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Economic Interventions

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Abstract

Policies regarding post-Cold War military interventions often posed difficult questions about who should intervene and whether action, to be legitimate, required support by the international community. They further revealed a conflict between national interest and support for international norms. Similarly, the history of economic intervention since the end of the Second World War has been shaped by the tension between profit and the interest of various states in exporting arms, on the one hand, and questions of principle related to limiting the proliferation of arms. In addition to various international agreements to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, economic sanctions have, particularly since the end of the Cold War, been an important tool for limiting the access of dangerous regimes to WMD. Decisions to sell arms to another country, that is, engagement in the arms trade, are no less interventions that shape the potential or likelihood of war than decisions to withhold arms or military equipment, as a form of economic sanction.

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Notes

  1. Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions: Economic Statecraft in an Age of Global Terrorism (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2003), p. 18.

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  25. For further reading on economic sanctions against Iraq, see: R. Thomas Naylor, Economic Warfare: Sanctions, Embargo Busing and their Human Cost (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2001); Tim Niblock, Pariah States and Sanctions in the Middle East: Iraq, Libya and Sudan (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Abbas Alnasrawi, Iraqs Burdens: Oil, Sanctions and Underdevelopment (New York: Greenwood Press, 2002); Simons, Imposing Economic Sanctions; Anthony Arnove, Iraq Under Siege; and Brown, Sanctioning Saddam.

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  26. Many accusations, particularly from the USA and the UK, have been leveled at Saddam Hussein in this regard. For instance, he has been accused of building presidential palaces, a stadium, and a lavish safari park while his people were suffering. The US government claimed that, under the Oil for Food program, he failed to order adequate baby foods, to order pulses-a main ingredient of Iraqi diets-and even of exporting food. UK Minister of Defense George Robertson accused Iraq of preventing medical supplies in Iraqi warehouses from reaching the population. See, respectively: Patrick Laws, “A Look at Sanctioning Iraq: The Numbers Don’t Lie, Saddam Does,” The Washington Post, February 27, 2000; US Department of State, “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” September 13, 1999, http://usinfo.state.govregional/neairaqiraq99.htm and George Robertson, “Bombing Iraq, Letter,” The Times, (London), March 6, 1999. It has been argued that many of these allegations proved to be unfounded or were based on misrepresentation and part of a campaign of vilification. See, for instance, Global Policy Forum “Iraq Sanctions: Humanitarian Implications and Options for the Future,” August 6, 2002, http://www.globalpoiicy.org/securitysanction/iraql/2002/paper.htm

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  29. For an overview of issues raised by the Ethical Foreign Policy, see: Karen E. Smith and Margot Light, eds, Ethics and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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© 2005 K. M. Fierke

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Fierke, K.M. (2005). Economic Interventions. In: Diplomatic Interventions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509917_6

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