Sanction This

A New York Times article that was reprinted in the March 7, 2010 talked about how the United States had passed a law several years ago that imposed economic sanctions on companies that did work with the Iranian government. This got me to thinking: how effective has the United States government been in imposing economic sanctions in the past, including the whole Iranian sanction effort:

• Probably the oldest standing U.S. embargo and sanctions effort has been directed at Cuba and Fidel Castro. The embargo was imposed in the early 1960s when Castro overthrew a corrupt government that was friendly to the United States. Since then, eight U.S. Presidents have come and gone (half them have died - Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan), more than two generations of ordinary Cuban citizens have lived under the onerous conditions caused by the sanctions, and almost fifty years after the embargo and sanctions started, the main target, Fidel Castro, is still firmly in power. In other words, this sanctions effort was a failure.
• One of the latest sanctions ended with our invasion of Iraq but before that, the United States and the United Nations had led a major sanctions effort against Saddam Hussein. Despite long term suffering of the Iraqi people, Hussein stayed in power for years and actually enriched himself and those in his inner circle by manipulating the sanction rules and processes. As you may recall, United Nations officials were found to have taken kickbacks in the UN oil for food/medicine that led to Hussein staying in power, and in riches, while the Iraqi people suffered. Thus, I think we would have to give this sanctions effort a failing grade also since it did not disarm or dislodge Hussein, the main target of the sanctions.
• This brings us to this article referenced above. For a very long time, several Presidents have tried to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to reign in the Iranian nuclear effort. According to the article and New York Times analysis, the Iran Sanctions Act was passed to punish any company that spent more than $20 million a year to develop Iran's oil and natural gas industry. However, the article reports that the law was never enforced despite over seventy four companies doing business in developing Iran's energy industry. Plus, many of those same companies also received over $100 billion in U.S. government contracts since 2000 despite working with the Iranian government. Two questions come to mind: 1) why pass a law you are not going to enforce even though we know that dozens of companies have violated the law and 2) even if you are not going to enforce the law, why would you continue to do business with those companies that are helping an enemy state you have identified? Iran continues to develop its critical energy industry with help from U.S. companies and no repercussions from the U.S. government despite the public position of forcing economic sanctions and a law on the books that has never been enforced. Looks like this effort is a failure also.

Three sanction/embargo efforts, three failures. The only people that have suffered as a result of the U.S. sancitons are not the bad guys but the poor citizens of Cuba and Iraq. We can now add another function, ineffective sanctions, to the long list of political class failures including the War on Drugs, failing public education, deficit spending, lack of a national energy strategy, skyrocketing health care costs, skyrocketing national debt levels, etc., etc., etc. Thus, the search continues for something, anything that the political does efficiently and effectively.



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