Sanctions

When diplomacy failed, war used to be the next option, the continuation of politics by other means. Today, when persuasion doesn’t work, big powers often turn to economic combat as their first resort. Sanctions occupy a messy zone between condemnations and military strikes. Hard to organize and uncertain in impact, they can hurt innocent citizens and legitimate businesses. They tend to be more effective when a group of countries comes together to target an offending state. That, of course, requires agreement on who deserves punishing.

In August, the U.S. began reimposing sanctions on Iran that it had lifted as part of a 2015 multilateral deal that eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement, saying he wanted to put pressure on Iran in order to negotiate a new deal with tougher terms. The U.S. also imposed unprecedented sanctions on a NATO ally, Turkey, in response to its refusal to release an American pastor the U.S. says is unjustly detained. In 2017, U.S. lawmakers approved fresh sanctions on Russia that sent the two powers into a new spiral of tensions. The sanctions were retaliation for Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The European Union objected to a provision in the U.S. plan that could harm European energy companies doing business with Russia. As North Korea ramped up its nuclear weapons and missile programs, the U.S., China and the United Nations Security Council expanded sanctions against it, contributing to a sharp contraction in the country’s economy in 2017. In 2018, North Korea agreed to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula, though it’s unclear what the country would require of the U.S., which provides a so-called nuclear umbrella to guarantee the safety of allies South Korea and Japan.