Serious question: Has sanctioning a nation ever changed any behavior?

[shortylickens]

U.S., E.U. impose sanctions on Russia over Navalny's poisoning

The coordinated sanctions are a response to the Kremlin's poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his subsequent arrest and detention.

www.nbcnews.com

Right of the top of my head, I cant think of it. And searching google & bing doesnt get me the results I want.
Also, searching for political stuff keeps returning nude college girls so I think I may need an unused search engine, or one that never tracks my habits.

 

[Fenixgoon]

I can't recall, either. But I'm not exactly "old" when it comes to "how long I've been paying attention to international politics".
Can't remember where I read it, but the idea was that sanctions work best as a threat and not a follow through. If you actually have to enact the sanctions on a country, every day people are those most affected, which is obviously not a good thing. The higher ups aren't nearly as affected because they will always make sure they're taken care of first.

Edit: spelling

 

[pauldun170]

Serious answer - Rarely and a topic that I will end up sinking way to fucking deep into because its...(stops self...has work to do)
However never say never

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/04/28/13-times-that-economic-sanctions-really-worked/

 

[dank69]

I thought it was universally known that Iran agreed to the Nuclear treaty specifically in response to sanctions. And by universally, I mean anyone capable of breaking out of the conservative media bubble.

 

[skyking]

Serious answer - Rarely and a topic that I will end up sinking way to fucking deep into because its...(stops self...has work to do)
However never say never

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/04/28/13-times-that-economic-sanctions-really-worked/

That rabbit hole is deep indeed. What strikes me the worst about it is the fact that the weakest and most vulnerable in a country are the ones hit hardest by the sanctions. It reeks of hypocrisy.
We had a neighbor who was known for beating on his kids. One day one of the brothers had hurt his little brother, and you could hear him chasing after him "I'll teach you to be mean!"

 

[tweaker2]

How 'bout the sanctions placed on post-WW1 Germany? Did it lead that nation into starting WW2 in one way or another? Or is that something unrelated to what the OP is referring?

 

[dank69]

How 'bout the sanctions placed on post-WW1 Germany? Did it lead that nation into starting WW2 in one way or another? Or is that something unrelated to what the OP is referring?

Didn't Pearl Harbor happen because of sanctions as well?

 

[PingSpike]

How 'bout the sanctions placed on post-WW1 Germany? Did it lead that nation into starting WW2 in one way or another? Or is that something unrelated to what the OP is referring?

I suppose the goal of sanctions is to cause a regime to collapse from within by destabilizing it economically. Which is pretty much what happened to Germany but I don't think that was actually the goal in that case. As near as I can figure, the goal was to punish Germany and there wasn't really a set of terms they could agree to in order to escape right?

 

[Indus]

Sanctions are punishments a country (or group of countries) puts on another country. It would mean that the US bans American companies in certain industries from exporting their goods.

Countries can also impose financial sanctions. That's when the financial assets of certain people or organizations are frozen, so they can't access their money in foreign bank accounts.

I'd say the certain people sanctions on Russia has worked a bit better.. it pissed Russia off enough that they got a Russian Agent in the white house.

 

[skyking]

Didn't Pearl Harbor happen because of sanctions as well?

That is a gross oversimplification. Japan had already gone to war over their entire region in one way or another. The US was going to be involved no matter how you view it.

 

[PowerEngineer]

That is a gross oversimplification. Japan had already gone to war over their entire region in one way or another. The US was going to be involved no matter how you view it.

Oversimplification? Perhaps a bit, but not a "gross" one IMHO.

There is no doubt that the ratcheting up of US trade sanctions fed the build up of Japanese hostility. The final straw was the embargo on oil exports to Japan following their occupation of Indochina. My understanding is that Japan's oil reserves would have only lasted two years, after which their military strength would have been gutted. So Japan had to make an immediate choice: back down in the face of US pressure (leaving China and Indochina), or roll the dice on a war to secure oil supplies (while they still had enough oil left to do so). The US did not appreciate the strength of Japanese cultural bias against backing down.

Yes, Japan was already involved in a war with China; and perhaps it would have been inevitable that the US would have gotten involved at some point. Nonetheless, I do think that US oil sanctions pretty directly triggered the Japanese decision to start the war when they did.

 

[fskimospy]

I think the first major problem would be to define what we consider to be ‘working’. The entire concept is based on the idea that we would see a country take an action and we could draw a line from A->B and that’s really hard because it’s not like the other country is going to broadcast their reasons. It also doesn’t factor in their deterrence element, and the type probably matters a lot.

Of course the fact that the results of sanctions are often unknowable or at least unknowable with a high degree of certainty might indicate to us that we shouldn’t get too excited about employing them.

 

[pmv]

How 'bout the sanctions placed on post-WW1 Germany? Did it lead that nation into starting WW2 in one way or another? Or is that something unrelated to what the OP is referring?

I don't think the post-WW1 punishment of Germany (i.e. Versailles) was really 'sanctions' in the sense of bans on trading with it. Maybe in what seems to be the wider sense of the term, i.e. penalties and restrictions. Seems to be generally thought that Versailles was overly-punitive and thus destabilised the country and helped bring the Nazis to power, but that involved all sorts of things (reparations payments, acceptance of war-guilt, loss of territory, including valuable resources crucial for the economy) that aren't usually part of 'sanctions' these days.

I have often wondered about sanctions in the contemporary sense of restrictions on trade. The recent track-record does not seem great. They seem to punish the vulnerable in the target country and not do much to change anything. The one case where it seems they maybe worked was Apartheid South Africa. And it seems like it was the cultural boycott that had a particularly demoralising effect on the regime. But the economic sanctions there were constantly broken, usually by people with an ideological sympathy with Apartheid. Surely by now there's been academic studies of that sanctions regime and its effect?

Edit - the thing about the South African case, is that there existed an active and determined internal opposition to the regime, that could benefit from the regime being hurt by sanctions. In many cases sanctions have been imposed on countries where there was no substantial opposition movement with any hope of overthrowing the regime. I think that maybe makes a difference in how sanctions play out (and the morality of them, even).

Edit2 - the alternative to sanctions would, I guess, be 'constructive engagement', where you try to encourage a regime to reform and to change the aspirations and values of the population through trade and other interactions. Maybe that makes more sense where there isn't an ANC or Nelson Mandela figure to be an internal opposition? I wonder about that with regard to China - where there seems to be no clearly-defined opposition to the CCP.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

There is zero doubt in this - it definitely financially hurts them.

The question is does it in anyway convince ignorant dictators to change their ways.... and to that, my answer is no.

Leaders think of "They did that? Well I'll show them!" instead of "Maybe we should re-think this..."

 

[nOOky]

I think you could find quite a few instances of sanctions only hurting the populace, the ruling class usually seems to come out just fine.

 

[blackangst1]

13 times that economic sanctions really worked - The Washington Post

 

[mect]

Sanctions at the very least give us a tool to try instead of getting involved in an armed conflict. Even if they are ineffective, there are certainly worse approaches.