1. Strengthening the Economic Arsenal: Bolstering the Deterrent and Signaling Effects of Sanctions
- Author:
- Elizabeth Rosenberg and Jordan Tama
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security
- Abstract:
- Economic sanctions have become the tool of choice for U.S. policymakers to influence international affairs. On issues ranging from nuclear nonproliferation to human rights, the United States typically imposes sanctions with the goal of inducing a government to change its behavior. Yet sanctions often have more potential to deter unwanted actions than to compel policy reversals, and the greatest impact of sanctions sometimes involves the signals they convey about likely future U.S. steps. Maximizing the overall effectiveness of U.S. economic pressure therefore requires concerted efforts by policymakers in the executive branch and Congress to make sanctions more effective instruments of deterrence and signaling. Doing this will also have positive knock-on effects, helping to limit the unintentional escalation of international competition and preserve the utility of sanctions as a vehicle for addressing security challenges and protecting universal norms. This report highlights several areas for action by U.S. policymakers: Make U.S. sanctions-removal assurances more credible: U.S. offers to lift sanctions on a country if it makes certain concessions send an effective signal only if the United States has a track record of backing up its commitments. In recent years, this signal has been severely weakened by U.S. failures to follow through on some significant sanctions-removal agreements, notably with Iran and Cuba.
- Topic:
- Economics, National Security, and Sanctions
- Political Geography:
- Iran, Global Focus, and United States of America