I know. I know. It's gonna get old fast. But that's ok. I have ammunition!
Another thing I recently learned about sanctions is that they're counter-productive.
Sanctions are meant to reverse a foreign government’s policies. When the end result of a sanction is worse than the original scenario, it is counter-productive.
In addition, sanctions often cause “flag-rallying” among the citizens of the target country. Jay Gordon of the Social Science Research Council (2004) reiterates this idea stating that “when the population at large is subject to deprivation by a foreign nation, they respond to it as they would a form of attack, with increased nationalism and support of their political leadership. Thus, while the intent of the nation imposing the sanctions might be to “send a message” of the wrongfulness of the target state’s actions, the effect is to consolidate support for the leadership, and its legitimacy is enhanced rather than undermined.”
This “flag rallying” effect is not purely hypothetical, however. According to Hufbauer, Shott, and Elliot of the Washington Institute for International Economics (1990), “a nationalistic reaction [to sanctions] seems to have blunted the League’s actions against Italy in 1935-36, Soviet sanctions against Yugoslavia in 1948-55, US measures against Indonesia in 1963-66, UN actions against Rhodesia in 1965-79, and US sanctions against Nicaragua in the 1980s.”
I don't understand how someone could think that sanctions would make the people of these countries go "oh, hey. I no longer have food or clean water, but gosh, my government sucks and I should revolt! GOD BLESS AMERICA!"
Really? Really. Come on, federal government. Let's think about this.
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