Sanctions

Intenational sanctions are the world's favorite means of punishing people who happen to be oppressed by evil governments. Fareed Zakaria's latest Newsweek column talks about why this very blunt weapon is usually a bad idea.

The Burmese government's grotesque crackdown on pro-democracy protests will have one certain effect. The United States and the European Union will place more sanctions on the country. Its economy will suffer, its isolation will deepen. And what will this achieve? Sanctions are the Energizer Bunny of foreign policy. Despite a dismal record, they just keep on ticking. With countries like Burma, sanctions have become a substitute for an actual policy.

The problem is that the burden of sanctions falls on business and working people, while thugs and the government may well thrive.

By design, sanctions shrink a country's economy. But the parts of the economy they shrink most are those that aren't under total state control. The result, says Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who has authored a wide-ranging study on the topic, is that "the state gains greater control of a smaller pie. And it shifts resources in the country toward groups that support [the state] and away from those that oppose it." In other words, the government gets stronger. We can see this at work from Cuba to Iran. "Even in Iraq," says Pape, "there were far fewer coup attempts in the era of sanctions than in the previous decades."

The list of places where sanctions have failed is vast - Cuba, Iraq, Yugoslavia ... Where can the work? Maybe only in a country like South Africa, with democratic institutions and a lot of power in the hands of business men and a middle class.

Somebody needs a better idea - and invasion is probably better not a good one.