1. For the most comprehensive survey of sanctions in the twentieth century, see the survey of 103 “episodes” of sanctions by Hufbauer, Gary Clyde and Schott, Jeffrey J., Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1985), especially Appendix CGoogle Scholar. “Case Abstracts,” pp. 107–753.

2. See Daoudi, M. S. and Dajani, M. S.. Economic Sanctions: Ideals and Experience (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1983)Google Scholar. Baldwin, David A., Economic Statecraft (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar likewise demonstrates the degree to which this skepticism has become the “received wisdom” in the literature on economic sanctions.

3. Hanson, Philip, Western Economic Statecraft in East–West Relations: Embargoes, Sanctions, Linkage, Economic Warfare and Detente, Chatham Papers no. 40 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1988). p. 14Google Scholar.

4. Shultz's, George comment in July 1982 is not untypical: “As a general proposition, I think the use of trade sanctions as an instrument of diplomacy is a bad idea. … Our using it here, there and elsewhere to try to affect some other country's behaviour … basically has not worked.” Quoted in Daoudi, and Dajani, , Economic Sanctions, p. 187Google Scholar; see Appendix II, pp. 178–88, for similar comments from other senior American officials. Likewise, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher have denied the efficacy of sanctions against South Africa, yet both eagerly embraced sanctions against the Soviet Union.

5. Lindsay, James M., “Trade Sanctions as Policy Instruments: A Reexamination,” International Studies Quarterly 30 (06 1986), p. 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft.

7. “In determining whether the episode was ‘successful,’ we confine our examination to changes in the policies, capabilities or government of the target country.” Hufbauer, and Schott, , Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p. 32Google Scholar. For a comparative assessment of the work of Baldwin and Hufbauer and Schott, see Lenway, Stefanie Ann, “Between War and Commerce: Economic Sanctions as a Tool of Statecraft,” International Organization 42 (Spring 1988), pp. 397–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. For a statement of these analytical assumptions, see Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, especially pp. 15–18Google Scholar.

9. See Galtung, Johann, “Pacificism from a Sociological Point of View,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 3 (03 1959), pp. 69–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As I understand Galtung's application of the sociological notions of “expressive” and “instrumental” behavior to foreign policy, the latter is motivated by a desire to resolve a conflict between two parties. By contrast, expressive behavior is designed to serve “the function of tension release from the latent intensity” generated by a conflict (p. 69); the settlement of the conflict is of secondary importance. Galtung uses the distinction in his 1967 discussion of sanctions against Rhodesia, but he shifts his definition considerably: he claims that “the expressive function” of sanctions is to send a “clear signal to everyone that what the receiving nation has done is disapproved of.” See Galtung, Johann, “On the Effects of International Economic Sanctions, with Examples from the Case of Rhodesia,” World Politics 19 (04 1967), p. 412CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an application of the distinction between instrumental and expressive behavior as applied to international economic sanctions, see Wallensteen, Peter, “Economic Sanctions: Ten Modern Cases and Three Important Lessons,” in Nincic, Miroslav and Wallensteen, Peter, eds., Dilemmas of Economic Coercion (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 87–129, especially pp. 98–102Google Scholar.

10. Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, p. 16Google Scholar; see also pp. 97–99. It might be noted that Baldwin's interpretation of what constitutes “instrumental” activity, while it is both more logical and more elegant than Galtung's definition in “Pacificism,” is nonetheless considerably at variance with that definition.

11. This is not, therefore, merely Galtung's “expressive” argument about sanctions restated in different form. Punishment may be an activity that is “expressively gratifying” (in the sense that Galtung used that term in 1959 on p. 71 of “Pacificism”); or (as he was to use the same term in 1967 with a rather different meaning) punishment may serve the “expressive function” of signaling disapproval to others, both domestically and internationally. Rather, I argue below that punishment is always an activity that is purposive, self-conscious, and “instrumental” (as Baldwin uses the term), even though its ends (or useful purposes) cannot always be understood when a model of means-end rationality is used.

12. See, for example, Kelsen, Hans, The Law of the United Nations (New York: Praeger, 1950), pp. 760ffGoogle Scholar; and the discussion in Daoudi, and Dajani, , Economic Sanctions, pp. 2–9Google Scholar.

