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Do sanctions work?

Do sanctions work?

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Kal'Stang

Kal'Stang

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Do they?

Imo the only time that they work is after many many MANY years of sanctions. And only if it starts seriously hurting those at the tippy top. In the mean time millions of poor people are hurt far far more. So in the short run no they don't. In the long run...only if the upper echelons are hurting.
 
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Yes. Sanctions provide a powerful bargaining chip for diplomatic negotiations with countries such as North Korea and Iran, and have for many years.
 
Yes they do but;
Look at Iraq,

The Iraqi people were left to suffer, like they weren't before the sanctions.
Saddam just bypassed the sanctions and sold oil anyway, just for cheaper prices.
Saddam never was able to rebuild his military after Desert Storm.

They work but on what scale do your rate success.

I feel that they did help in this case but it isn't seen helping for years when you can look back at what it actually accomplished.

Sanctions rarely change the way the common people of the country live.
 
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Far too contextual depending on country, politics, nature and goal of sanctions, etc.
 
Sanctions don't work.Those that live high off the hog will just take more from those that don't live high of the hog. So the only ones who are harmed are the poor and opposition.
 
If history is our guide, sanctions rarely have the effect you would hope for. Castro is still in Cuba, the Imams still run Iran, and North Korea is....well, they're North Korea. The sanctions on Saddam after the first Gulf War did not remove him from power.

On the other hand, they are preferable to the alternatives of letting them do whatever or a long, protracted war.
 
Seems to be that if the other side is ideologically fixed in it's course, sanctions are not effective - apart from crippling the economy - as we can see in the case on North Korea which at the end got it's nuclear bomb.

Same thing is happening now with Iran.
 
It depends upon what the sanctions wish to accomplish. They seemed to prove somewhat effective in South Africa in ending Apartheid. "In 1990 President F.W. de Klerk released Nelson Mandela after twenty-seven years of imprisonment, opened negotiations with the ANC and scrapped most of the apartheid laws. In 1992 a strong majority of the country's white population voted to endorse de Klerk's dismantling of apartheid and the extension of political rights to the black majority. When this happened, President Bush lifted the economic sanctions, claiming that the purpose of the bill, SANCTIONS AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA (1986), had been successfully carried out."
 
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