Busted Sanctions: Explaining Why Economic Sanctions Fail

摘要

This book examines the role of third parties in undermining the effectiveness of international economic sanctions. Past research indicates that sanctions episodes generate successful outcomes only about a third of the time (Hufbauer et al. 2007). The present author investigates the extent to which third-party spoilers are responsible for the shortcomings of economic sanctions and identifies the main drivers of third-party obstructionism. "Sanctions busting" comes in two varieties. The first is trade based, in which individuals, firms, and governments in third-party nations extract the rents arising from the skewed terms of trade created by embargoes. Since these trade-based activities are often highly profitable for those involved, this is the most pervasive type of sanctions busting. The second type is aid based, the so-called "black knight" phenomenon, which is politically motivated by the desire of third-party governments to support a target country and/or oppose the sender.