We are living in an age of economic aggression, including cyberattacks, trade wars, intellectual property theft, tariffs and sanctions. They appear to be a bloodless way to beggar your enemies, but are far from victimless crimes.
President Trump, who loves to talk tough but has the bully’s habit of flinching when real action is required, chose not to launch a strike against Iran in retaliation for the shooting down of a drone and said the United States had no need to protect ships of other countries in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz through which so much oil passes, though guaranteeing freedom of the seas has traditionally been regarded as a duty of all nations that rely on global trade.
Instead, Trump made a show of signing another tightening of the brutal sanctions he imposed six months ago. They had reinstated strictures of the Obama administration that were relaxed after the signing of the international treaty to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear arms. It was Trump’s unilateral abandonment of the treaty and reimposition of the sanctions that began the present escalation.
He has crowed that the sanctions are working because thanks to him the Iranian “economy is shattered…their inflation is through the roof…worser than anyplace.” One can’t help being reminded of the fallen wreck of the image of Ozymandias in the desert with its carved boast: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”
Macho boasting aside, are painful sanctions really a good thing or, as in this case, the source of a threat to the world’s most important shipping lane for energy on which Europe, China and Japan depend? As Auden wrote in September 1, 1939, “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.’ and a policy of ruining thy neighbor’s economy has a way of backfiring.
An academic study of the efficacy of sanctions found that they were effective in producing the change desired only about 34% of the time. Even worse, a second look at the data suggested
the actual success rate was closer to four percent. Would we launch any other kind of war with a four percent chance of victory? Or make an investment wth only a one in twenty-five chance of turning a profit? Not likely, and perhaps a clue to why Trump was the king of bankruptcy.
You’d think Americans would be especially reluctant to embrace crippling economic sanctions. For starters, our country was born out of a furious reaction to economic coercion by the British who tried to impose custom duties, then import taxes on sugar, stamps, tea, glassware, paper, paint and other luxury goods, while demanding a monopoly on the trade in colonial products, all without permitting the colonials a say in the matter.
When they protested violently, the British imposed the Coercive Acts that restricted their liberties. For every British move, the colonies replied with a counter, including a boycott on British imports that cut their revenue by 40 percent. We all know this didn’t end well for the bullying power that thought it could shatter the weaker colonial economy.
Now, as then, sanctions are almost always applied by the powerful nation or alliance against a weaker adversary hoping to make hem bow to their wishes. Free people will surely resist such meddling, and sanctions may be even more useless against totalitarian states.
The rulers of Iran or North Korea are personally insulated from pain, and if they cared about the suffering of their people they would have done something about it long ago. In such regimes the victims of the economic squeeze don’t get a vote, so couldn’t knuckle under even if they wanted to. Often, the pain makes them more loyal to the wicked regime if only because it provides them with all their information.
Another object lesson comes from the prelude to World War II when the United States tried to use economic pain to persuade Japan to rethink its imperial designs. Though America had largely ignored the Japanese expansion into Korea, Manchuria and China during the 1930s, its pact wth the Nazis and the beginning of War II in Europe1939 made the U.S think twice about Japan. So, that same year, the United States terminated a trade treaty with Japan.
In 1940, Roosevelt signed an Export Control Act denying Japan access to American exports of strategic importance. Finally on July 26, 1941 Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States and entered into an embargo of oil exports to Japan with the Asian colonies of the British and Dutch. Five months and twelve days later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and destroyed the Pacific Fleet, precipitating our entry into a World War.
As a bullying businessman, Trump may think shattering a competitor is all in a day’s fun, but shattering the economy of a regime with a fanatical religio-military establishment, nuclear scientists, control over a strategic waterway, and history of terrorism, and leaving it with few options other than capitulation or violence is serious business.
Sanctions may occasionally have the desired effect, but far more often back the targeted party into a corner. The result may be to harden hearts, and instead of dividing the sufferers, unite them in hatred for those causing the pain. Even when they don’t like their own rulers, they are likely to despise foreign meddlers who are ruining their lives and fortunes even more. Wouldn’t we?