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Not so much these days, since even the stereotypical bad actors have liberalized economies and so sanctions mean you're just leaving money on the table for a le
by 13thLetter 11y ago
Not so much these days, since even the stereotypical bad actors have liberalized economies and so sanctions mean you're just leaving money on the table for a less scrupulous nation to scoop up. It's easy to put, and keep, global sanctions on a country like North Korea which produces and imports very little anyway (although even in that case they leak like a sieve.) But say, Iran, which has plentiful resources to export and a vibrant consumer economy? A very different story, as we're seeing right now.
If there was ever a meaningful enforcement mechanism for these treaties, it no longer exists except in the case of the smallest, easiest targets.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoThe actions of the North Korean government borders on genocide, if you have that level of contempt for your own people then trade sanctions are ineffective. However, in the case of Iran they appear to have done what they were intended to do, the stories I've seen from Iran indicate that the trade sanctions were a large part of what brought Iran to the negotiating table. Does this tie up with what you've read/seen?
- 13thLetter 11y agoYes, it does. And to be clear, I'm not saying that sanctions were ineffective in this case: as you say, they'd be much more effective against a nation like Iran with a relatively open economy and society. However, that same factor makes most other nations much less eager to keep the sanctions, because they're losing the money they could make by trading with such a nation. So at the first chance to make a fig-leaf deal and abandon the sanctions, of course they jumped on it.