A Thinking Reed

Were the sanctions "working"?

Written by

Lee M.

in

One common criticism of President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq is that the UN-imposed sanctions were “working” – i.e. containing Saddam Hussein’s expansionist ambitions and his drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction. That fact that the U.S. has indeed not found the dreaded WMD seems to confirm this.

While the efficacy of the sanctions certainly needed to be taken into account in assessing any possible threat posed by Saddam’s Iraq, it is eminently debatable whether sanctions are morally preferable to going to war, or even morally permissible at all.

Accounts differ, but most people agree that the toll of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq from the end of the first Gulf War until the re-commencement of hostilities in 2003 was anywhere between 500,000 to over a million deaths, largely due to lack of access to clean water, food, and medical supplies (excacerbated by the probably unnecessary destruction of Iraqi infrastructure during Gulf War I).

So, in sheer quantitative terms, sanctions rival or exceed war as a tool of policy. Moreover, sanctions are among the least discriminating ways of punishing another country for failing to comply with one’s demands. The political elite are usually the last to feel the punishing effect of sanctions, and ordinary people suffer the most. Sanctions intrinsically violate the principles of just warfare.

In fact, sanctions are essentially a form of siege warfare, so “let the sanctions work” was not exactly an “anti-war” stance. It may instead have been a policy for a silent, but more deadly, form of war.

Comments

4 responses to “Were the sanctions "working"?”

  1. Marvin

    Sanctions against South Africa did seem to work. Perhaps they worked there and not in Iraq because the people they hurt were able to move the government to change policies, something impossible in Iraq given the suffocating nature of Saddam’s dictatorship.

    Though I deplored the Wag the Dog odor that hung over Clinton’s bombing of Iraq in December, 1998 (same weekend he was impeached), that probably had something to do with the lack of WMDs in Iraq 5 years later.

    When I think about what the people of Iraq have suffered this past generation, it’s hard not to despair…

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  2. Lee

    Still seems as though sanctions are morally problematic if we’re punishing civilians in order to get their government to change its policies, doesn’t it? (In fact, put that way it sounds a lot like the official definition of terrorism!)

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  3. Marcus

    Have to agree with Lee on this one. If the essense of terrorism is killing non-participants to force political change on a government, sanctions generally are terrorism.

    Of course, it depends on just what trade is interdicted. If it’s only weapons or luxury items, or somehow targeted directly at the ruling classes (who are NOT non-participants in the struggle, anyway), that would be a just means of conflict.

    But intentionally starving the people to death or depriving them of vital medications, particularly when owing to dictatorship they are as collectively powerless over their government as citizens are individually in a democracy, is surely as wrong as bombing them with napalm.

    Yes. We’ve done that, too. In Japan, for instance.

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  4. Genius

    You could argue that a sanction is an “inaction” (ie a failure to trade) and that placing sanctions on a country is rather like “failing to save lives” as opposed to actively killing people.

    I.e. it is equivalent to NOT invading the country to remove a despot as opposed to invading.

    Anyway I agree that sanctions are morally problematic possibly because I also see leaving a sadistic despot in charge as problematic (as too is war).

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