Publications > Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 2, no. 3
Winter 1990/91

Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 2, no. 3
Winter 1990/91

Download PDF file Contents Economic Sanctions against Iraq Stockholm NMR conference Commission on Nonmilitary Resistance What is CBD? Ukrainian student protests Nonviolent action in USSR New Books The Case for Economic Sanctions Against Iraq by Gary C. Hufbauer and Kimberly A. Elliott Editor's Note: Would economic sanctions alone have forced Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait? Now that war has begun, we will never know. But there is good reason to believe that they could have, given enough time. The following article first appeared as an op-ed in the January 14, 1991 issue of The New York Times. It is reprinted here with permission. Proponents of a military solution to the Kuwaiti crisis have asserted repeatedly that there is no proof that sanctions will work. Only war, they say, guarantees that Iraq will get out of Kuwait, and soon. But there is abundant proof that sanctions can work—a recent report by the Central Intelligence Agency notwithstanding—and there is considerable evidence they can do so within the next 12 months. In an extensive analysis of 115 cases beginning with World War I, we found that economic sanctions helped achieve foreign policy goals 34 percent of the episodes. The odds of success in the Iraq case are far better than the historical record suggests because of the unprecedented cooperation among the sanctioning countries and the comprehensiveness of the embargo. To test our conclusions regarding Iraq more formally, we drew on work by San Ling Lam, an economist at Harvard University, to construct a computer model that analyzes the factors that contribute to successful sanctions. Taking these factors—among them, lost trade and economic output—we then asked the model to predict the likelihood that sanctions would succeed in a given situation. Since the estimated cost to Iraq—48 percent of the gross national product—is so far beyond that observed in other cases, the initial results placed the probability of success at nearly 100 percent. Even when the model is adjusted to account for Mr. Hussein’s exceptionally tyrannical control, and the estimated cost is, say, halved to 24 percent of G.N.P., the probability of success remains above 85 percent. In 12 other cases where the model projected an 80 percent or higher probability of success, sanctions did in fact succeed. On average, in those cases, the potential loss of trade for the target countries was only 36 percent, and the average cost to the target was a meager 3.8 percent of G.N.P. By contrast, virtually 100 percent of Iraq’s trade and financial relations are subject to sanctions. The resulting loss of 48 percent of Iraq’s G.N.P. is 20 times the average economic impact in other successful episodes and three times the previous highest cost imposed on any target country. But critics argue that sanctions are useless against a ruthless dictator who doesn’t care what price his people must pay. Yet sanctions have been employed successfully against dictators of all stripes, sometimes convincing them to change policies and sometimes driving them from power. U.S. sanctions in the early 1980s exacerbated Poland’s economic problems and contributed to Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s decision to release political prisoners and ease repression of the opposition. Economic sanctions, often buttressed with either covert actions or military threats, also contributed modestly to the downfalls in the 1960s of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, and of Uganda’s Idi Amin and Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza in the 1970s. Benito Mussolini is said to have confided to Hitler that, had the League of Nations included oil in its sanctions against Italy in 1935–36, he would have been forced to withdraw from Ethiopia in a week. The embargo of Iraq is uniquely comprehensive and Draconian, but there are recent parallels on a smaller scale. When India partly blockaded Nepal in 1989–90—because of a dispute over Nepal’s decision to buy weapons from China—it possessed a degree of economic leverage against its landlocked target approaching that deployed today against Iraq. Only 27 percent of Nepal’s trade originates in India, but most of it passes through Indian ports. India closed 13 of 15 border crossing points, creating severe shortages of food and life-saving medicines, even hospital oxygen. Rationing had to be imposed, and long lines for food and fuel led to rioting in Kathmandu. As is typical in these situations, several more months passed before economic deprivation led to political protests. Once underway, the protests rapidly escalated, forcing the autocratic King Birenda to recognize opposition parties for the first time in 30 years and to appoint a prime minister sympathetic to India. How long would it take for sanctions against Iraq to work? Can we afford to wait? The historical evidence from 115 cases indicates that sanctions imposed in pursuit of relatively ambitious objectives typically take between one and two years to succeed. Mussolini’s comment and the Nepal case show that a year or less may be sufficient if the sanctioning country or coalition has extraordinary leverage over the target country, as in the Iraq case. Far