Smart sanctions prove not so clever

As an alliance of states built on ‘soft power’, it is perhaps not surprising that the European Union has had ambivalent feelings about sanctions from the very first time it imposed them - against the Soviet Union in response to the suppression of democratic stirrings in Poland in December 1981.

The trade embargo against the Soviet Union was partial and half-hearted: Germany was opposed, Greece was exempt and Denmark’s participation was limited to refusing to allow goods to be shipped through its territory to or from states that were implementing the sanctions.

But the sanctions on the agenda of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting this week (15-16 October) were quite different. The ‘dumb sanctions’ of the 1980s and 1990s - blanket trade embargoes against rogue regimes in South Africa, Yugoslavia and Iraq - have been replaced by ‘smart sanctions’ that minimise the effects on the general population by targeting individuals who are directly implicated in the events that triggered the measures in the first place.

Smart sanctions, which include visa bans, asset freezes, flight bans and bans on investments and trade in certain goods, can be imposed by unanimous decision of EU member states in the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

Visa bans are often a first step on the ladder and are currently being imposed on members of the ruling elites of Myanmar (Burma), Zimbabwe, Belarus and Uzbekistan. (Transdniestria is subject to similar restrictions as visa bans are the only form of sanctions that can also be applied to unrecognised territories.)

But this new approach does not seem to have muffled the political squabbles that greet every new sanctions package and, indeed, the periodic reviews of existing sanctions.

The latest disagree-ments emerged during preparations for the foreign ministers’ meeting, when it became clear that Germany and the UK held diametrically opposed views about continuing a travel ban for senior officials from Uzbekistan. The ban was imposed after the Uzbek government rejected calls for an independent inquiry into the massacre of Andijan in the spring of 2005, when hundreds of unarmed demonst-rators were killed by security forces.

Germany sees modest improvements in the human-rights situation in the central Asian country where other governments see an unchanged overall picture; in consequence, Berlin wants to recalibrate the policy mix of sanctions and incentives while others - notably the UK - want to stay tough.

Beyond the underlying policy disagreement, this conflict also points to a built-in flaw in the way that the EU applies ‘smart sanctions’. Smart sanctions always come with an expiration date (they are generally imposed for one year), which means that the situation in the country in question has to be reviewed on a regular basis. This makes sense from a policy viewpoint and is also a good way to keep a crisis on the international agenda.

But since the extension of sanctions requires unanimity, the built-in expiration date also means that an individual government can compel others to agree to a softening of existing sanctions by threatening to veto the annual renewal. By contrast, it is impossible for a single government to force through a toughening of the sanctions regime unless it can convince all the others that this is the best course of action.

Such mechanisms make EU policy vulnerable to national agendas that are often conditioned by trade links. EU foreign ministers also agreed last week to target certain extractive industries in Myanmar - something that was possible only because bilateral trade is negligible, making the moral high ground a painless place to occupy.

If smart sanctions can be quite dumb in their effects on EU policymaking, what about their effects on the intended target? The evidence is mixed. There is little doubt that the most comprehensive sanctions regime ever maintained by the EU (including an oil embargo) contributed to widespread discontent in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and, eventually, to the fall of Serbian strongman Slobodan Miloševi´c. But a much more direct contribution to his downfall was the application of brute force - the NATO bombing campaign of 1999. In the case of Uzbekistan, little change is visible to anyone but the German government - yet sanctions have now been suspended.

Academics are already suggesting that adding a few dumb features to smart sanctions might actually get the job done. In a new briefing paper on EU sanctions, Clara Portela of the European University Institute noted how odd it was "that a major trading power [such as the EU] renounces the use of economic tools to influence third countries". But as long as even much more limited measures remain controversial among EU member states, it is unlikely that this insight will spread to the people who actually make policy.

As an alliance of states built on ‘soft power’, it is perhaps not surprising that the European Union has had ambivalent feelings about sanctions from the very first time it imposed them - against the Soviet Union in response to the suppression of democratic stirrings in Poland in December 1981.