Economic Sanctions and the Symphony of Power

Another day, another sanctions conference.

Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash

Yesterday an academic on Bluesky asked, “What's the moment of luck that's had the biggest impact for your academic career?” I have a bunch of answers to this question, but maybe the most consequential one was my choice of dissertation topic. Thirty years ago,¹ I started working in earnest on my Ph.D. dissertation. deciding to write about economic sanctions, I was warned off by some senior scholars. In the nineties, sanctions were considered to be neither an area of cutting-edge scholarly research nor a substantively interesting topic of inquiry. The one book that captured any attention was not interested in sanctions per se so much as what drove international cooperation in sanctioning.

I persisted, and let’s just say that things worked out. One of the perks has been that as scholarly and policy attention has been paid to economic statecraft, I occasionally get asked to write some more about the topic.

[OK, that’s enough of a solipsistic wind-up. Get to the punch!—ed. On it!]

This is a long-winded way to say that last weekend I had the privilege of heading down to Williamsburg, VA and the College of William & Mary to present at the third annual Gates Forum on Sanctions and the Symphony of Power. As the conference website explains:

Under the leadership of Chancellor Robert M. Gates, the forum engaged participants with a singular focus: In an era of intensifying great power competition, what concrete actions can the United States take to reimagine its approach to sanctions and other tools of economic statecraft in ways that best advance its national interests, deliver effective results, and respond to changing international circumstances?

I wrote one of the seven commissioned papers, entitled “Sanctions and the American Symphony of Power.”² Here are the key paragraphs:

One has to view economic sanctions as one instrument in a symphony of power. On occasion, sanctions alone can achieve desired foreign policy ends. On other occasions, sanctions are one part of a larger suite of policy instruments that achieved a favorable policy outcome. Unfortunately, U.S. policymakers are often unaware of this complex relationship between sanctions and foreign policy outcomes.

A look at high-profile sanctions cases– and the ways that U.S. officials reacted to those cases– reveal three significant flaws in the American way of sanctioning. First, there is a ratchet effect with sanctions; they are easy to impose and difficult to lift. This is particularly true with sanctions authorized by Congress. Therefore, even in periods when U.S. officials are skeptical about the utility of sanctions, they will continue to accumulate. Second, officials tend to overlearn the lessons from high-profile cases– in no small part because they fail to comprehend the ways that sanctions often involve multiple instruments of power. Successful instances of economic coercion cause the tool to be massively overused; high-profile failures cause an underutilization of sanctions. Finally, the growth of U.S. financial power and weaponized interdependence has made it impossible for policymakers to credibly commit to limiting the American use of sanctions. Even well-meaning officials genuinely interested in reducing the use of sanctions will find it impossible to resist sanctions when circumstances demand some kind of U.S. response.

These arguments are illuminated by looking at the legacy that high-profile sanctions cases have had on U.S. economic statecraft. The longstanding U.S. sanctions against Cuba, for example, demonstrate the ratchet effect at work. Simply put, it is easy for the United States to impose sanctions and very difficult to lift them. The Iraq sanctions in the 1990s triggered a shift in the way that sanctions are employed, from comprehensive measures to “smart sanctions.” This shift partially addressed one sanctions problem while creating others. The successful sanctioning of Iran reveals how successful outcomes often trigger more enthusiasm for sanctioning activity– which will usually lead to less productive sanctions and an atrophying of other policy instruments. Finally, the recent sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation highlight an ongoing 21st century sanctioning problem facing the United States: the near-impossibility of resisting their use.

You will have to read the whole thing (pages 64-80 of this .pdf) to see my reasoning. But those interested in my arguments will also be interested in the other six papers, all of which have something interesting to say about the current state of U.S. economic statecraft.³

1. 30 years ago?!?!?!?!?!?!

2. The other papers were: “The Sources of American Financial Power and its Challengers,” by Daniel McDowell; “A New World Re-Order: Geopolitical Shifts Arising from Tomorrow’s Financial Systems,” by Yaya Fanusie; “U.S. Sanctions and the Global South: Navigating Networked Resistance, Competing Narratives, and Unintended Consequences,” by Samantha Custer; “China’s Economic Statecraft and Implications for the Open Economic Order,” by Audrye Wong; “Toward a New Sanctions Multilateralism: How the United States Can Work Better with Allies on Economic Statecraft,” by Edward Fishman; and . “Harnessing the Private Sector to Empower U.S. Economic Statecraft,” by Will Norris.

3. It helped that the Gates Forum also brought in numerous private-sector notables as well as policy practitioners from both parties. They helped ensure that the conversation could go beyond conceptual debates to consider the nitty-gritty of implementation and institutional reform.