Winning Without Killing

The revolution in military affairs with targeted bombing and the advent of drone warfare tactics have
changed the nature of conflicts and reduced the human costs for using force. However, the lower
casualty rate on the offensive side has not been equalled with the same decrease on the civilian side of
the defensive party. Since the war in Vietnam, the ‘collateral damage’ has not been overlooked as a
variable for determining the success of foreign policy actions. Victory was not enough to justify the use
of force, and the humanitarian consequences of interventions became a central concern for foreign
policy actions. Sanctions could be placed in a very similar context since the United Nations embargo
imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait was made illegitimate by the 500.000 children allegedly
killed by the decision of the Security Council. In such case, the use of sanctions was criticized regardless
from the reason that led to the imposition and the objective that could be achieved because the
humanitarian consequences are deemed disproportionate compared to the harm they were supposed to
fight. This chapter deals with the evolution of sanctions according to the principle of winning without
killing. Especially, the objective of this chapter is to review the opportunities and challenges that
characterize targeted sanctions in order to provide recommendations on how to enhance their
effectiveness. The argument of the chapter is that targeted sanctions are more demanding in terms of
knowledge and maintenance compared to comprehensive sanctions. If the international community, or
individual states, wish to rely effectively on this foreign policy instrument, then ways to acquire more
information about targeted societies and threats that are to be countered as well as the creation of
institutional capacity to monitor and enforce sanctions is key to making sanctions useful. The chapter
presents how sanctions changed from their classical and comprehensive form to a more recent targeted
version. Whereas comprehensive sanctions aimed at whole states, today the targets of sanctions are
mostly individuals, entities and specific economic sectors. The situations in which sanctions have been
used and adapted to achieve foreign policy objectives with the simultaneous objective to reduce their
humanitarian impact has grown overtime, for instance by including the utilization of sanctions in post-
conflict contexts. Thus, the utilization of targeted sanctions to achieve policy objectives is in the spirit of
winning without killing.

