Acting while avoiding action in Iran
By George Friedman
The Iranian government has rejected, at least for the moment, a proposal from
the "Iran Six" to ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium abroad for
further enrichment. The group - comprising the United States, Britain, France,
Russia, China and Germany - is now considering the next step in the roadmap
that it laid out last April.
This is a new round of sanctions, this time meant to be crippling. The only
crippling sanction available is to cut off the supply of gasoline, since Iran
imports 35% of its refined gasoline products. That would theoretically cripple
the Iranian economy and compel the Iranians to comply with US demands over the
nuclear issue.
We have written extensively on the ability of sanctions to work in
Iran. There is, however, a broader question, which is the general utility of
sanctions in international affairs. The Iranian government said last week that
sanctions don't concern it because, historically, sanctions have not succeeded.
This partly explains Iranian intransigence: the Iranians don't feel they have
anything to fear from sanctions. The question is whether the Iranian view is
correct and why they would believe it - and if they are correct, why the "Iran
Six" would even consider imposing sanctions.
The assumptions of sanctions
We need to begin with a definition of sanctions. In general, sanctions are some
sort of penalty imposed on a country designed to cause it sufficient pain to
elicit a change in its behavior. Sanctions are intended as an alternative to
war and therefore exclude violence. Thus, the entire point of sanctions, as
opposed to war, is to compel changes of behavior in countries without resorting
to force.
Normal sanctions are economic and come in three basic forms. First, there is
seizing or freezing the assets of a country or its citizens located in another
country. Second, sanctions can block the shipment of goods (or movement of
people) out of the target country. Third, sanctions can block the movement of
goods into a country. Minor sanctions are possible, such as placing tariffs on
products imported from the target country, but those sorts of acts are focused
primarily on rectifying economic imbalances and are not always driven by
political interests.
Thus, the United States placed tariffs on Chinese tires coming into the United
States. The purpose was to get China to change its economic policies. On the
other hand, placing sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s or on Sudan today are
designed to achieve political and military outcomes.
It is important to consider the underlying assumptions of the decision to
impose sanctions. First, there is the assumption that the target country is
economically dependent in some way on the country or countries issuing the
sanctions. Second, it assumes that the target country has no alternative
sources for the economic activity while under sanctions. Third, it assumes that
the pain caused will be sufficient to compel change. The first is relatively
easy to determine and act on. The next two are far more complex.
Obviously, sanctions are an option of stronger powers toward weaker ones. It
assumes that the imposition of sanctions will cause more pain to the target
country than it will to the country or countries issuing sanctions, and that
the target country cannot or will not use military action to counter economic
sanctions.
For example, the United States placed sanctions on the sale of grain to the
Soviet Union during the Cold War. It discovered that while the sanctions were
hurting the Soviets, they were hurting American farmers as well. The pain was
reciprocal and there was an undertone of danger if the Soviets had chosen to
counter the sanctions with military force. An example of that concerned Japan
in 1941. The United States halted the shipment of oil and scrap metal to Japan
in an attempt to force it to reshape its policies in China and Indochina. The
sanctions were crippling, as the Americans expected. However, the Japanese
response was not capitulation, but Pearl Harbor.
To understand the difficulties of determining and acting on the assumptions of
imposing sanctions, consider Cuba. The United States has imposed extensive
economic sanctions on Cuba for years. During the first decades of the
sanctions, they were relatively effective, in the sense that third countries
tended to comply rather than face possible sanctions themselves from the United
States. As time went on, the fear of sanctions declined.
A European country might have been inclined to comply with US sanctions in the
1960s or 1970s, for both political reasons and for concern over potential
retaliatory sanctions from the United States. However, as the pattern of
international economic activity shifted, and the perception of both Cuba and
the United States changed within these countries, the political implication to
comply with US wishes declined, while the danger of US sanctions diminished.
Placing sanctions on the European Union would be mutually disastrous and the
United States would not do it over Cuba, or virtually any other issue.
As a result, the sanctions the United States placed on Cuba have dramatically
diminished in importance. Cuba can trade with most of the world, and other
countries can invest in Cuba if they wish. The flow of American tourists is
blocked, but European, Canadian and Latin American tourists who wish to go to
Cuba can go. Cuba has profound economic problems, but those problems are only
marginally traceable to sanctions. Indeed, the US embargo has provided the
Castro regime with a useful domestic explanation for its economic failures.
Limitations
This points to an interesting characteristic of sanctions. One of the potential
goals of placing sanctions on a country is to generate unrest and internal
opposition, forcing regime change or at least policy change. This rarely
happens. Instead, the imposition of sanctions creates a sense of embattlement
within the country. Two things follow from this. First, there is frequently a
boost in support for the regime that might otherwise not be there. The idea
that economic pain takes precedence over patriotism or concern for maintaining
national sovereignty is not a theory with a great deal of empirical support.
