elites are stubborn;
states need material
capabilities
Decrease
target
capabilities
by
limiting
important
resources
Political Fracture
Government policies
depend on elite and
Foster
a
legitimation
Compellance
Normative
Communication
1
Conditions
for
Success
At
Least
Partial
Economic
and
Military
Interdependence
Elites
clearly
understand
normative
arguments
The behavior that
sanctioners seek to
alter
requires
material resources;
at
least
partial
economic
and
military
interdependence
Fragile elite; ability
of outside actors to
Primary site of
influence
Elite Decision
Makers
Elite Decision
Makers
Institutional
Structures of
the
Target
Government;
economy
Elite Decision
Makers
and
General Sherman to the US Commander Henry Halleck in 1864, quoted in Lance Janda, "Shutting the Gates of
Mercy: The American Origins of Total War, 1860-1880," The Journal of Military History, 59 (January 1995) pp. 7-26:
15.
2
popular support
crisis
that
leads
to
increased
dissent
or
revolution
support groups that
oppose the target
government
Civil Society
Effects of Targeted Sanctions
Targeted sanctions are essentially of two types, those focused on named individuals (such as travel bans
or freezing assets) and those focused on an economic sector or a specific material good/resource (e.g.
arms and oil embargoes).
Much of the targeted sanctions literature focuses on individuals. I am a pessimist about the normative
and compellence effects of sanctions that target individuals. If someone has risen to a position of
authority, they are more than likely a true believer, and unlikely to be persuaded by a normative appeal.
Rather, from what we know about individual psychology, those targeted individuals will most likely
increase their commitment to their policies and beliefs. The sanction is thus most honestly undertaken for
the audience effects and for the simple reason that we want to punish (or at least withhold resources and
approval from) those who are considered bad and, if only marginally, limit the actions of those that can do
us harm.
On the other hand, targeting individuals can be effective if sanctions increase the costs of a leader doing
business. In this case, the effects are essentially those of resource denial since the sanctions entail an
opportunity cost for that leader. Further, targeted sanctions can contribute to fracturing an elite
consensus if those who have not been targeted have greater ability and legitimacy to make change within
a regime. But here again, the rally around the flag effect may trump the delegitimizing and legitimizing
effects of sanctions.
I focus here on the effects of targeting a sector or a material good. What are the likely effects of
sanctions that are targeted on particular sectors or material resources? Direct effects, result from the
attempted denial of the resource, and indirect effects result from the target attempting to ameliorate the
direct effects of sanctions.
The most dramatic direct effect is total resource denial. But delays or a reduction in the quantity of the
resource available to the target may have significant effects. A shortage of a particular resource may
mean that the target must either halt or curtail activities that are dependent on that resource, or make
choices about when and where to use a now scarce resource.
Indirect effects are often more subtle but powerful. To the extent that the resource is only partially halted,
and the target is still in the market for the resource, the cost of the resource may substantially increase
when the target pays a substantial premium on the black or grey market. The target may be forced to
change suppliers or shift allies or attempt to substitute something of inferior value. Most dramatically, a
target may develop an import substitution strategy. Mobilization for import substitution can force the target
to significantly restructure their economy
The threat of an embargo may be enough to produce both direct and indirect material effects. For
example, the price of an item may rise in anticipation of a threatened embargo. The target may seek to
diversify supply, horde a resource, or conduct anticipatory import substitution industrialization. Indeed,
this may be how threats work — I doubt threats often change elite decision makers' minds.
Both the direct and indirect effects of targeted sanctions are likely to entail immediate and long term
opportunity costs. As noted above, if the target is short on an important resource, for example, oil, they
may have to choose between civil transport and military transport. To the extent that the target diverts
resources to the military sector, the civilian sector may suffer. Or to the extent that the target devotes
resources to import substitution industrialization, they may be diverting important resources from another
area of the economy.
