Abstract
Even if the economic consequences of sanctions are not those originally expected or desired, sanctions may be successful in generating a desired political reaction. They may demonstrate unity within an alliance and firm resolve in taking some action; they may serve as a warning against policies or actions which may provoke sanctions; they may be designed to impress the domestic population of the sanctioning county. All of the possible objectives, symbolic and instrumental, are political in intention.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
This became a major dispute in Alliance relations, because the Europeans felt they were not consulted prior to imposing sanctions, because they did not think the situation in Poland justified such stringent measures (since they doubted the sanctions’ effectiveness), and finally because the U.S. removed grain from the list of controlled products, highlighting the uneven burden-sharing dimension of the sanctions. President Reagan announced sanctions against Poland on 23 December 1981, but no measures were taken against the USSR at that time. See New York Times, 24 December 1981, p. 1 for an account of a letter Reagan sent to Brezhnev, urging him to permit restoration of human rights in Poland, and the Miami Herald (25 December 1981) p. 21 A, for a list of sanctions taken against Poland. Following a rejection by Brezhnev of Reagan’s appeal, arguing that the USSR had no responsibility for Poland’s martial law, the U.S. President announced on 28 December 1981 additional sanctions against the Soviet Union. See New York Times (30 December 1981), p. 6 for a list of sanctions taken against the USSR. The U.S. called a special meeting of the North Atlantic Council (the ministerial level group in NATO) to take place on 11 January to discuss a unified response to the Polish crisis. See Times (London) (11 January 1982) p. 4, and Guardian (12 January 1982) p. 26 for a discussion of the NATO meeting; and see Appendix for a full text of the communiqué issued. On the Buckley mission, see Financial Times (London) (17 March 1982) p. 1, and Times (London) (17 March 1982) p. 4. Both Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary, and Claude Cheysson, the French Foreign Affairs Minister, opposed Buckley’s efforts to halt subsidized credits to the USSR, with the former saying the time was not ‘ripe,’ and the latter merely ‘taking note’ of U.S. suggestions. Continued unsuccessful negotiations persisted right up until the Summit in June 1982.
In the 1962 case, Europe’s suspicion over economic considerations was accentuated by the U.S. determination to halt the sale of large gauge steel pipe to the USSR, a suspicion that was later confirmed. In this earlier case, the U.S. moved the decision into NATO after COCOM, which requires unanimous consensus in its decisions, appeared to oppose the controls. While the U.S. was successful in blocking the shipment, it required the Adenauer government in West Germany to resort to extra-parliamentary measures to comply with the NATO decision. To make matters worse, the USSR was able to get the pipe from Sweden, so the restrictions only undermined confidence in French and German suppliers, while not hurting the Soviets. Adding insult to injury, only ten months later, President Kennedy proposed the first massive sale of U.S. wheat to the USSR, all the while continuing the press the Swedes to stop shipping pipe to Russia. For a brief summary of this, see Angela (Yergin) Stent’s book, From Embargo to Ostpolitik (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
The U.S.-USSR energy cooperation deal fell through in October 1975 only when President Ford attempted directly to link the sale of U.S. grain to a letter of intent to purchase Soviet oil at below the world market price.
Robert W. Tucker, ‘The Atlantic Alliance and Its Critics,’ Commentary (May 1982) p. 69, says there are two détentes: the global American detente, and the regional European detente.
Kissinger describes this as ‘differential detente’ in H. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown & Co., 1979) p. 132. And as was reported in House of Commons, Fifth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 1979–1960, entitled ‘Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and its Consequences for British Policy,’ (London: HMSO, 1980), p. xii: ‘The U.S. tended to regard detente as ‘indivisible,’ that is Soviet misconduct in one part of the world was bound to affect superpower relations throughout the world. For the Europeans, this was perhaps becoming a luxury they could not afford.’
Information on the proceedings of this meeting were provided confidentially to the author by a participant, but see Ditchley Conference Report, No. 7, 1981,(19–21 June 1981) ‘Soviet Empire in Europe.’
International Herald Tribune (4 September 1981) p. 2.
New York Times (30 December 1981) p. Y-7.
International Herald Tribune (4 September 1981) p. 2. Although not mentioned in the article, there were also the so-called ‘tank’ clauses in U.S. loans to Poland, which would automatically trigger default in the event of Soviet invasion of Poland.
Says Margaret Doxey, ‘International Sanctions: A Framework for Analysis,’ International Organization, Vol. 26 (1972) p. 533, ‘It is obvious when deterrence has failed, but not when it has worked. This presents a fundamental difficulty in any empirical study of the sanctioning process.’ In retrospect, the deterrence capacity of the British ‘positive’ sanctions on the U.S. were not sufficiently strong to prevent the Carter Administration from undertaking a para-military rescue attempt.
Robert E. Osgood, NATO: The Entangling Alliance (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1962) p. 50. ‘The attribution of deterrence must always be a highly conjectural inference about calculations in others’ minds of which we have no firsthand knowledge, but our own common experience tells us that deterrence is seldom a product of a single factor.’
Paula Stern, Water’s Edge (London: Greenwood Press, 1979).
Jackson was actually called ‘that Senator from Boeing’ because he came from Seattle, Washington, the home of the Boeing Corporation, a major U.S. defense contractor.
Paula Stern, Water’s Edge, p. 142.
See Jürgen Notzold, ‘East-West Economic Relations,’ Aussenpolitik, Vol. 32, No. 4 (1981) p. 381.
Also see Theodore C. Sorensen, ‘Most Favored Nations and Less Favored Nations,’ Foreign Affairs (January 1974), p. 278.
George F. Kennan, ‘America’s Unstable Soviet Policy,’ The Atlantic Monthly (November 1982) concluded the Jackson Amendment was the turning point in the period of detente and in general U.S.Soviet relations, with a steady deterioration thereafter.
A personal discussion with Roger Robinson, Senior Advisor to the National Security Council for International Economic Affairs.
U.S. News and World Report (3 August 1981) p. 72.
See Philip Hanson, Trade and Technology in Soviet-Western Relations (London: Macmillan, 1981) p. 232, for a discussion of balancing political and economic costs in economic sanctions. And says C. Lloyd Brown-John, Multilateral Sanctions in International Law: A Comparative Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1975), p. 371, ‘Sanctions, regardless of type, must be viewed as a political rather than economic function.’
James Mayall, ‘To Sanction or Not to Sanction’, LSE Quarterly (Winter 1987) pp. 372–4.
Copyright information
© 1991 David William Hunter
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hunter, D.W. (1991). Political Significance of Economic Sanctions. In: Western Trade Pressure on the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12002-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12002-4_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-12004-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-12002-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)