American secondary sanctions: old wine in new bottles?

In June 2021, the United States imposed 36 different sanction regimes on states, groups, or individuals. Some of these measures have been in place for several years – as with American sanctions in the Balkans – while others, such as those imposed against members of the Hong Kong government, have been implemented for less than a year. The United States is the country that has imposed the most sanction regimes, with over 120 occurrences throughout the century, even though the general effectiveness of these sanctions seems to have been declining since the 1990s.

Are sanctions effective?

From the end of World War II to the 1960s, American sanctions led to notable successes such as those taken against Southern Rhodesia in 1965. At that time, the United States was at the forefront of many international assistance programs, aid in post-war reconstruction for war-torn countries, and sometimes the sole providers of essential goods and services. In the 1970s and 1980s, despite economic development thanks to multilateral aid from several states, American sanctions remained effective as long as their objectives were limited. The sanctions against Libya in 1978 are a good example of this.

Before World War II, less than a quarter of the sanctions imposed aimed to overthrow the sanctioned regime. However, since the 1990s, more than half of the sanction regimes have had this objective. A well-known example is the sanctions adopted against Iraq in 1990 after Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait. This case, which did not result in the overthrow of the dictator, illustrates that sanctions rarely lead to political changes as definitive as a regime change.

Various factors can contribute to the success or failure of a sanction regime. Among the main ones are the economic cost for the sanctioned state, the nature of its power, its political and social stability, the relationship between the state imposing the sanctions and the sanctioned state, international cohesion, phenomena of “rally around the flag” in the sanctioned state, the reputation and image of the latter, and finally, time. The first factor on this list is arguably the most decisive.

PLAN: – Are sanctions effective? – The use of secondary sanctions – The precedent of Soviet hydrocarbons – Helms-Burton and D’Amato laws – Sanctions under George W. Bush and Barack Obama – The Trump administration: the resurgence of secondary sanctions

Sophie Marineau is a PhD student in the history of international relations at the Catholic University of Louvain.