November/December (4) Evidence
Lincoln-Douglas Debate Evidence
For the Resolution
Resolved: The use of economic sanctions to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals is moral.
November/December 1999 NFL LD Topic
Editor and Researcher: Craig Linton
I make no warranty regarding this document and the contents herein. The user of this document retains full responsibility for insuring the accuracy of information provided herein. Use at your own risk!
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The Economist (US), August 21, 1999 v352 i8133 p36
SANCTIONS DO NOT HURT GOVERNMENT
Nine years of suffocating sanctions have, without doubt, helped a bunch of Iraqis, above all Saddam Hussein and his cronies, to prosper in several exceedingly evil ways. At the same time, however, the prolonged lack of all basic necessities has crushed the great mass of Iraqis, once proudly in the van of Arab advancement, to a pitiful state of near-destitution.
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Leonard Le Blanc, "The Sanctions Practice.", Offshore, May 1999 v59 i5 p6(1). PennWell Publishing Company.
PURPOSE OF SANCTIONS
The principle function of sanctions levied against other nations is to force changes in objectionable actions or heads of governments by creating domestic dissatisfaction or economic unrest.
SANCTIONS RARELY WORK
Sanctions rarely work, and they often damage outside companies trying to conduct business there. The target governments with objectionable actions often are too firmly entrenched in power, or global commerce renders the action worthless over time.
SANCTIONS ARE A PEACEFUL PROCESS
However, the sanction process is one of the few peaceful weapons in practice today. The alternatives are to do nothing, use invisible means of influence, or resort to armed conflict. With these poor choices, sanctions will remain a preferred option.
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Joy Gordon, "Sanctions as Siege Warfare." The Nation, March 22, 1999 v268 i11 p18(1). The Nation Company Inc.
SANCTIONS ARE AN INDIRECT FORM OR WARFARE
If not sanctions, then what? Is bombing preferable to sanctions as a device to "punish rogues" and enforce international law? Without the sanctions option, it is sometimes argued, the militarists will just say there is no longer an alternative to bombing. But the Iraq situation demonstrates that sanctions are not merely a "problematic" or "less than ideal" form of political pressure. Rather, they are an indirect form of warfare. Not only are they politically counterproductive, but sanctions directed toward the economy generally (as opposed to, say, seizing personal assets of leaders) are inherently antihumanitarian.
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Noam Chomsky; Edward Herman; Edward W. Said; Howard Zinn. "The U.S. war against the people of Iraq." Canadian Dimension, March-April 1999 v33 i2 p10(2). Dimension Publishing Inc. (Canada)
BAD U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
This month US policy will kill 4,500 children under the age of 5 in Iraq, according to UN studies, just as it did last month and the month before that, all the way back to 1991. Since the end of the Gulf War, at least hundreds of thousands - maybe more than 1 million - Iraqis have died as a direct result of the UN sanctions on Iraq, which are a direct result of US policy.
This is not foreign policy - it is sanctioned mass-murder that is nearing holocaust proportions. If we remain silent, we are condoning a genocide that is being perpetrated in the name of peace in the Middle East, a mass slaughter that is being perpetrated in our name.
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Jesse Helms, "What Sanctions Epidemic?" Foreign Affairs, Jan 1999 v78 i1 p2(1). Council on Foreign Relations Inc.
SANCTIONS STATS MISLEADING
The statistic has become conventional wisdom: in just four years the United States has imposed sanctions 61 times, burdening 2.3 billion people (42 percent of the world). That would be pretty awful, save for one thing--it is not true. These figures have been circulated by the antisanctions business group USA Engage, based on a study by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). They are a fabrication. At my request, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) evaluated the NAM claim that from 1993 through 1996, "61 U.S. laws and executive actions were enacted authorizing unilateral sanctions for foreign policy purposes." CRS reported that it "could not defensibly" justify the number. "We find the calculation used in ... the NAM study to be flawed, even if the specific [sanctions] were fairly characterized, which is not always the case," CRS concluded.
The claim that 42 percent of the world's population has been affected is also bogus. The study lists the entire population of the former Zaire (now the Congo) as being under U.S. sanction because the United States barred sales of defense items to the government. The same goes for China, Nigeria, Mauritania, and Pakistan, where CRS notes that such highly targeted actions "put the entire populations of these countries into NAM's calculation, even though most people ... are not likely to experience significant impact from or awareness of [the] imposition." U.S. access to those countries' commercial goods-and-services markets remains unaffected.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SANCTIONS
What is the reality? Between 1993 and 1996, Congress passed and the president signed a grand total of five new sanctions laws: the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, and the Free Burma Act of 1996. During the same period, the president imposed just four new sanctions: declaring Sudan a terrorist state; banning imports of munitions and ammunition from China; tightening travel-related restrictions, cash remittance levels, and the sending of gift parcels to Cuba (restrictions that have since been lifted); and imposing a ban on new contractual agreements or investment in Iran. Nine new sanctions. That is it. The allegation of a sanctions epidemic is demonstrably false--a myth spread with the intention of misleading Congress, the American public, and the American business community.
SANCTIONS GOOD ENOUGH FOR FOUNDERS
Sanctions have always been an American foreign policy weapon. Economic sanctions were imposed by the American colonies against Britain in response to the Stamp and Townsend Acts, in both cases forcing their repeal. Jefferson and Madison both passionately advocated economic sanctions, believing not only that they were legitimate but that they should be America's primary diplomatic tools. In an 1805 letter to Jefferson, Madison argued, "The efficacy of an embargo ... cannot be denied. Indeed, if a commercial weapon can be properly crafted for the Executive hand, it is more and more apparent to me that it can force nations ... to respect our rights." Jefferson, for his part, contended that in foreign affairs "three alternatives alone are to be chosen from. 1. Embargo. 2. War. 3. Submission and tribute."
WHAT SANCTIONS HAVE DONE
U.S. sanctions helped bring down the Soviet Union. They played a pivotal role in forcing communist Poland to release political prisoners and legalize Solidarity--sparking the collapse of communism. Our targeted Nigerian sanctions are beginning to bear fruit as the military government wearies of its pariah status. In Guatemala, the decision to freeze $47 million in U.S. aid (one of the "sanctions" that business is lobbying to curtail) and the mere threat of lost trade convinced business, labor, and military leaders to roll back President Jorge Serrano Elias' May 1993 coup. Swiss banks' recent decision to pay $1.25 billion in reparations to Holocaust survivors was a direct result of threatened sanctions, as admitted by the Union Bank of Switzerland.
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