Will I still be able to buy my tea?

The Economist on 25 February wrote with regard to Iran's development of nuclear energy / weapons and whether sanctions would be effective against the belligerent country. I ever argued that sanctions will not work against Iran, and most readers in an online debate about Iran agree. However this article at least has me thinking again about the plausibility of specific sanctions against certain perpetrators in Iran and not against the whole Iranian population in general.

What would be more able to deter Iran, as proposed in this article: a ban on weapons sales, a curtail on investments in the oil & gas industries in Iran and financial sanctions against banks that deal with suspicious Iranian firms. What might successfully deter Iran from acquiring the nuclear weapon, however, might not necessarily be able to be carried out given Russian and Chinese resistance towards tough sanctions against Iran. Vested interests evidently, but at least Russia is beginning to see the light after being rebuffed by Iran for offering alternatives to enriching uranium in Iran by offering to enrich uranium in Russia. Russia continues to sell weapons to Iran however, which would negate the effect of a weapons trading ban.

But unfortunately, the Iranian government appears as if it is immune to sanctions and international action against its actions, and continues to act as if nothing has happened. Life is made much more difficult for the Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guards behind the scenes, but life is also made difficult for the local Iranians. Hopefully, if China can see the light and squeeze Iran, Iran might back down considering that China is considered one of its major backers.

No more trading!

In January 27's The Straits Times, Susan Long writes in the Review column about why sanctions will not work in curbing Iran's nuclear tendencies. Whether sanctions work or not has been a long debated issue, and simply googling the title of Long's article "Why sanctions dont work now" will yield many articles that have been written on this subject, mostly arguing for the end of sanctions against "evil" countries like Iran and Cuba.

First, regarding Long's write-up. She asserts that sanctions may not be as messy as outright fighting or war, but they harm the innocent civilians most and not the leaders and perpetrators. The poor suffer the most as they have limited access to food, medicine and daily necessities amongst other things, whereas the rich are not affected very much by economic sanctions since they already have the monetary ability to purchase high-end goods like "Swiss chocolate". The elite will "thrive on the black market" while the poor suffer unnecessarily.

Sanctions can also backfire, such as when it unites a country against the perpetrators of the sanctions (often the United States of America together with the United Nations). Take the sanctions against Iran. Instead of isolating the Islamic regime led by Ayatollah Khamenei & President Ahmadinejad and causing displeasure towards the leaders by the populace, it could end up bringing together the forces that wanted to overthrow Khamenei & Ahmadinejad, led by the Green movement whose leader is Mir-Hossein Mousavi. This would make it even more difficult to "overthrow" the current Islamic regime should the incumbents unite with the opposition against the United States and the outside world.

Of course, sanctions are only sanctioned when the country that imposes the sanctions does not stand to lose much. And often countries that impose sanctions or threaten to do so end up revoking them out of other motivations, such as the United States' threat to impose sanctions on Myanmar which in the end were not realised because such sanctions would have benefitted China and other rogue regimes that would increase their sphere of influence in the country.

Some other articles that disbelieve in sanctions can be found online as well. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times has similar views to Long, published in the Global Policy Forum. David Henderson of Hoover Institution in Hoover Digest even goes as far as to propose that free trade with "rogue" nations would help to engineer collapses in these regimes when the people open their eyes to the world out there and what is on offer. Dursun Peksen in Foreign Policy names other plausible alternatives such as "engagement / dialogue" and even economic incentives like foreign aid.

In essence, the idea seems to be that should the stick fail, the carrot might be the only way out. In a globalized world such as ours, penalties like sanctions have a high chance of backfiring.