13. See Losman, Donald L., International Economic Sanctions: The Cases of Cuba, Israel and Rhodesia (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979)Google Scholar, in which embargo and sanctions are used interchangeably throughout the book. See also Olson, Richard Stuart, “Economic Coercion in World Politics, with a Focus on North–South Relations,” World Politics 31 (07 1979). pp. 471–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Knorr, Klaus, The Power of Nations: The Political Economy of International Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1975), chaps. 1 and 6Google Scholar.

15. This is the definition that underlies the mammoth survey of economic sanctions by Hufbauer and Schott. See Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p. 2.

16. Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, p. 36Google Scholar.

17. Baldwin, David A., “Interdependence and Power: A Conceptual Analysis,” International Organization 34 (Autumn 1980), pp. 471–506CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, p. 32Google Scholar.

19. Knorr, Power of Nations, chap. 6; Olson, , “Economic Coercion,” p. 474Google Scholar; and Losman, International Economic Sanctions, chap. 1.

20. Such an exclusion is not uncommon. See, for example, Lindsay, , “Trade Sanctions,” p. 155Google Scholar; Hufbauer, and Schott, , Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p. 2Google Scholar; Nincic, Miroslav and Wallensteen, Peter, “Economic Coercion and Foreign Policy,” in Nincic, and Wallensteen, , Dilemmas of Economic Coercion, p. 3Google Scholar; and Barber, James, “Economic Sanctions as a Policy Instrument,” International Affairs 55 (07 1979), pp. 367–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. The Oxford English Dictionary thus distinguishes between “vindictive” and “remunatory” sanctions, but both kinds are clearly linked to wrongdoing (or “rightdoing”), as can be seen in the first usage of “positive” sanctions appearing in 1692: “The strictest Sanction which any Soveraign Power can give unto its Laws is, when it … hath … declared, That it will conferr a sufficient share of good Things, or Rewards, for so doing; and of Evils, or Punishments, upon any breach, or neglect of its Commands.”

22. Doxey, Margaret P., International Sanctions in Contemporary Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare her earlier, more restricted, definition in Economic Sanctions and International Enforcement, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 7Google Scholar.

23. Feinberg, Joel, Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 96–97Google Scholar, argues that we make such distinctions in domestic law between “penalties” for rule breaking that is not considered evil (overstaying one's time at a parking meter, for example) and “punishments” for acts of wrongdoing that are morally offensive to the community and therefore involve both “hard treatment” and condemnation.

24. Such statements accusing the target with violation of some sanctity have always been an integral component of international sanctions, whether it be Athenian charges of Megaran impiety in cultivating consecrated ground or American condemnations of Soviet violations of “certain irreducible standards of civilized behavior” in downing a civilian aircraft. See Thucydides, , The Peloponnesian War, trans. Warner, Rex (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1954), p. 118Google Scholar; and Hersh, Seymour M., “The Target Is Destroyed”: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It (New York: Vintage, 1986), p. 184Google Scholar.

25. On this, I follow Hedley Bull's assertions concerning “community” in the contemporary international system; see The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), chap. 2Google Scholar.

26. Galtung also stressed the importance of norms in the imposition of sanctions, arguing that the purpose of economic sanctions was to alter behavior that violated norms held by the sender. See Galtung, , “Effects of International Economic Sanctions,” p. 380Google Scholar. My purpose, by contrast, is not to focus here on the intended effects of sanctions but, rather, on what kind of international behavior provokes them. See also Daoudi, and Dajani, , Economic Sanctions, p. 7Google Scholar.

27. Hufbauer, and Schott, . Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p. 27Google Scholar.

28. See Doxey, , International Sanctions, p. 143Google Scholar.

29. The markedly different international reactions to the destruction by a Soviet fighter of Korean Air Lines flight 007 in September 1983 and the destruction by a U.S. cruiser of Iran Air flight 655 in July 1988 amply demonstrate this. In 1983, the downing of 007, with the loss of 269 lives, was widely characterized in Western rhetoric as an evil and morally repugnant act that was deserving of sanctions. Indeed, many Western leaders called it an act of “murder,” with the attendant implications of mens rea on the part of those who had participated in the decision. In 1988, by contrast, the downing of 655, with the loss of 290 lives, was widely characterized as a “tragic accident.” Few were willing to see this as an act of moral wrongdoing, much less attribute murderous intent to those who had authorized the shootdown; there was no international support for Iran's initial demand that sanctions be imposed against the United States.