from inconclusive, the evidence suggests that sanctions will begin to bite sometime in the spring or early summer, with a high probability of forcing Iraq from Kuwait as early as the fall. War may resolve the situation more quickly, but with unpredictable side-effects. The imponderables of sanctions and the costs of waiting must be weighed against the imponderables of war and the costs of attacking soon, including the loss of thousands of American lives. Copyright 1991, The New York Times. Distributed by Special Features/Syndication Sales. Gary C. Hufbauer and Kimberly A. Elliott are co-authors, with Jeffrey J. Schott, of Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (2nd Ed., 1990). Their book can be ordered directly from the Institute for International Economics, 11 Dupont Circle, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Stockholm Conference Examines Civilian-Based Defense "Nonmilitary Resistance: Part of a War-Deterring Defense?" was the title of a one-day conference held in Stockholm, Sweden in October. The invitation-only conference was jointly sponsored by the Commission on Nonmilitary Resistance of the Swedish Ministry of Defense, the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, and the Royal Military Science Academy. It was attended by nearly 120 representatives of the Swedish Parliament, governmental departments, social organizations, political parties, research organizations, and the media. Nearly one-third of the participants were military officers, including the chief of the Defense Staff. Principal speakers were Roine Carlsson, minister of defense of Sweden; Gene Sharp, president of the Albert Einstein Institution; and Raymundas Rayatskas, vice-president of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Sharp presented a paper entitled "A Civilian-based Resistance Component: A Contribution to both Deterrence and Defense." In it he briefly sketched four often cited historical cases of improvised nonviolent struggle for defense (German resistance to the 1920 Kapp Putsch against the Weimar Republic; French resistance to an attempted coup d’état in Algeria in 1961; German government-sponsored resistance to the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923; and Czechoslovak resistance to the Soviet invasion and occupation, 1968–1969). Sharp went on to outline his analyses of nonviolent struggle, civilian-based defense, and possible strategies for its use in defense crises. In the third part of his presentation, Sharp addressed the issue of transarmament (the gradual transition from military defense to civilian-based defense), the problems of mixing military and civilian forms of defense, and the applicability of civilian-based defense in today’s changing European security environment. In addition to Sharp’s and Rayatskas’ presentations, several conference participants had been asked in advance to comment on "nonmilitary resistance." (The Swedes generally use this term when referring to civilian-based defense; however, officially, this term includes both armed and unarmed forms of resistance carried out by groups not incorporated into the Swedish defense forces.) The selected commentators represented a cross section of thinking from the Swedish military and foreign policy establishments about nonmilitary resistance (NMR). A former commander of the Royal Swedish Air Force felt that NMR would indeed help to deter war, but only as a complement to a strong military defense posture. The ex-commander cited a failure in communication between advocates of NMR and members of the military and called for further dialogue between the two. Bo Huldt, director of the Royal Swedish Institute of International Affairs, drew a parallel between civilian-based defense (CBD) and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): with both CBD and MAD, a country places its civilian population on the line. Huldt saw CBD as the antithesis of Sweden’s current peripheral defense policy, in that war would first have to enter the country before CBD could be implemented, whereas peripheral defense plans aimed to keep an aggressor out of the country. Huldt concluded, however, that "under certain conditions" (not spelled out) CBD was a viable and useful form of resistance. The chief of the Defense Staff, Vice Admiral Torsten Engberg, said that all citizens should be involved in the defense of their country in one way or another, and thus all forms of defense were useful and welcome. Engberg felt that NMR could certainly contribute to deterring aggression against Sweden in that it would raise the potential costs of military occupation. However, Engberg continued, NMR could do this only as a complement to a strong military defense policy. Engberg endorsed the commission’s efforts in exploring NMR and called for moving towards "stage two" of this exploration, the development of an effective NMR defense. Moreover, Engberg said that the defense establishment should financially support this research. Helena Nilsson of the Center Party felt that the numerous social organizations in Sweden were quite willing to see NMR incorporated into the country’s Total Defense system. She felt that there was much pressure for NMR to be taken out of the hands of the national politicians and implemented on the local level. Jan Olsson, a member of the National Psychological Defense Board (Sweden’s Total Defense system is comprised