Why sanctions aren't the answer: As we were saying

Larry Everest, Progressive Review, March 1992 - The argument that sanctions — not war — are the way to bring down bloody dictators has gained wide acceptance among peace activists. Yet far from being a weapon for peace, sanctions are a weapon for war, often less discriminating than bombing. Before last year's Gulf war, many in the anti-war movement endorsed sanctions as a "humane alternative" to military confrontation. Today an estimated one million Iraqi children are malnourished as a result of both sanctions and wartime destruction.

Greenpeace estimates that 70,000 Iraqi civilians have died from starvation and disease since the fighting ended.That's 10 times more non-combatants than lost their lives during the war itself, and more are dying daily.

Iraq isn't the only country where US-sponsored sanctions are taking a human toll. Last October an embargo was imposed on Haiti following the anti-Aristide coup; now fuel is scarce, malnutrition is even more widespread than before, and thousands are desperately trying to flee.

In the 1970s and 1980s sanctions against South Africa were widely supported by Western activists and the ANC. During the Gulf war many activists viewed sanctions as a reasonable middleground between total war and non-intervention — a way to get Iraq out of Kuwait without bloodshed. Today sanctions are the weapon of choice of President Bush's New World Order to force compliance from upstart regimes…. The events of the past year highlight the problems with this approach. To begin with, sanctions aren't humane. They are especially deadly for a semi-industrialized country like Iraq, which depends on imports for everything from food to medicines to essential machinery (a dependence deliberately heightened by the bombing of Iraq's infrastructure).Today many Third World countries are increasingly dependent upon imports for the basic necessities of life. Haiti imports 80 percent of its food. In 1960, for example, the Middle East was a net exporter of food; by1981, it was buying nearly 40 percent of all Third World food imports. Today,Oman imports 90 percent of its food;Iraq and Libya import 70 percent of theirs, Egypt and Tunisia 50 percent.

Sanctions can be a far less discriminating weapon than even bombs. Food and medicine may officially be exempted from an embargo (as is the case with Iraq), but without export earnings, sanctioned countries don't have the money to buy them. The primary victims end up being civilians, while the impact on the ruling group isminimal.Nor are sanctions ever analternative to war.

As Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell admitted in the case of Iraq, "sanctions and war were a seamless process." They served to soften up Iraq, buy time for the Allied military buildup and convincet he world that the coalition had gone the last mile for peace (even after the decision to strike had secretly been made).In the case of South Africa, peaceactivists saw sanctions as a means of waging non-violent warfare to bring down the apartheid regime. But the US government, when it finally came around to accepting sanctions, viewed them only as a way to push for certain reforms. And in the end, US sanctions (which cost the South African economy an estimated $30 to $40 billion during the 1980s) were never as airtight or comprehensive as those imposed on Iraq.

Many progressives, both Haitian and American, supported the embargo against Haiti. Yet according to Haitian activists, the embargo has been enforced selectively by the U.S. as a means to pressure not just the military junta but Aristide himself to moderate his demands. Haitians have expressed their readiness to sacrifice for liberation, but hardly to further U.S.goals.

The lesson is that it's impossible to see sanctions as a non-violent means of warfare against abusive regimes. Even in cases where governments accede to peace activists' demands to impose sanctions, they will use them only to further their own agendas. The legacy of the Gulf war is now clear: Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and bully, but U.S. intervention has proven to be a greater evil for the people. This is powerful testimony that peace activists should oppose any foreign intervention by the U.S. government, whether it's direct military involvement or selective use of sanctions.

© PNS. Larry Everest, a journalist who has traveled widely in the Middle East and South Asia, is author of Behind the Poison Cloud