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Penn Law’s Journal of International Law Holds Symposium on Economic Sanctions.
Posted by Clif Burns at 5:53 pm on March 3, 2008
Category: Sanctions
Posting was light last week because I was speaking at a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania Law School being conducted by the law schools Journal of International Law. The symposium was titled “Trade Sanctions in a 21st Century Economy: Are They An Appropriate Or Effective Means Of Altering State Behavior?” and had as featured speakers, among others, Gary Hufbauer, who has done more research on the impact of economic sanctions, both unilateral and multilateral, than almost anyone else. He is the lead author of Economic Sanctions Reconsidered which analyzes most modern cases of economic sanctions and provides factual support for some important, if not surprising, conclusions, namely that sanctions sometimes work, but more often than not they do not achieve their desired results and that multilateral sanctions are more likely to be successful than unilateral sanctions.
Also speaking was Professor Orde Félix Kittrie, currently a visiting associate professor of law at the University of Maryland who was on a panel discussing the humanitarian impact of economic sanctions. He unashamedly advanced the argument that the humanitarian impact of economic sanctions imposed on Iran and North Korea didn’t matter. In Professor’s Kittrie’s view, it might be necessary to starve a few North Korean and Iranian civilians to prevent their governments from killing a bunch of Americans with a nuclear device.
My presentation, which you can download here, was not quite as controversial. I looked at two methods used by the United States to bootstrap the effectiveness of unilateral sanctions — namely, secondary sanctions and prosecution of foreign nationals for extraterritorial violation of U.S. sanctions — and discussed whether they were consistent with our WTO obligations and with basic principles of international law regarding prescriptive jurisdiction.
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6 Comments:
Thanks for the link to your presentation, with your permission, I’d like to share it with our trade sanctions staff.
Also, I love the title, and I can assure you that it will take on a life of its own. I once did a presentation on assessing country risk that contained a slide titled ‘Antarctica is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.’ I’ve seen that slide tacked up in compliance offices of banks that never heard the original presentation.
Scott, feel free to share the presentation. And the Anarctica line is great. With your permission, I’ll quote you on that when the next opportunity arises!
Feel free! Eventually George Lucas will catch up with me, though.
Clif: I’m disappointed you didn’t announce the symposium ahead of time. CLEs that cheap are hard to come by, especially in export controls. Plus, the pleasure of hearing you live, of course.
Mike, my apologies for not announcing it ahead of time. I’d been meaning to do so but in the last minute rush to get ready I forgot to post an announcement. I also didn’t focus on the cheap CLE aspect because we DC Bar members don’t have a CLE requirement.
In all events, my presentation was only 10 minutes and was not nearly as, um, interesting as watching jaws drop throughout the room when Professor Kitrie dismissed any consideration of the civilian impact of country-based sanctions on the grounds that a few starving North Korean (or Iranian) civilians was a small price to pay to keep their government from blowing up NYC.
Did the good professor draw a distinction betwee unilateral and multilateral sanctions? The present UN sanctions against Iran hardly affect the average citizen, whereas the UN embargo of Iraq, even with the corruption, had a nasty effect on the average citizen and actually made Saddam stroner in the domestic context. The US embargo of all trade, including EAR99 items, does no more to Iran – and maybe even less – than the suspension of dual use licenses that preceded it. By declaring a zone free from competition by U.S. companies, the U.S. has given China a free hand to pull Iran into its sphere, and vice versa.