of National Boards of Military Defense, Economic Defense, Psychological Defense, and Civil Defense) said that much still needed to be learned about the environment in which NMR would operate: what psychological factors are vital in nurturing NMR in a society which has been militarily defeated and occupied? Olsson called for more research into this area. Gunnar Gustafsson, general director of the Commission on Nonmilitary Resistance, concluded the conference with the remark that "perhaps now we can remove the question mark from the title of this conference and replace it with an exclamation point." Gustafsson felt a broad consensus had emerged from the proceedings: NMR was an accepted complement to Sweden’s military defense posture. Now, Gustafsson said, Sweden must take the next, more important step of developing the deterrent potential of NMR and anchoring it into Swedish society. The consensus which emerged from the proceedings was indeed a positive one: like the unanimous 1986 parliamentary authorization for the creation of the commission, there appears to be unanimous support for the further development of nonmilitary resistance as a complement to Sweden’s predominantly military defense policy. The Swedish Commission on Nonmilitary Resistance The Swedish Commission on Nonmilitary Resistance was officially established within the Swedish Ministry of Defense on June 1, 1987. The ordinance establishing the commission formulated the commission’s purpose as follows: "1) to further the conditions for non-military resistance through advice and recommendations to authorities and individuals; 2) to deal with questions of international law, psychological and other conditions of non-military resistance; and 3) to further research within the field." The commission’s recent activities have included: - encouraging five majors from the officer’s training college to conduct case studies of possible civil resistance in their own communities. - organizing annual one-day seminars on nonmilitary resistance for those performing alternative civilian service. - encouraging the National Research Institute to conduct a three-year study on the possible psychological effects of occupation and war on the Swedish population. The study is to be financed by the commission, the National Research Institute, and the Supreme Commander’s office. - launching a "novel project," in conjunction with the Swedish United Nations Association, encouraging young Swedish authors to write about life and resistance under a military occupation. - conducting seminars on nonmilitary resistance at the National Defense College. What is Civilian-Based Defense? Civilian-based defense is the preferred term used to describe the defense policy application of the nonviolent technique. The term indicates defense by civilians (as distinct from military personnel) using civilian means of struggle (as distinct from military and paramilitary means). This is a policy intended to deter and defeat foreign military invasions, occupations, and internal usurpations, including both executive usurpations and coups d’état. Deterrence and defense are to be accomplished in civilian-based defense by reliance on social, economic, political, and psychological "weapons," or specific methods of action. These are used to wage widespread noncooperation and to offer massive public defiance. The aim is both to deny the attackers their objective and to make impossible the consolidation of their rule, whether in the form of foreign administration, a puppet regime, or a government of usurpers. The action also aims to subvert the loyalty of the attackers’ troops and functionaries, to promote their unreliability in carrying out orders and repression, and even to induce them to mutiny. Civilian-based defense is meant to be waged by the population and its institutions on the basis of advance preparation, planning, and training, derived from research into nonviolent struggle, the attackers’ system, and its weaknesses. Full adoption of civilian-based defense is usually conceived to be an incremental process, called transarmament, in which a civilian resistance component, once adopted, is gradually expanded in power and size to the point at which the military components are judged to be superfluous and even counterproductive, and hence can be phased out fully. "Disarmament," as the reduction or abandonment of defense capacity, is not involved. Instead of transarming to a full civilian-based defense policy, most societies and governments are far more likely to adopt simply a civilian-based defense component into an existing overall predominantly military defense policy. This limited component would operate within the framework of overall military policies. It would therefore be directed to help to provide deterrence and defense for specific situations and contingencies. When a civilian-based defense resistance component is added to a predominantly military policy, there is no permanent commitment by the society or government to maintain that element at the initial level of operation and for the original specific purpose. That component might later be increased, reduced, or eliminated, depending on future assessments of its deterrence and defense capacity. — Gene Sharp Ukrainian Government Yields to Students’ Demands Last October, students in Kiev waged a nonviolent campaign to press the Ukrainian government for