According to Richard Hanania, trade sanctions are “ineffective, immoral, and politically convenient”:
Sanctions have massive humanitarian costs and are not only ineffective but likely counterproductive. On these points, there is overwhelming agreement in the academic literature. Such policies can reduce the economic performance of the targeted state, degrade public health, and cause tens of thousands of deaths per year under the most crushing sanctions regimes. Moreover, they almost always fail to achieve their goals, particularly when the aim is regime change or significant behavioral changes pertaining to what states consider their fundamental interests. Sanctions can even backfire, making mass killing and repression more likely, while decreasing the probability of democratization.
He makes a convincing case, but this gets me thinking. When countries impose sanctions, they barely even mention consequences. Instead, they focus on the sheer evil of the targeted regime:
When the EU extended sanctions against Syria, they averred:
The Council today extended EU restrictive measures against the Syrian regime for one additional year, until 1 June 2022, in light of the continued repression of the civilian population in the country.
Similarly, here’s how the Congressional Research Service rationalizes sanctions against Venezuela:
For over 15 years,the United States has imposed sanctions in response to activities of the Venezuelan government and Venezuelan individuals. The earliest sanctions imposed related to Venezuela’s lack of cooperation on antidrug and counterterrorism efforts. The Obama Administration imposed targeted sanctions against individuals for human rights abuses, corruption, and antidemocratic actions. The Trump Administration significantly expanded economic sanctions in response to the increasing authoritarianism of President Nicolás Maduro…
Observation: If sanctioned regimes are so monstrous, then virtually all of their subjects have a good reason to fear them. In technical terms, this plausibly amounts to a “well-founded fear of persecution” – the essential legal ingredient for meriting asylum.
Which brings me to my modest proposal of the day. Namely: If a country is bad enough for sanctions, it is bad enough to grant all of its citizens asylum. For the U.S., this would at minimum include all citizens of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela.
If embraced, this norm would have two main effects, both good.
First, governments would be more reluctant to impose sanctions and more eager to end them, to avoid the responsibility to accept large flows of refugees. Per Hanania, this is a big win. Sanctions cause immense harm, and the “humanitarian” exceptions for food and medicine do little to mitigate this harm.
Second, all citizens of the very worst governments would suddenly have viable exit options. So even if sanctions make monstrous regimes go from bad to worse, they also almost automatically reduce the number of people who actually live under such regimes. Total oppression can easily go down as per-capita oppression goes up.
I’m not saying that the my modest proposal is going to happen. I’m saying it should. If Hanania is right about sanctions, the main reason sanctions persist is that politicians barely care about the well-being of foreigners. Alas, this also predicts that my modest proposal won’t happen. Sure, it would allow the world’s most oppressed people to find a better life. But who cares about them?
READER COMMENTS
Knut P. Heen
Feb 10 2022 at 11:01am
Do not all the sanctions reveal how strongly politicians believe in markets?
IronSig
Feb 16 2022 at 3:52pm
Thanks to Social Desirability Bias and the half-level analysis of “it sounds good,” sanctions don’t reveal a belief in market efficacy, but in wealth held in certain territories that key interest groups hold in contempt.
AMT
Feb 10 2022 at 12:54pm
It is easy to imagine a nation mistreating a subset of its population grotesquely enough to justify sanctions, but it does not follow that “all” it’s citizens would therefore qualify for asylum.
IronSig
Feb 16 2022 at 4:24pm
Some mid-level cronies deserve asylum provided they have enough proof that they were coerced into their decisions. Some mid-level cronies will be Adolph Eichmanns. These are two positions that are both at some distance from a cut-off line for asylum. The existence of despots who don’t deserve asylum does not mean anyone who took a paycheck from the angry bear of their local abusive government has stained character.
Admittedly, this is the kind of character criteria not listed on Bryan Caplan’s two open borders provisos: no communicable disease and no outstanding warrant. An interviewer or policy maker might ask Bryan or the other Open Borders bloggers how “let anyone take a job anywhere” fits without straining an asylum policy or an extradition policy.
IronSig
Feb 16 2022 at 4:30pm
This is the only OpenBorders blog post that was searchable for “Adolph Eichmann.” https://openborders.info/blog/schindler-or-eichmann/
Floccina
Feb 10 2022 at 1:00pm
It would also have the effect the effect of the targeted countries pointing their guns in to keep the productive from leaving.
It could possibly have the effect of people in some poor counties trying to get their country on the list.
Matthias
Feb 12 2022 at 10:20pm
That’s essentially what happened in East Germany, since West Germany was willing to take anyone who made it out.
Offering asylum is probably still a net positive. If nothing else, keeping your guns pointed is exhausting for a regime to keep up.
Henri Hein
Feb 10 2022 at 2:57pm
It’s an easy sell for me. I would happily favor an expansive asylum policy: the asylee claims to be persecuted by their government. If they are not from Finland, take them at their word.
The problem I have here is that Hanania’s description makes sanctions sound more effective than I previously thought. I doubt proponents of sanctions are swayed by it. The measure is designed to fall somewhere between a stern talking-to and outright war. The description of the results Hanania gives covers that territory pretty well. If he is right, then sanctions do something pretty close to what its proponents claim.
The big problem with sanctions is the target. It hurts the people of the sanctioned country, not the government. Politicians, and other leaders, barely care about the well-being of foreigners, but they are only slightly less callous towards their own subjects. Sanctions don’t seriously hurt the people in charge of the sanctioned country. Those leaders can point the finger at the sanctioner as a culprit, so I have always thought of sanctions as ineffective, maybe even counter-productive, to regime change.
Mark Z
Feb 10 2022 at 4:06pm
A scenario in which sanctions are consistent with denying asylum: if one believes most of the citizens of a country support the oppressive regime. This might make most of the citizens of the country partly to blame for its circumstances, as well as make it make sense to deploy sanctions to affect the political behavior of the general public, rather than just the leaders. And to the extent that a country is oppressive because of the politics of its citizens, one might be wary of accepting into one’s own country people who likely helped create and uphold an oppressive government in their own.
Of course hardly anyone ever takes this position. Usually politicians make distinctions between oppressive governments and their people, who are seen as victims, but maybe politicians are, in fact, seeking sanctions on the general population of the country they’re targeting, not just the leaders, but know it’d be an unpopular thing to say out loud.
Matthias
Feb 12 2022 at 10:22pm
Perhaps only apply this policy to places that are not democracies?
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Feb 11 2022 at 10:51am
In addition, granting easier asylum to victims of tyrannical regimes is itself a sanction.
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