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has been apparent for several weeks now that one of the early foreign-policy
challenges facing the new Bush administration will be to contend
with Secretary
of
State Colin Powell's proclivity to make policy by personal fiat.
A case in point was a pronouncement he made to Sens. Chuck Hagel,
Richard Lugar, and others on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
in the course of his confirmation hearings: "I would like to participate
with you in discussing how to get rid of most of [the United States'
economic sanctions against other countries]."
Fortunately, there is reason to believe Secretary Powell will not
get away with his effort to eliminate unilateral economic sanctions
as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Notably, President Bush
has just made clear that he intends to keep them in place with respect
to Libya until its government acknowledges responsibility for PanAm
103. And Vice President Cheney has said he sees no end in sight
on sanctions on Cuba until there is a regime change there.
The question is: How much damage will Mr. Powell do to unilateral
economic sanctions as a necessary security-policy tool in the process
of trying to "get rid of most of them"?
The damage could be severe since Powell's anti-sanctions message
plays well in certain circles, both on Capitol Hill and off. In
recent years, with the Cold War fast receding from memory, Republican
members of Congress have shown increasing sympathy for agricultural
and business interests who view dealing with odious regimes in places
like Cuba, China, Iran, Libya, Iraq, and North Korea exclusively
in commercial terms — i.e., whether they will be able to compete
with French, German, Canadian, and other Western companies and to
secure taxpayer subsidies that are often required to make such transactions
lucrative. This faction within the GOP has created working majorities
by making common cause with left-wing Democrats who feel a certain
solidarity with such regimes, notably with respect to the latters'
antipathy towards a domineering United States and their claims that
the sanctions are only harming innocent civilians and retarding
political reform in their countries.
A far more disciplined, organized and well-funded effort on the
part of special interests — notably a consortium known as "USA
Engage" — has been instrumental in engineering this unholy
marriage of convenience. Television and print ads, intensive lobbying,
and generous campaign contributions have secured a number of victories
for the agribusinesses, exporters, and others among the anti-sanctions
crowd. These include: passage of a rider to the Fiscal Year 2001
agriculture bill authorizing the shipment of food and medicine to
countries on the State Department's terrorist-sponsors list; Madeleine
Albright's visit to North Korea among other initiatives meant to
bring an end to U.S. sanctions against the despotic and increasingly
dangerous "Hermit Kingdom"; the adoption of Permanent Normal Trade
Relations for Communist China; and the substitution of the term
"states of concern" to temper the perception that what were formerly
and properly dubbed "rogue states" are now governed by people with
whom we can safely do business.
Not content with these victories, USA Engage and its legislator-allies
are seeking statutory changes that would effectively eliminate the
United States' ability to impose economic sanctions on a unilateral
basis. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has announced that sanctions-reform
legislation would be one of his priorities in the first session
of the 107th Congress.
Presumably, what Sen. Lott has in mind is something along the lines
of the disingenuously named "Enhancement of Trade, Security and
Human Rights Through Sanctions
| “The
Lugar bill would radically change the latitude that currently
exists with regard to sanctions.” |
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Reform
Act," first introduced by Sen. Lugar in 1998. The Lugar bill would
radically change the latitude that currently exists with regard
to the imposition and implementation of unilateral economic sanctions.
For example, it would require all future sanctions to include presidential-waiver
authority. President Clinton demonstrated the folly of universally
offering such an out; virtually without exception, he utilized waivers
to defeat the clear intent of Congress with respect to odious Chinese,
Iranian, and Cuban misconduct.
The Lugar reform legislation would also establish burdensome reporting
requirements designed to discourage the adoption of sanctions, a
mandatory 60-day delay in their imposition, and the "grandfathering"
of all contracts concluded before the sanctions went into effect.
Taken together, these arrangements effectively mean that no such
sanctions will be deemed workable or practicable, virtually assuring
that no other nation will join us in their imposition. That prospect
will make it all the easier to oppose such a step in the first place,
since it is generally agreed that multilateral sanctions are more
effective than unilateral ones. For good measure, Sen. Lugar would
"sunset" all U.S. sanctions, making the maintenance of constraints
needed to deny economic life-support to well-entrenched and hostile
regimes exceedingly difficult, if not as a practical matter impossible.
These sorts of measures would, in short, significantly impinge upon
the government's present authority under the Constitution to utilize
sanctions in response to foreign-policy crises or national-security
threats. The nation would thus be left with just two, generally
unsavory, options: take military action or issue often ineffectual
diplomatic warnings.
Tying our hands in that way is all the more ill-advised in light
of fact that the costs of unilateral sanctions to the economy are
usually greatly exaggerated. As the Congressional Budget Office's
Jan Paul Acton told Congress on June 3, 1998: "To date, the cost
of existing sanctions to the overall economy has been quite modest.
CBO's review of research indicates that the net cost may be less
than $1 billion annually of lost national income. That compares
with $6.6 trillion of total national income in 1997…. The main
reason that sanctions have had such a small effect on the overall
U.S. economy is that the principal targets of sanctions have been
countries with which the United States conducts relatively little
trade."
To be sure, unilateral economic sanctions are rarely an ideal foreign-policy
tool. Wherever possible, other, more precisely targetable measures,
should be utilized. For example, policies aimed at removal from
power of the likes of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic are
much to be preferred over economic sanctions, unilateral or otherwise.
In addition, more emphasis should be given to the use of carefully
crafted financial sanctions — including limiting access of
offending foreign government-controlled entities to the U.S. debt
and equities markets. Such measures would affect an area of economic
activity where the United States enjoys a clearly dominant position.
Restrictions on the issuance of stocks and bonds in the U.S. market,
for example, would not jeopardize underlying American exports, jobs,
or people-to-people contacts.
It behooves Secretary Powell and the rest of the Bush team to preserve
the latitude to impose the option of economic sanctions, by rejecting
legislation like Sen. Lugar's, while working in less counterproductive
ways to ensure that those sanctions which are imposed are as effective
as possible, with as few unintended and undesirable impacts on American
businesses, farmers, and other interests.
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