political reforms. Using a variety of nonviolent tactics, including a hunger strike, school boycotts, street protests, and building occupations, the students gradually escalated the conflict to the point where the government had to respond either with massive repression or major concessions. Only fifteen days after the campaign had begun, the government conceded to the students’ demands. The students’ campaign was launched on October 2, when twenty-three students pitched tents in the center of Kiev and began a hunger strike. "Asked about the hunger strike, Alexander Gudima, a nationalist deputy to the Ukrainian parliament, said the students had studied the techniques of Japanese and South Korean protesters, realizing that good organization and public support were crucial," the Christian Science Monitor reported. That the students were well-organized and had planned ahead was clear from the start. First, they had specific demands: "resignation of the prime minister of the Ukraine, nationalization of the property of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] and the Komsomol, refusal to sign the Union treaty, dissolution of the inept parliament, army service only inside the Republic and new parliamentary elections on a multiparty basis," Moscow News reported. Second, they had worked out important details such as how to guard against agents provocateurs. The hunger strikers’ camp was fenced in. Students guarded the perimeter. And only persons with special passes were allowed in. Third, they had a strategy, a step by step plan for mounting pressure on the government until their demands were met. During the course of their campaign, the hunger strikers’ numbers grew from twenty-three to one hundred to more than two hundred by the end of the campaign. Thousands of Kiev citizens came out to support the hunger strikers, bringing them flowers, mattresses, and warm clothing. Students who were not part of the hunger strike began to boycott classes. In less than two weeks, all Kiev students, including those in senior high schools, technical and vocational schools, were refusing to attend classes. On October 15, one hundred thousand students gathered outside the parliament building, carrying Ukrainian flags and signs saying, "Let the CPSU Live in Chernobyl!", "Communism Is for Communists, the Ukraine Is for the People!". Inside, one of the student leaders, Oles Dony, chairman of the Kiev branch of the Ukrainian Students Union, addressed the parliament, repeating the hunger strikers’ demands. That same day, another group of students began occupying the University building. They allowed anyone wishing to leave to do so, but no one was allowed to enter. The next day students also took over the Polytechnic and Pedagogic Institutes. Student leader Oles Dony told Moscow News: "They say the hunger strike began spontaneously. A lie! Markiyan [Ivashishin] and myself are behind this action. We planned it two months ago. Seizing the University and the two institutes is only the second plan of action. If parliament continues to refuse to budge, we have a further three contingencies, in an emergency." On October 17, fifteen days after the hunger strike began, Ukrainian Prime Minister Vitaly Masol resigned, and the parliament passed several measures in response to the students’ demands. In effect, the students had won. "The parliament agreed that a referendum in 1991 will determine public confidence in the government and a framework for new elections; a union treaty will be rejected until a new Ukrainian constitution is adopted; no Ukrainians should serve in the Soviet Army outside the Ukraine, unless voluntarily; and a commission will decide how to dispose of Communist Party property," the Christian Science Monitor reported. Glasnost and Nonviolent Action in the USSR Text and photos by Roger S. Powers Glasnost has led to tremendous changes in the Soviet Union, among them a marked increase in public criticism and political protest. Before glasnost, criticism was heard only within the confines of a Soviet’s apartment, in the company of family and close friends. Only small bands of dissidents dared to make their criticisms public, and when they did government repression was swift and severe. Dissidents were harrassed, ostracized, fired from their jobs, beaten, and/or imprisoned. Fortunately, times have changed. When I visited the Soviet Union last fall, I found Soviets openly criticizing the government and the Communist party and some engaging in unprecedented nonviolent protests. A lot had changed since my previous visit in 1986. Today Soviets feel much freer to speak their minds. Pushkin Square in Moscow has become a gathering place similar to Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. Small crowds gather there regularly to hear political and economic issues debated. Soviets can now legally form their own "informal organizations." They are able to hold meetings and demonstrations without government interference. And they are freer to have contact with foreigners. Glasnost has also given more freedom to the press and has led to the creation of new publications critical of the government and the Communist party. However, these positive changes are in danger of being reversed. Gorbachev’s recent shift to the right, his efforts to consolidate power, and his crackdown in the Baltic republics, are signs that Gorbachev may be returning