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Cases: Arms and Oil Embargoes Against Apartheid South Africa
The aims of the arms embargo against South Africa were to reduce the ability of South Africa to repress
its domestic population and also reduce its ability to make war (viz. Angola which it invaded and partially
occupied from 1975-1989) or destabilizing raids against its neighbors (viz. Mozambique, Zambia and
Zimbabwe from the mid-late 1970s to the early 1990s). Further, the sanctions were meant as punishment
for South Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia and an attempt to reduce its capacity to conduct the
occupation.
The arms embargos, begun as voluntary restrictions in 1963, and gradually tightened and made
mandatory in the 1970s and 1980s, never completely halted the flow of conventional weapons or military
technology to South Africa. Further, dual use technologies were difficult to restrict.
Were the arms embargos effective? The South African government was not directly compelled by the
threat of embargo or the actual embargo to leave the field in Angola or to cease its occupations and
destabilization campaigns. The South African government never found the normative argument implicit
and explicit in the arms embargo persuasive. The South African elite interpreted the embargo as part of
the "total onslaught" they faced. However, the direct and indirect effects of the conventional arms
embargoes were an important reason why South Africa began to lose its war in Angola, faced increased
difficulty occupying Namibia, and began to reform apartheid.
The direct effects were felt in terms of resource denial, delay, and increased cost. First, even though
South Africa was able to buy weapons on the black market, the supply of spare parts and weapons was
reduced and delayed. Second, the mark-up on those weapons that did get through the embargo was
significant. The premium paid was often between 20 and 100 percent while some deals were simply
swindles. Third, even though South Africa engaged in black market purchases and import substitution
industrialization (developing one of the largest arms industries in the world) because South Africa was at
war its rate of consumption of spare parts and new equipment was outstripped by its ability to build or
purchase arms. This production/import versus consumption gap was most dramatic, I argue, in the area
of aircraft spare parts and aircraft. When South Africa lost air superiority in Angola, they began to lose
rapidly on the ground.
Further, although unanticipated, indirect effects of import substitution were extremely important. South
Africa restructured the economy to become as self-sufficient as possible in terms of weapons and spare
parts. The armaments sector became the leading manufacturing sector of the South African economy.
Restructuring empowered different elite sectors of the economy, which, it turned out, had less interest in
maintaining apartheid and the wars, even as they profited from the creation of a military-industrial
complex. In other words, more liberal elements of the white community, with an interest in policy change,
grew increasingly powerful both economically and politically.
Further, and ironically, P.W. Botha decided early on (in the 1970s) that in order to resist sanctions and to
continue making war, the South African economy had to be restructured to permit greater liberalization.
Blacks had to be educated, travel restrictions on the flow of blacks and colored people had to be eased,
and job reservation and the restrictions on black labor unions had to be relaxed. So, to "save apartheid"
South Africa had mobilize the economy for import substitution industrialization, and thus apartheid had to
be reformed and partially dismantled. These reforms did have (from the perspective of the South African
elite) the consequence of empowering black trade union organizations and black workers. These workers
were at the forefront of the anti-apartheid struggle.
The nuclear embargo analysis (done by David Fig for Crawford and Klotz) had mixed results. In sum,
despite sanctions, South Africa was able to build a sophisticated nuclear weapons infrastructure, it
completed the construction six nuclear weapons and had another nuclear bomb partly completed.
(Delivery of a nuclear weapon over a long range would have been a problem, in part because of the
conventional weapons embargo, but that constraint could eventually have been over come).
South Africa began to develop a nuclear industry in the 1940s and accelerated the program in the 1960s.
South Africa decided not to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 and was first embargoed in 1976.
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The decision to construct nuclear weapons was taken in 1974 by the Prime Minister, and the first nuclear
weapon was completed in 1977. The weapon was tested in 1979 and more weapons were built during the
1980s. F.W. DeKlerk decided to destroy the weapons in February 1990. South Africa joined the NPT in
1991 announced the production of nuclear weapons and their destruction in March 1993.
