Sanctions as a Policy Tool

When governments seek to pressure a foreign state, individual, or organization without resorting to military force, economic sanctions are often the instrument of choice. They have been deployed against countries, terrorist organizations, nuclear proliferators, human rights abusers, and political regimes deemed hostile to international norms. But what exactly are sanctions, how are they constructed, and does the evidence suggest they actually work?

Types of Sanctions

Comprehensive Sanctions

Comprehensive sanctions cut off nearly all trade and financial transactions with a targeted country. The United States has maintained comprehensive sanctions on Cuba for over six decades, and North Korea faces sweeping multilateral restrictions through the UN Security Council. These measures aim to create economy-wide pressure on a government.

Targeted ("Smart") Sanctions

Developed partly in response to evidence that comprehensive sanctions hurt civilian populations without necessarily changing government behavior, targeted sanctions focus pressure on specific individuals, entities, or sectors. Common forms include:

  • Asset freezes — blocking access to funds held in foreign financial institutions
  • Travel bans — prohibiting sanctioned individuals from entering sanctioning countries
  • Sectoral sanctions — restricting specific industries such as energy, defense, or finance
  • Export controls — denying access to specific technologies or goods

Secondary Sanctions

A more aggressive and legally contested approach, secondary sanctions penalize third-country entities that do business with a sanctioned target. The United States has used secondary sanctions extensively, compelling foreign banks and companies to choose between access to the U.S. market and doing business with sanctioned countries. Critics argue these extend U.S. jurisdiction extra-territorially in ways that violate international law.

The Legal and Institutional Framework

Sanctions can be imposed unilaterally by individual countries, multilaterally by groups of states (such as the EU's coordinated sanctions on Russia), or through the UN Security Council — which gives measures the broadest international legal authority. UN sanctions require agreement among the five permanent members, meaning any one of them can veto proposed measures, a significant limitation when the target has allied itself with a major power.

Do Sanctions Work?

This is genuinely contested in the scholarly literature. The most comprehensive academic studies suggest that sanctions achieve their stated political objectives in a minority of cases — perhaps between 30% and 35% by some estimates, though definitions of "success" vary considerably. Several factors influence outcomes:

  • Multilateral vs. unilateral — sanctions backed by broad coalitions are harder to evade and more economically painful
  • Target's dependence on the sanctioning economy — the more integrated the target, the more vulnerable they are
  • Existence of workarounds — sanctions-busting through third countries significantly reduces pressure
  • Clarity of demands — targeted states are more likely to comply when the conditions for relief are clear and achievable
  • Regime type — authoritarian governments can distribute costs onto their population while shielding the leadership

The Humanitarian Dimension

One persistent criticism of broad-based sanctions is that they disproportionately harm ordinary citizens rather than political elites. Governments regularly use sanctions as a nationalist rallying point. The debate over how to maintain economic pressure while protecting civilian populations remains unresolved — and is central to the design of modern "smart" sanctions regimes.

Looking Ahead

The weaponization of financial systems — particularly the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT international payments network following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine — has prompted serious discussion about whether targeted states will accelerate efforts to build alternative financial infrastructure. If effective workarounds emerge, the leverage provided by sanctions may diminish over time, forcing policymakers to rethink the tool's long-term utility.