Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism (review)

In Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, formerly a fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution, has made a significant contribution to the understanding of economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool.

Shrewd Sanctions seeks to move the sanctions debate from a simplistic focus upon whether or not sanctions "work" to an emphasis on their usefulness relative to other possible policy approaches. To that end, the book provides case studies of sanctions in four countries listed as "state sponsors of terrorism": Iran, (pre-war) Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. For each case, O'Sullivan reviews the history of the relevant sanctions regimes and evaluates them based on four criteria: impact (economic and political repercussions of sanctions), effectiveness (to what extent were policy goals achieved), utility (a measure of effectiveness minus the overall costs of the policy), and comparative utility (utility of sanctions relative to other available policy options). This framework for a rigorous analysis of sanctions regimes should be of particular value to policymakers as they consider sanctions relative to the full range of available policy options. O'Sullivan proceeds to make specific recommendations for each case.

O'Sullivan's major contribution lies in the nuances she adds to what has already been a vigorous, though often limited, debate over the use of sanctions. Rather than concentrating on a strict cost-benefit approach to their use, she correctly maintains that arguments for and against sanctions are immaterial if one fails to place them in the context of a full policy debate. Simply put, O'Sullivan views sanctions as tools that are most effective when used with other instruments of foreign policy in support of an overarching strategy.

O'Sullivan devotes the final chapter to identifying lessons learned and making recommendations for current and future policymakers. In particular, she makes clear that two factors determine how well sanctions are used: the structure of the sanctions regime itself, and the extent to which sanctions are coordinated with other instruments of foreign policy. The former must vary depending on one's overall objectives, while the latter requires policymakers to overcome the tendency to treat sanctions themselves as an isolated strategy.

Shrewd Sanctions defines three categories of policy objectives relevant to sanctions, each with its own set of challenges: "behavior change, containment, and regime change." O'Sullivan succeeds in showing how these objectives require both different sanctions regimes and different complementary policies in order to achieve the desired result. The overlap among these three goals makes prioritizing them particularly challenging for policymakers. Given that fact, sanctions regimes need to be made flexible enough to allow for changing goals.

O'Sullivan mentions the likelihood that non-state actors will increasingly become the targets of U.S. sanctions, as well as the idea that technological progress will make it increasingly possible to employ such sanctions more precisely. There is scope here for further research on the extent to which these developments increase the range of policy options available to current and future administrations.

The timeliness of Shrewd Sanctions is manifest. With the Libyan commitment to compensate the families of Lockerbie bombing victims, the looming peace in Sudan, and Iran's late October 2003 decision to engage with Europe and the United Nations on its nuclear weapons programs, it is clear that the U.S. government should be reviewing its policy objectives and options on an ongoing basis. Among the key issues is whether or not the United States "can take yes for an answer." Only by incrementally easing sanctions in response to behavioral changes in the target countries can the United States create an incentive for compliance with its demands. Libya's increasing cooperation with international demands related to the Lockerbie bombing has been rewarded with the suspension of U.N. sanctions, though U.S. sanctions remain. O'Sullivan argues well that the gradual...