Two facts about nuclear sanctions against South Africa are significant. First, the embargo was extremely
porous. The United States, France, West Germany, Canada and Israel and other governments all, at
various junctures, made important contributions to South Africa's nuclear program or allowed companies
within their borders to do so. Even when sanctions were tightened, dual use technology was not
effectively screened. Second, South Africa had a uranium supply (its own and occupied Namibia) that it
could and did trade for nuclear technology and foreign exchange and with which it could and did build a
domestic nuclear power industry that was partially used to conceal its uranium enrichment program.
So, if the nuclear embargo was porous and ineffective at compelling South Africa to cease its clandestine
nuclear program, and did not, at least at first, change any elite minds through normative persuasion, what
did the sanctions accomplish?
First, acquisition of resources to build nuclear weapons was delayed, partially denied, and made more
expensive. The key component is fissile material. When the US decided to cease export of highly
enriched uranium (HEU) to South Africa and cease other nuclear technology transfer in 1978 South Africa
had to get HEU elsewhere or produce its own fissile material. Specifically because of sanctions on
technology transfer, the domestic enrichment program was both more expensive and delayed. Second,
to the extent that the South Africans put intellectual, financial and material resources toward building a
nuclear (and also a chemical and biological weapons program), the opportunity costs were significant.
Third, to the extent that South Africa wanted to see sanctions removed, it made gestures such as
announcing its nuclear program, destroying the weapons, and placing the nuclear infrastructure under
international (IAEA) oversight that were designed to end sanctions and decrease its status as a pariah.
Thus, under the regime of F.W. DeKlerk, South Africa saw the prospect of removing sanctions as a carrot.
(It was arguably the financial sanctions that South Africa most wanted removed at this juncture since it
had a nuclear industry.) If there had been no embargo of nuclear weapons technology or fissile material
South Africa could have built more nuclear weapons and made them sooner than they did.
The call for an oil embargo against South Africa began in 1960. Some countries had already halted oil
exports to South Africa when the Arab countries' embargo, begun in 1973 as a response to South Africa's
support of Israel during the 1973 war, made the embargo tighter. Yet Iran was still exporting oil to South
Africa until the Iranian revolution in 1979, when Iran ceased exports to South Africa. After an initial
period of highly restricted oil imports (importation of oil fell 40 percent immediately after the Iranian
Revolution), the South Africans were able to resume an important black market trade.
Again, in terms of compellance, oil sanctions were a failure — no elite decisionmakers changed their
policies because of either the threat or the gradual implementation of oil sanctions. Occupation of
Namibia continued, apartheid continued, and the war against South Africa's neighbors continued. South
Africa continued to support and collaborate with Israel, albeit more clandestinely, in the area of weapons
and other technology. The embargo was gradually lifted (first by the US in 1991) when South Africa
began more earnest negotiations with the ANC over apartheid and completely ended in 1993. Normative
communication was also likely a failure — as seen by the decision of the apartheid government to resist
the sanctions and continue the policies which had led to the implementation of sanctions.
Yet the oil embargo caused significant economic, military and political effects. South African elites were
increasingly constrained by oil sanctions and the economic and political structure of power within South
Africa was shaken and reordered because South Africa chose to resist the sanctions in the way it did.
The direct effect was a reduction in the quantity of oil South Africa was able to import. This led to oil
shortages. The indirect effects were staggering. South Africa paid a huge premium to import oil on the
black market — at times as high as 50 percent. To compensate and cushion the effect of the premium,
South Africa developed a stockpiling program.
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More significant were the indirect effects of South Africa's import substitution program of turning coal
(which it had in enormous supply) into oil known as SASOL, and later of turning natural gas into liquid fuel
(Mossgas). These programs were extremely expensive. When economists have estimated the costs of
these efforts they suggest that South Africa spent $15- 20 billion on sanctions busting imports and on
import substitution. South African decisionmakers, such as P.W. Botha acknowledged at the time that the
oil sanctions were quite painful. And again, import substitution industrialization led the government to
reform, i.e. liberalize the South African economy.
