On December 4th, WorldBoston hosted a Chat and Chowder program featuring Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr, authors of the newly published book, How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare. Narges Bajoghli, an award winning anthropologist, writer, and Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), joined forces with Vali Nasr, the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at SAIS to write a groundbreaking work centering on the limited political impact of sanctions.
Commencing the talk, Nasr asserts that the question of whether sanctions work is the wrong question to ask. Sanctions of course cause significant damage to the society and the economy of the country impacted, however the more important question is whether or not sanctions achieve their desired result.
The book How Sanctions Work is centered around Iran, though carries implications for U.S. policy as a whole. Since 2011, American sanctions on Iran have increased 900%, and today a third of all of the world's countries are sanctioned by the United States. In 2018, after Trump left the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), the United States began a campaign of maximum pressure on Iran, ramping up the sanctions in the hopes of forcing Iran back to the negotiating table. The United States wanted a smaller nuclear program, fewer backed regional militants, and a less repressive Iran. In Venezuela, in part resulting from debilitating American sanctions, nearly a quarter of the country has fled, many to the United States. Have sanctions worked in these instances?
Bajoghli and Nasr argued that sanctions are intended to force either behavioral or regime changes, but after scrupulous examination of the evidence they came to the opposite conclusion: sanctions entrench the establishment authoritarian leadership that they are supposed to be target, destroy the middle class, weaken any potential uprising, and strengthen the military. Overall, rather than a push towards a freer, fairer society, sanctions increase repression.
As formal trade markets become unavailable, non-government affiliated companies are forced to seek state or military assistance in order to reach grey and black markets. In charge of policing the nation's borders, the military is now required to export goods out of the country, relatively strengthening the military through its newly minted monopoly on trade and weakening independent companies. The middle class similarly is devastated by the sanctions which, in Iran’s case, pushed a considerable number of people into poverty, destroying the base of regime protesters. Notably too, sanctions impacts are largely permanent, and societal changes that occur under sanctions including the destruction of the middle class, do not suddenly revert if the sanctions are lifted.
Bajoghli and Nasr added that the biggest weakness in sanctions was their use as a one way ticket. Once sanctions were implemented, nearly never were they offered to be removed. As a result, nations factor sanctions into their calculations as permanent, making the behavioral changes desired unlikely to occur without the ostensible benefits that sanction cancellation would have.
As Bajoghli and Nasr point out, Biden has never offered to remove sanctions from Russia in return for abandoning their pursuit of Ukraine, showcasing the failures of sanctions as an incentive device. In part, this is a failure of delegations of power. Despite the president maintaining sole authority as a diplomat and to engage in warfare, Congress retains much of the power in sanctions, requiring congressional approval for certain sanction removal.
If sanctions have so little impact on states' decisions - why are they implemented so often? This question was similarly answered by Bajoghli and Nasr with the assertion that sanctions are most effective in Washington DC. They are perceived as the solve-all solution. They give the impression of action, and as a result, the United States overuses sanctions.
Worryingly enough, Bajoghli and Nasr tie the conversation back to the ever present theme of the axis of evil, citing that as countries begin to believe that they will be sanctioned, they prepare, creating sanction resistance infrastructure, decreasing reliance on the dollar, and begin to work together to evade sanctions, all together aiding in the forming of an anti-American alliance, aimed at ending the dollars world dominance.
After this talk we were left with the obvious question: what does work? Bajoghli and Nasr offered the solution of including an expiration date, to truly incentivize behavioral changes. They add that as sanctions have proliferated, significant interest groups have now sprung up to push for their continued implementation, having become a source of income for numerous groups especially as the number of sanctions and those working on them has risen.
To conclude, this fascinating talk was followed by a nice reception, the clam chowder remaining was finished and networking began. Much of the audience like myself came away with a new perspective on sanctions and their use, realizing that the dramatic damage that sanctions cause and the few meaningful results from their use should force a reexamination in Washington of sanction policy.
