The New York Times Weighs in on Sanctions

Was it a good editorial or a bad editorial?

Photo by Sarah Shull on Unsplash

The New York Times editorial page likes to think of itself as an organization that exudes significant gravitas, like a great power in international politics. The Grey Lady certainly treats itself like one. I will not soon forget the tortured, self-absorbed process it used to decide who to endorse in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary — nor will I forget how silly their eventual decision wound up being.

Still, as a member of the Ideas Industry, I take note when the Times weighs in on my area of expertise. Over the weekend, the Editorial Board ran a long disquisition on economic sanctions that is worth reviewing. It’s safe to say that they view this instrument of statecraft warily:

While sanctions are easy to impose — there are dozens of sanctions programs administered by multiple federal agencies — they are politically and bureaucratically difficult to lift, even when they no longer serve U.S. interests. What’s worse, sanctions also escape significant public scrutiny. Few officials are held responsible for whether a particular sanction is working as intended rather than needlessly harming innocent people or undermining foreign policy goals.

This certainly matches my general assessment of U.S. sanctioning behavior in recent years, so well done there, Times editorial board!

What else did the Times say? I’ll excerpt the key bullet points:

• “What is already known is that sanctions are most effective when they have realistic objectives and are paired with promises of relief if those objectives are met.”

• “It’s notable that the sanctions against South Africa and Poland were aimed at bringing about free and fair elections, not regime change. Sanctions aimed at regime change often incentivize defiance, not reform. They have a terrible track record, as the cases of Cuba, Syria and Venezuela make clear.”

• “The Biden administration should be more explicit about which sanctions in Venezuela would be lifted and when, especially those on the state-owned oil company.” A large portion of the editorial was devoted to the Venezuela case.

• “The Biden administration can do much more to show that the United States is changing its sanctions policy to make it more humane. The first step would be to follow through on the recommendations of its 2021 review and formally take the humanitarian cost of any sanction into account before it is imposed.”

• “Once the government begins conducting systematic reviews of existing sanctions, it’s crucial to ensure that any sanction imposed can be reversed.”

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World agonized about whether to fully endorse the New York Times position on economic sanctions. After considered debate, I am afraid I must withhold my full-throated endorsement. Instead, I only “mostly agree” with the Times position on economic coercion.

In the main the Times position on sanctions is sound. As a tool of coercion they are most likely to work when the U.S. demand is clearly articulated, feasible for the target regime to concede, and when the U.S. can credibly commit to lifting the sanctions if the target acquiesces. It’s also true that no one in the U.S. government has a strong political incentive to lift sanctions and that U.S. politicians tend to discount humanitarian costs. That all tracks.

I have two quibbles, however. The first is the claim that, “Sanctions aimed at regime change often incentivize defiance, not reform. They have a terrible track record.” It’s a bit more complicated than that. As Nikolay Marinov noted in his research, “economic pressure works in at least one respect: it destabilizes the leaders it targets.” Sanctions cannot always foment regime change, but they are a bit more successful than the Times intimates.

The second is the suggestion that the Biden administration, “formally take the humanitarian cost of any sanction into account before it is imposed.” This sounds great in theory but would be more vexing in practice. Most sanctions are imposed in response to a real-time crisis. In those instances, the time needed to engage in a full humanitarian impact assessment could be costly; if the U.S. is busy calculating the externalities of sanctions, they may not impose them quickly enough to matter. Either the humanitarian assessment needs to be quick-and-dirty or run parallel to their imposition.

Still, on the whole this is a decent NYT editorial. They are correct that the sanctions against Venezuela have not worked. The danger is in extrapolating only from spectacular failures like that one.