Second, the sanctions allow a regime to legitimize declaring a state of
emergency - which is what sanctions intend to create - and then use that state
of emergency to increase repression and decrease the opportunity for an
opposition to emerge.
Consider an extreme example of sanctions during World War II, when both the
Axis and Allies tried to use airpower as a means of imposing massive economic
hardship on the population, thereby attempting to generate unrest and
opposition to the regime. Obviously, strategic bombing is not sanctions, but it
is instructive to consider them in this sense. When we look at the Battle of
Britain and the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan, we find
that counter economic warfare did not produce internal opposition that the
regime could not handle. Indeed, it could reasonably be argued that it
increased support for the regime. It is assumed that economic hardship can
generate regime change, yet even in some of the most extreme cases of economic
hardship, that didn't happen.
Imposing an effective sanctions regime on a country is difficult for two
reasons. First, economic pain does not translate into political pressure.
Second, creating effective economic pain normally requires a coalition. The
United States is not in a position to unilaterally impose effective sanctions.
In order to do that, it must act in concert with other countries that are
prepared not only to announce sanctions but - and this is far more important
and difficult - also to enforce them. This means that it must be in the
political interest of all countries that deal with the target to impose the
sanctions.
It is rarely possible to create such a coalition. Nations' interests diverge
too much. Sometimes they converge, as in South Africa prior to the end of
apartheid. South Africa proved that sanctions can work if there is a coalition
that does not benefit extensively from economic and political ties with the
target country, and where the regime is composed of a minority within a very
large sea of hostility. South Africa was a special case. The same attempt at a
sanctions regime in Sudan over Darfur has failed because many countries have
political or economic interests there.
It is also difficult to police the sanctions. By definition, as the sanctions
are imposed, the financial returns for violating them increase. Think of US
drug laws as a form of sanctions. They raise the price of drugs in the United
States and increase the incentives for smugglers. When a broad sanctions regime
was placed on Iraq, vast amounts of money were made from legitimate and
illegitimate trading with Iraq. Regardless of what a national government might
say (and it may well say one thing and do another) individuals and corporations
will find ways around the sanctions. Indeed, President Barack Obama's proposed
sanctions on corporations are intended precisely for this reason. As always,
the issue is one of intelligence and enforcement. People can be very good at
deception for large amounts of money.
The difficulty of creating effective sanctions raises the question of why they
are used. The primary answer is that they allow a nation to appear to be acting
effectively without enduring significant risks. Invading a country, as the
United States found in Iraq, poses substantial risks. The imposition of
sanctions on relatively weaker countries without the ability to counter the
sanctions is much less risky. The fact that it is also far less effective is
compensated for by the lowered risk.
In truth, many sanction regimes are enforced as political gestures, either for
domestic political reasons, or to demonstrate serious intent on the
international scene. In some cases, sanctions are a way of appearing to act so
that military action can be deferred. No one expects the sanctions to change
the regime or its policies, but the fact that sanctions are in place can be
used as an argument against actions by other nations.
This is very much the case with Iran. No one expects Russia or China (or even
many of the European states) to fully comply with a sanctions regime on
gasoline. Even if they did, no one expects the flow of gasoline to be
decisively cut off. There will be too many people prepared to take the risk of
smuggling gasoline to Iran for that to happen. Even if the US blockaded Iranian
ports, the Caucasus and Central Asia are far too disorderly and the monetary
rewards of smuggling are too great of an incentive to make the gasoline
sanctions effective. Additionally, the imposition of sanctions will both rally
the population to the regime as well as provide justification for an intense
crackdown. The probability of sanctions forcing policy changes or regime change
in Iran is slim.
Balancing acquiescence and war
But sanctions have one virtue: they delay or block military action. So long as
sanctions are being considered or being imposed, the argument can be made to
those who want military action that it is necessary to give the sanctions time
to work. Therefore, in this case, sanctions allow the United States to block
any potential military actions by Israel against Iran while appearing
domestically to be taking action. Should the United States wish to act, the
sanctions route gives the Europeans the option of arguing that military action
is premature. Furthermore, if military action took place without Russian
approval while Russia was cooperating in a sanctions regime, it would have
increased room to maneuver against U.S. interests in the Middle East,
portraying the United States as trigger-happy.
The ultimate virtue of sanctions is that they provide a platform between
acquiescence and war. The effectiveness of that platform is not nearly as
important as the fact that it provides a buffer against charges of inaction and
demands for further action. In Sudan, for example, no one expects sanctions to
work, but their presence allows business to go on as usual while deflecting
demands for more significant action.
The "Iran Six" is now shaping its response to Iran. They are not even committed
to the idea of sanctions. But they will move to sanctions if it appears that
Israel or the United States is prepared to move aggressively. Sanctions satisfy
the need to appear to be acting while avoiding the risks of action.
(Published with permission from Stratfor,
a Texas-based geopolitical intelligence company. Copyright 2009 Stratfor.)
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