30. The degree to which the perceptions of wrongdoing will often depend on an essentially amoral calculus can be seen in the reactions of the U.S. government to violations of one of the cardinal rules in contemporary international law and practice—the proscription against one state sending its troops uninvited into another state and replacing the legitimate government there by force. This rule has been openly broken on numerous occasions since 1975: by Indonesia in 1975 (East Timor), by Vietnam in 1978 (Kampuchea), by Tanzania in 1979 (Uganda), by the Soviet Union later that year (Afghanistan), by Argentina in 1982 (Falklands), and by the United States in 1983 (Grenada). Judging by the U.S. government responses, however, only some of these acts were perceived to be “wrongful” or morally repugnant.

31. Lindsay, , “Trade Sanctions,” pp. 155–56Google Scholar. See also Barber, “Economic Sanctions as a Policy Instrument”; and Nincic, and Wallensteen, , “Economic Coercion and Foreign Policy,” pp. 4–8Google Scholar.

32. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1968), chap. 28, p. 353Google Scholar; original italicized.

33. Ibid., pp. 354–57.

34. Indeed, for some, the right of an individual to be punished is integral to liberal democratic contract theory. See, for example, Lewis, Thomas J., “Contract Theory and the Right to Be Punished,” American Behavioral Scientist 28 (11–12 1984), pp. 263–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Ted Honderich defines punishment as “an authority's infliction of a penalty on an offender”; see Punishment: The Supposed Justifications (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Pelican, 1971), p. 19Google Scholar. See also SirMoberly, Walter, The Ethics of Punishment (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968), p. 35Google Scholar.

36. Lindesmith, Alfred, “Punishment,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 13 (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1968), p. 219Google Scholar.

37. In Leviathan, p. 356, Hobbes asserted that “Harme inflicted upon one that is a declared enemy, fals not under the name of Punishment: Because seeing they were either never subject to the Law, and therefore cannot transgresse it, … all the Harmes that can be done them, must be taken as acts of Hostility.”

38. See Renwick, Robert, Economic Sanctions (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Affairs, 1981), pp. 91–92Google Scholar: “The purpose of sanctions was conceived initially as being either preventive or remedial. Their main effect, however, has invariably been punitive. There are international circumstances in which it may become necessary to take some punitive action, falling short of the use of force, either to weaken the regime to which sanctions are applied or, by penalizing it for one undesirable action, to try to deter it from further action of that kind.”

39. See, for example, Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, pp. 264–65Google Scholar; and Knorr, , Power of Nations, p. 4Google Scholar.

40. Knorr, , Power of Nations, p. 138Google Scholar.

41. “Pain” and “punishment” are derived from the same root: from the Latin poena, the money that was paid in atonement for some wrong, which itself is from the Greek poinē, payment or penalty.

42. It is for this reason that we would not likely describe a victim being beaten up by a mugger as being “punished”; by contrast, it would be more appropriate to use the word “punishment” to describe the actions of a victim who was able to turn on the mugger and beat him.

43. Hoffmann, Fredrik, “The Functions of Economic Sanctions: A Comparative Analysis,” Journal of Peace Research 4 (04 1967), p. 144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Leyton-Brown, David, “Lessons and Policy Considerations About Economic Sanctions,” in Leyton-Brown, David, ed., The Utility of International Economic Sanctions (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 303Google Scholar.

45. Doxey, , International Sanctions, p. 92Google Scholar.

46. Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), International Sanctions (London: Oxford University Press for the RIIA, 1938), p. 13Google Scholar. Such a view was not uncommon among practitioners at the time: for example, the Ecuadorian delegate to the League Assembly argued in 1935 that “the sanctions envisaged under the Covenant involve no punitive intention, no element capable of wounding the pride of any nation which may embark upon a war.” Quoted in Daoudi, and Dajani, , Economic Sanctions, p. 71Google Scholar.

47. For a brief but useful discussion, see Renwick, Economic Sanctions, chap. 2.

48. Doxey, International Sanctions, chap. 3.

49. Knorr, , Power of Nations, p. 138Google Scholar.

50. See Galtung, , “Effects of International Economic Sanctions,” pp. 380–81Google Scholar; emphasis in original.

51. Weintraub, Sidney, “Current Theory,” in Weintraub, Sidney, ed., Economic Coercion and U.S. Foreign Policy: Implications of Case Studies from the Johnson Administration (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982), p. 10Google Scholar.

52. Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, p. 182, footnote 105Google Scholar.

53. For example, one could envisage a situation in which the individual meting out punishment to an offender derived pleasure from the offender's pain. But pain that is inflicted in order to derive sadistic delight is not, by definition, punishment.

54. The “punishment-is-sadism” position tends to unravel when applied to ordinary cases of punishment for noncompliance. For example, according to this position, a librarian who continued to fine me after I refused to return an overdue book or a judge who continued to imprison me for repeatedly refusing to comply with a judicial order would have to be considered a sadist.

55. Grotius, Hugo, The Law of War and Peace (De jure belli ac pacts), trans. Kelsey, Frances W. (1925; reprint, Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merill), p. 462Google Scholar. Kelsey translates “malum passionis quod infligitur ob malum actionis” as “an evil of suffering which is inflicted because of an evil of action.”

56. There is, of course, a difference. Punishments can prevent an offender from repeating the offense by making the consequences of the transgression costly enough that the offender will seek to avoid experiencing these costs in the future; by rehabilitating the offender through penitent expiation, catharsis, or correction; or by making it physically impossible for the offender to repeat the crime by amputation, lobotomy, or removal of the offender from the community through incarceration, banishment, or execution. But only the first of these preventive punishments is, properly speaking, a “deterrent punishment,” for it makes little sense to argue that an offender who does not offend again because he has been rehabilitated or because it is physically impossible for him to do so has been “deterred” from offending again.

57. This companion term for deterrence was coined by Schelling, Thomas in The Strategy of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 195Google Scholar.

58. This may, but need not, include the purpose of restitution: imposing on the offender responsibility for restoring the status quo ante malum.

59. Mabbott argues that punishment is the necessary and obligatory corollary of law breaking, not wrongdoing: one punishes a person not because he is evil, but because he has broken a law. See Mabbott, J. D., “Punishment as a Corollary of Rule-Breaking,” in Gerber, Rudolph J. and McAnany, Patrick D., eds., Contemporary Punishment: Views, Explanations and Justifications (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), pp. 41–48Google Scholar.

60. For example, the durability of the retributive justification for punishment can most clearly be seen in modern public policy debates about the appropriateness of capital punishment.

61. For a discussion, see Feinberg, , Doing and Deserving, pp. 103–13Google Scholar.

62. See the discussion in Duff, R. A., Trials and Punishments (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 236Google Scholar.

63. As Feinberg, notes in Doing and Deserving, pp. 103–4Google Scholar, the notion that a society which fails to punish wicked arts endorses them “does seem to reflect, however dimly, something embedded in common sense.”

64. See, for example, Honderich, , Punishment, chap. 2, pp. 22–51Google Scholar; and the selections in Gerber and McAnany, Contemporary Punishment, chap. 2.

65. Hufbauer, and Schott, , for example, assign a score of “outright failure” on their “success” scale in Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p. 664Google Scholar. For a survey of the generally negative assessments of the “effectiveness” of these sanctions, see Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, pp. 267–68Google Scholar.

66. See Falkenheim, Peggy L., “Post-Afghanistan Sanctions,” in Leyton-Brown, , Utility of International Economic Sanctions, pp. 107 and 127Google Scholar.

67. See Baldwin's, cogent discussion of the “targets” of the Afghanistan embargo in Economic Statecraft, pp. 261–68Google Scholar.

68. See Paarlberg, Robert L., “Lessons of the Grain Embargo,” Foreign Affairs 59 (Fall 1980), p. 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “The purpose … was simply to punish the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan.” See also Falkenheim, , “Post-Afghanistan Sanctions,” p. 107Google Scholar.

69. See Economic Statecraft, pp. 264–66, for Baldwin's view of the punitive motive in the Afghanistan case.

70. Indeed, because the task of foreign policy analysis is to reconstruct decisions in terms that sound both purposive and rational, there is always the possibility that the “rational reconstruction” of decisions by a particularly clever analyst may result in an ex post facto rationalization that reads more into motivations than may have been there.

