Sanctions and Conflict: A Lesson to Be Handled with Care

As a professor of international relations with 10 years of experience, I am sad to say that my job has recently become easier. The invasion of Ukraine and President Trump’s two terms have changed how young people see the world. Once, theories of global politics seemed outdated to students raised in an unusually peaceful era. Europeans born in the late 1990s were so optimistic, often rejecting the idea that states must worry about survival and maintain strong militaries. Now, after witnessing war return to Europe on a scale unseen since 1945, young Europeans are more open to this hard-nosed view of the world. At the same time, students from the developing world, who used to be too pessimistic, are also adjusting their views. They tended to see foreign policy as driven solely by self-interest, overlooking the fact that, in times of growth and stability, Western states often showed real generosity toward the poor and powerless. With today’s widespread cuts to foreign aid, that generosity may become most visible in its absence. These shifts in my students’ perceptions reflect a broader return of history.

If history is making a comeback, what other useful insights does it provide? I want to highlight two ideas related to economic sanctions. Sanctions, measures intended to coerce or weaken a target state, are now used by both superpowers (the US and China) and regional powers like Saudi Arabia and India. While sanctions like those imposed on Russia in 2022 make headlines, dozens of countries are targeted each year. Their appeal lies in two factors: growing economic interdependence and the high cost of war.

Although countries increasingly use sanctions to get what they want in international politics without resorting to war, 20^th century history tells us that their improper use can actually raise the risk of war. 

One lesson from history is that using economic sanctions under new circumstances should be done carefully, because it tends to reduce sanctions’ future effectiveness. When the League of Nations imposed the first large-scale sanctions against Italy for the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, fascist regimes in Germany and Japan saw this as a warning. They learned that the international community may attempt to prevent their territorial expansion by strangling them economically. Accordingly, these countries doubled their efforts to become economically more independent and less vulnerable. Therefore, not only did the 1935 sanctions fail to reverse the invasion of Ethiopia, they also alerted potential targets of this economic weapon and motivated them to take countermeasures. 

Since 2022, the Western coalition has imposed on Russia unprecedented sanctions against a major power, including its expulsion from the global financial system. Other potential targets of sanctions, like China and India, have learned that financial integration with the West makes them vulnerable, and have taken steps to mitigate their vulnerability. Even if justified, the 2022 sanctions have revealed a strategic cost: they have reduced the West’s options in future confrontations, because future adversaries will now be better prepared. As a result, Western policymakers now have a less effective alternative to the military option. 

A second lesson from history is the importance of calibrating sanction severity and not provoking a military backlash. Many scholars believe that Japan’s attack against the US base in Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a response to the Western oil embargo on Japan. The embargo threatened to permanently curtail Japan’s expansion in the Far East, which was seen by the Japanese regime as essential for the empire’s viability. Forced to choose between permanent paralysis and a desperate military plan, Japan chose the latter. Ironically, in trying to contain military aggression, sanctions instead provoked it.

Ideally, sanctions should be structured to incentivize policy change without fundamentally threatening the target regime’s future viability. Take current rivalries, for instance: if the US were to impose “maximum” sanctions on China (for instance, a full trade embargo), it could create an existential crisis for China’s regime, possibly triggering a military response while China still believes it can win. Therefore, policymakers have to carefully weigh how far to go in using sanctions as a deterrent in scenarios like Taiwan.

We live in interesting times and there is no reason to think that policymakers will use economic sanctions less frequently in the coming years. The lesson from history is clear: sanctions must be used sparingly and designed with both long-term strategy and unintended consequences in mind.