The Evolution of Sanctions: From Comprehensive to Targeted

Sanctions are an old practice in international affairs. The wide spread understanding of sanctions is an
economic embargo on a state, defined as the prohibition of exporting and importing goods to and from
other states. This view is historically rooted in the practice of sieges, when fortresses or fortified cities
were surrounded by aggressors with the objective to force them to surrender. From the Megarian
decree, with which Athens banned Megara from trading with the Delian League 4 centuries B.C., till the
decision to impose sanctions on Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the understanding of sanctions
had not changed.1 In the 1990s, the United Nations has changed the nature of sanctions through its
practice of targeting individuals and entities as well as economic sectors. The Security Council of the
United Nations imposes sanctions under Chap. 7 of the Charter, which deals with countries’ ‘Action(s)
with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.’ As established
under Art. 41 of the Charter, the Security Council is authorized to impose ‘measures not involving the
use of armed force’ that ‘may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail,
sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic
relations’. 2 As such, given that the UN is an association of states, sanctions were interpreted as being
directed towards states, as the cases of, for instance, Southern Rhodesia, South Africa and the former
Yugoslavia seem to suggest.3 For instance, Milosevic was included in the sanctions list only once he was
out of office, and Saddam Hussein was not sanctioned by the United Nations until 2003. Why did then
the UN start to impose sanctions on individuals? The evolution of sanctions from their comprehensive
nature to a targeted form that took place in the 1990s is due mainly to three factors. First,
comprehensive sanctions were not deemed to be effective. The intense debate that took place since the
late ‘60s led Baldwin to write that one of the things in common among all the scholars of sanctions was
their ‘universal tendency to denigrate the utility of such tools of foreign policy’. 4 Drezner reports a
number of statements by practitioners and academics that would confirm this: Kennan, Nixon, Schultz,
Galtung, Wallensteen, Pape, Doxey, Friedman, and others all say that economic sanctions are not
effective.5 The perspective of sanctions in the 1990s is best described by looking at the debate that took
place between Pape, Elliot and Baldwin in the journal International Security. Pape triggered the
discussion by analysing the findings of a study that set the success rate of sanction at 34% of the times,6
and countering this by offering his assessment that that figure should in fact be lowered substantially to
as low as 5%.7 This contribution sparked the responses from Elliot, suggesting a more optimistic view of
sanctions, and by Baldwin, who invited to consider the comparative utility of sanctions vis-à-vis other
foreign policy instruments. However, the general perception remained negative.8 The second factor that
favoured the evolution towards targeted sanctions was the need to avoid the human sufferance on
civilians caused by comprehensive sanctions. Possible backlashes from the imposition of sanctions that
could have the adverse effect of strengthening targets—the so-called rally-around-the-flag-effect— were
already known,9 but growing attention was paid to the humanitarian consequences of imposing
comprehensive and, therefore, non-discriminatory measures.10 The hardship that was imposed on the
population of Iraq11 and Haiti12 proved to be more harmful for innocent civilians than for the elites who
they were intended to punish. The Iraqi case became unfortunately known for the widely reported study
that blamed UN sanctions for the death of 500,000 children13 and sanctions against Iraq and Haiti ‘have
paid only minimal political dividends at a very high price in human terms’. 14 Sanctions were ineffective
and they were harming the people that were supposed to protect. A comment made by the Economic
and Social Council suggested that states should be responsible for the humanitarian consequences that
their policies had in other countries,15 and the Secretary General Boutros-Ghali called on states to avoid
comprehensive measures in the future.16 Third, the individualization of responsibility principle allowed
for targeting individuals and entities. Affected by the tragedies of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the
genocide in Rwanda and the protracted conflicts in Sierra Leone, the international community was under
pressure to provide a solution to situations that were intolerable in the new world order after the end of
the Cold War. In the attempt to deal with the reconstruction of communities after conflicts, the growing
demand for justice was dealt with the attempt by international courts to identify individual
responsibilities for wrongdoings done in the name of states. The unique and novel character of such
transitional justice efforts was represented by the fact that these courts were after individual
responsibilities rather than those of states. Parallel to these creations, the Rome Statute establishing the
International Criminal Court (ICC) represents the institutionalization of a norm that was observed only
since the crises in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone,17 thus creating a landmark decision to formalize
the existence of an international individual responsibility.18 The world of sanctions was also affected by
this trend. In August 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were targeted by terrorist attacks in
which over 200 people were killed. The Security Council reacted promptly with Resolution 1189
condemning the action and calling on states to adopt effective and practical measures to respond. The
Security Council passed Resolutions 1193 (1998) and 1214 (1998) linking the situation in Afghanistan and
international terrorism, but the main step was made on 15 October 1999. The Security Council, taking
note that Usama bin Laden and his associates had been indicted by the United States of American for the
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and determining that the Taliban authorities had failed to comply with
Resolution 1214, passed Resolution 1267 imposing financial restrictions and a travel ban on a list of
individuals identified by the sanctions committee. There is still some ambiguity in Resolution 1267. If on
the one hand, the Taliban are targeted as they are acknowledged as the leaders of Afghanistan, on the
other, they are defined as ‘the Afghan faction known as the Taliban’ and, therefore, they are not
recognized as state authorities and banned as outlaws.19 The Pandora’s Box was open. On the one hand,
the UNITA sanctions committee led by the Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler published a report with
names of individuals responsible for supporting or being involved in sanctions busting activities, and, on
the other hand, the Security Council passed Resolution 1333 (2000) adding Usama bin Laden, individuals
and entities associated with him and with Al Qaida organization to the list of targets of the 1267
committee. The Security Council sanctioned individuals for actions that could have not been justified
and/or motivated by the pursuant of national duties. This transition has been accompanied by the
discussion taking place in three different international conferences organized by like-minded states
known as the Interlaken, Bonn-Berlin and Stockholm processes. The first conference on the feasibility of
financial sanctions and how to make targeted financial sanctions more effective was held in 1998 and
1999 in Interlaken, Switzerland. The Interlaken process, which was initiated by Switzerland, triggered
further efforts from Germany and Sweden, which organized and sponsored two similar initiatives. The
Bonn-Berlin aimed at improving the effectiveness and the Stockholm process focused on the
implementation process of sanctions, the challenges posed by the legislation of nation-states, and on the
opportunity to evade the sanctions by the targets.20 The Security Council legitimized the practice for an
international organization to restrict the freedom of individuals and non-state actors when international
peace and security were threatened. The 9/11 terrorist attacks strengthened this trend and the 1267 list
grew exponentially in the following months to the thousands since states felt compelled, in solidarity
with the US, to share information on terrorist activities and individuals known to their services.21
Targeting individuals and entities became the norm of sanctions practices and the onset of such trend
was welcomed by the international community since sanctions had become ‘smart’. 22 Given the little
guarantees about the ‘smartness’ of sanctions, the label soon changed into the less problematic
‘targeted sanctions’. Biersteker wrote in 2009 that ‘All UN sanctions today are targeted sanctions’. 23 A
targeted sanction policy has been defined as ‘one that imposes coercive pressures on specific individuals
and entities and that restricts selective products or activities, while minimizing unintended economic
and social consequences for vulnerable populations and innocent bystanders’. 24 In fact, sanctions
targeting specific sectors of state economies had been practiced before, such as in Libya and Haiti in the
1990s and on South Africa in the 1980s. Instead, sanctions targeting individuals and non-state actors
gained importance with the aforementioned 1267 regime in 1999.

Currently, there are four types of targeted sanctions that are imposed: arms embargoes, travel bans,
commodity boycotts and financial restrictions. Arms embargoes regard the prohibitions to trade with
either dual-use or military related equipment and services with individuals, entities and actors located in
specific regions. Travel ban relates to the prohibition for people to travel and access the territory of
specific states. Commodity boycotts refer to the limitation to trade specific goods and services. This
could be the case for natural resources, such as diamond and timber that can be linked to the
enrichment of specific groups, but also strategic sectors of economies, such as the exploration of natural
resources. Other forms of diplomatic measures could be also listed here. There have been numerous
efforts of creativity to design sanctions in the recent years, but all of them would fall under these
categories. The next section presents why sanctions are used.