Americans use sanctions for domestic political benefits, disregard their effectiveness
Only once in a very long while, the stars may align for scholars of things long gone to have their works taken up and eagerly consumed by the public right after their publication. In that regard, the timing could not be more fortunate for Nicholas Mulder, assistant professor of modern European history at Cornell University, and author of ‘The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War’, published by Yale University Press in January 2022, which explores the genesis of economic sanctions as an alternative to war in the interwar period in the early twentieth century after the creation of the League of Nations.
Mulder’s historical investigation is highly relevant to our times because, at the dawn of the Russia-ukraine war, Russia became the most sanctioned country on earth as Western powers scrambled to confront it by doing everything they could short of direct military engagement – which, for the Western block, primarily translated into resorting to pervasive economic sanctions. The move has so far helped them save face and inflict pain. But what’s exactly its ultimate goals? Would it be effective in materializing those goals? What about its unintended consequences? If history is any indication, the answers to such questions are far more complicated than what is often proclaimed, and there are other factors at play when it comes to contemporary uses of sanctions, according to Mulder.
The US, in particular, is an interesting case in point. “It is a historical irony that the state that between the world wars most fervently opposed economic sanctions has been their most avid user over the last seven decades,” says Mulder in his book. Explaining that in an exclusive interview with Iran Daily, Mulder, a regular contributor to prestigious journals such as Foreign Policy and The Nation, argues that it’s not just about the effectiveness of sanctions. The fact that the US can use the economic weapon without much of a serious consequence for its own economy encourages American statesmen to apply it for their “domestic political benefits” without much regard for “its ultimate success in achieving its external goal,” which often has been disappointing.
Moreover, it is far more difficult to lift sanctions (that is, in return for compliance) than to impose them, which essentially questions the credibility of sanctions “as a goal-oriented coercive strategy,” says Mulder, adding that “the US domestic politics is a real constraint on more effective sanctions use.” In the long run, therefore, the American way of sanctioning may prove utterly counterproductive by turning a potent tool of international politics into an obsolete one, especially given the rise of new economic powerhouses across the globe – most notably China. This, in itself, may curiously be of much interest to Mulder, who, on the sidelines of an interview with The Wire China in 2021, had said that his personal hero were the Byzantines, who played a bad geopolitical hand well for over a millennium.”