71. For example, on 11 January 1980, Secretary of State Vance, Cyrus claimed that one of the purposes of the sanctions was “to make it very clear to the Soviet Union that they will continue to pay a heavy price as long as their troops remain in Afghanistan.” The New York Times, 12 01 1980, p. 4Google Scholar.

72. See, for example, Vance's pessimistic assessment of the likelihood that the Soviet Union would withdraw by the middle of February, the date set by President Carter for the imposition of a boycott of the Olympics. The New York Times, 21 January 1980, p. A4.

73. For one assessment of the impact of these sanctions, see Falkenheim, , “Post-Afghanistan Sanctions,” pp. 111–27Google Scholar. Compare Hufbauer, and Schott, , Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, pp. 655–65Google Scholar. It might be noted that eventually the United States embraced measures that did make it more costly for the Soviet Union to continue occupying Afghanistan. But the American military assistance funneled to the Afghan rebels after 1984 was not, properly speaking, a punishment.

74. This argument has been made regarding the Polish crisis of 1981–82. See Marantz, Paul, “Economic Sanctions in the Polish Crisis,” in Black, J. L. and Strong, J. W., eds., Sisyphus and Poland: Reflections on Martial Law (Winnipeg: Ronald P. Frye, 1986), p. 122Google Scholar. Indeed, one might conclude that trying to compel the Soviet Union by employing sanctions will always be a mug's game: with the standard having been set by Nikita Khrushchev's ignominious descent into nonpersonhood after he bowed to the ultimatum issued by John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, it is highly unlikely that any conceivable package of economic sanctions would move another Soviet leader to suffer comparable humiliation and risk a similar fate.

75. The New York Times, 7 January 1980, p. A1.

76. Ibid., 12 January 1980, p. 4.

77. Ibid., 29 December 1979, p. A5; and 30 December 1979, pp. 1 and 10.

78. Ibid., 5 January 1980, p. 6.

79. Ibid., 24 January 1980, p. A12.

80. Carter, Jimmy, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), p. 473Google Scholar. See also p. 471: “The brutality of the act was bad enough, but the threat of this Soviet invasion to the rest of the region was very clear.”

81. For a report on the debate within the administration on the effects of sanctions, see The New York Times, 6 January 1980, p. 16.

82. See Baldwin, , Economic Statecraft, p. 264–65Google Scholar.

83. For example, President Carter let it be known that he was “personally angered” not only by the intervention but also by Leonid Brezhnev's response. See The New York Times, 4 January 1980, p. 6. For a broader discussion of Carter's images of the Soviet Union, see Rosati, Jerel A., The Carter Administration's Quest for Global Community: Beliefs and Their Impact on Behavior (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), especially chap. 3Google Scholar.

84. The New York Times, 1 January 1980, p. 4.

85. Ibid., 5 January 1980, p. 6.

86. Ibid., 7 January 1980, p. A6.

87. Ibid., 16 January 1980, p. A14.

88. Letter to Kane, Robert J., president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, quoted in The New York Times, 21 01 1980, p. A4Google Scholar.

89. The New York Times, 24 January 1980, p. A12.

90. Carter, , Keeping Faith, pp. 471, 472, and 476Google Scholar.

91. The New York Times, 6 January 1980, p. 16. It might be noted that Henry Kissinger sounded a comparable theme, according to James Reston. See “Kissinger on Afghan Crisis,” The New York Times, 4 January 1980, p. A23: although Kissinger was opposed to “grand gestures,” he did agree that the Soviet Union “must be made to pay a price for its latest outrage.”

92. The comparison with the punishments invoked after the shootdown of Korean Air Lines flight 007 is instructive. Even though it was highly unlikely that such an incident would recur, there was nonetheless a desire to inflict a penalty on the Soviet Union for its action. See Hufbauer, and Schott, , Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, pp. 738–43Google Scholar; Hersh, , “The Target Is Destroyed,” pp. 185–86Google Scholar; and Dallin, Alexander, Black Box: KAL 007 and the Superpowers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 93–94Google Scholar.

93. Chief among the empirical difficulties is knowing what passes through the minds of decision-makers when they are confronted with actions of others which deeply offend their moral sensibilities. We can make some educated assumptions about the empathetic responses of a leader when informed of some act of wrongdoing; but in public statements and memoirs, the visceral and more nonrational responses will inevitably be filtered, and often mitigated, by the necessity of appearing to be acting in accordance with the precepts of means-end rationality.