Was South Africa sui generis and therefore of little value in analyzing the effects and effectiveness of
targeted sanctions? There are many ways that apartheid South Africa was unique, not least of which was
its concentration of political power in the hands of a very small and homogenous elite. But in salient
respects, South Africa was not unusual in comparison to other states where either broad or targeted
sanctions have been imposed. Apartheid South Africa was a pariah, rather like North Korea, Iran and
Zimbabwe. The concentration of power in a small elite is actually similar to the concentration of power in
other pariah states. South Africa was a regional aggressor, a domestic authoritarian state, in pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction. South Africa was a mixed economy — agricultural, extractive and
industrial. Nor was the duration, quality and extent of international cooperation on the imposition of
sanctions so unusual. Most sanctions were extremely porous. What we can learn from this case is the
longterm effects of both broad and targeted (on sectors and with the academic and cultural boycotts,
focused on individuals) sanctions.
Conclusions: Effects versus Effectiveness, Ethics and Research Design
Can sanctions have the effect of getting a state to "take a right decision"? I argue based on the South
Africa case that we should not expect sanctions to work in this manner.
Should changing minds (through rational or normative arguments) be the measure of effectiveness? No:
the effectiveness of sanctions should not be assessed in terms of changing minds. Sanctions are unlikely
to change minds by changing the calculations of rational actors or by being credible signals and
commitments in ethical arguments intended to change the normative beliefs of elite actors.
How should the effectiveness of sanctions be measured? To talk in terms of immediate effectiveness is to
ask a utilitarian question — do sanctions work to achieve the goals of the sanctioners? Are the costs to
sanctioners worth the likelihood of success?
Perhaps a better question is this: what are the consequences of targeted sanctions likely to be? What
are the direct and indirect effects of sanctions? Will those consequences cause a denial of resources
significant enough to force the target to halt its undesirable behavior? Will the indirect effects of resisting
sanctions drain resources, alter the political balance of power within the targeted state, or prompt
economic changes that gradually change the political balance of power?
We might be able to anticipate the direct and indirect effects of sanctions by understanding an economy
and predicting that states will resist. Then we can make predictions about how that resistance will affect
the economy and politics within that state. Targeted sanctions might be fine tuned to target those
resources that are the lynchpin of an undesired policy.
There are two ethical issues I have only mentioned but not explored. First, I think we ought to prefer
targeted sanctions on ethical grounds because and to the extent that they are intended to discriminate
between decisionmakers and the general population. Second, even targeted sanctions can produce
unintended effects, or to borrow from the language of war, targeted sanctions can produce collateral
damage, and thereby harm innocents. Such was the case when South Africa resisted the oil embargo by
greatly increasing their coal mining and the burning of coal. South Africa became one of the most polluted
countries in the world and tuberculosis rates among the poor skyrocketed. Unintended effects can be
anticipated however. That is our job — to predict not only the effects on perpetrators and elites, but to
anticipate and curtail the effects on the innocent.
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Despite the discrimination that is characteristic of targeted sanctions there are also sometimes significant
externalities. Specifically, embargoes often strengthen the ties between pariah states (when they
cooperate to produce the embargoed resource) and they also often increase the strength of black
markets and criminal elements. Other externalities may be environmental or health related on the
domestic population of a targeted state or of near and far neighbors. And clearly, though I have not
written about it here, the economies of neighboring or interdependent states suffer their own direct and
indirect effects.
In sum, my arguments also have implications for research design. First, if I am right, we had better pay
attention to indirect effects as much as the direct effects of both broad and targeted sanctions. Second,
much more attention needs to be paid to ethical issues — including the problems raised by the analogies
to just war theory — the "hard hand" theory, the problem of double effect and intentions, the question of
foreseen versus intended and unintended effects. Finally, we should attend to the synergistic effects of
sanctions and other factors.
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