to the hardline policies of the past, sacrificing the reforms he himself had instituted in order to maintain control over the fifteen Soviet republics and prevent the USSR from breaking up. I was in the Soviet Union from October 25 to November 8 as part of a delegation organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Soviet Peace Committee. During those two weeks I witnessed several examples of nonviolent action. Three examples follow: My first encounter with nonviolent action in the USSR was near Red Square in Moscow. There, to my amazement, was a shanty town, right in front of the enormous Rossiya Hotel and directly across the street from St. Basil’s Cathedral. Perhaps as many as one hundred people were living there in tiny hovels they had built from packing crates, plastic sheets, and other makeshift construction materials. They were living in these squalid conditions to protest a variety of injustices. Some were refugees from Azerbaijan who had no place to go. Others were protesting government repression or demanding the release of political prisoners. Still others had lost their jobs or their homes. Each had come with a different grievance. All blamed the government for their difficulties and vowed to stay until their problems were solved. They had already been there for months. Such a protest, in the very center of Moscow, would not have been possible four years ago. On Thursday evening, November 1, we visited a memorial "to all the people killed by the brutality of the Communist system," which had been erected and dedicated just two days before by the society ‘Memorial’ with some 10,000 people in attendance. The centerpiece of the memorial is a large stone taken from the first (1918) forced-labor camp in the USSR, Solovyetsky Island. It sits upon a marble base covered with flowers and surrounded by small signs naming various prison camps. That such a memorial now exists is extraordinary. That it is located on Dzerzhinsky Square, right next to KGB headquarters, is astounding. Finally, on November 7 our delegation was privileged to be present in Red Square for the military parade celebrating the October 1917 revolution. Following the parade, we went to the two alternative commemorative events called by anti-Communist groups: a rally near Communist party headquarters and a march down Gorky Street. Both events involved Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic, and Popov, the mayor of Moscow. They were small in comparison to the official parade, involving no more than a few thousand people. Marchers carried pictures of Yeltsin and Sakharov and signs that read "This is the day of sorrow for those killed during seventy-three years"; "Bloody Communist Regime"; "We need to bury the regime"; "Gorbachev resign"; "The Communist party is the worst disaster of our century." We learned later that the marchers were granted permission to enter Red Square, the first time an anti-Communist protest has been allowed there. New Books on Nonviolent Struggle Two new books on nonviolent struggle have just been published. Both include research supported by the Albert Einstein Institution. One, entitled Arab Nonviolent Political Struggle in the Middle East, grew out of a 1986 conference sponsored by the Arab Thought Forum in Amman, Jordan. It is a preliminary examination of nonviolent political struggle in the Arab World. Among the themes discussed in the book are the essential character of nonviolent struggle, the differences between those who perceive nonviolence as a creed and those who view it as a policy, and the arenas in which nonviolent struggle is most likely to be effective. Contributors include Ronald McCarthy, research coordinator of the Einstein Institution; Gene Sharp, president of the Einstein Institution; and Brad Bennett, a former research assistant at the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. The book was edited by Ralph Crow, who has taught for more than twenty years at various universities in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon; Philip Grant, who served for several years on the political science faculty of the American University in Beirut; and Saad E. Ibrahim, professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo and secretary-general of the Arab Thought Forum. A second recently published book is entitled Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland: Finnish "Passive Resistance" Against Russification as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle in the European Resistance Tradition, by Steven Duncan Huxley. Huxley did the main research for the book while an Einstein Institution Fellow from 1986 to 1988. Published as part of a series by the Finnish Historical Society, this book traces the history of "passive resistance," examines its development in Finnish political thought and action up through the nineteenth century, and then focuses on the years 1898-1905 when Finns used this distinct and sophisticated form of nonmilitary struggle to fight against Russification. Constitutional Insurgency in Finland can be ordered from the Finnish Historical Society, Arkadiankatu 16 B 28, 00100 Helsinki, Finland. Telephone: 011-358-0-440-369. Arab Nonviolent Political Struggle in the Middle East can be ordered from Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1800 30th Street #304, Boulder, CO 80301. Telephone: 303-444-6684. Download PDF file