Saying that there are plans in motion to starting a war with Iran is, at this point, something that doesn’t really need to be said. Iran is being invoked when talking about Iraq, talking about Lebanon, or just talking about the dangers of the world in general.
Fortunately, once again the world isn’t going along with us. We’ve got Russia saying they don’t want to impose sanctions and France already saying military action against Tehran is a bad idea.
“I know of no instances in world practice and previous experience in which sanctions have achieved their aim and proved effective,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters during a trip to Russia’s far east.
“Moreover, I believe that the question is not so serious at the moment for the U.N. Security Council or the group of six to consider any introduction of sanctions. Russia stands for further political and diplomatic efforts to settle the issue.
And that’s a fair point. Much like the poor track record setting up a government in another nation has, I’d be curious as to any history majors who could tell me if imposing sanctions on any nation has ended without bloodshed.
A quick search gives us a report suggesting that sanctions have a pretty poor success rate here in the United States.
A 1997 study by the Institute for International Economics found that since 1970, unilateral U.S. sanctions had achieved foreign policy goals only 13 percent of the time. The study also concluded that sanctions are costing the United States $15 billion to $19 billion annually in potential exports.
Sanctions have not led to democratic changes in Cuba, Iraq or Iran, and the unambiguous threat of sanctions did not deter India and Pakistan from testing nuclear weapons last year.
Fantastic. Oh hey, India. Isn’t that the country that Bush decided could get nuclear materials again, without forcing them to promise not to make weapons or resume nuclear testing? Anyway…
So let’s review. Sanctions have a 13% success rate and many of the recent wars have had their roots in the practice. For example:
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was also prompted in no small way by the US sanctions on oil shipments to Japan, which the latter viewed as a direct threat to its interests.
Obviously I needn’t mention Iraq. Unfortunately today, the Bush Clan seems to see sanctions as a first step kind of thing. It’s not actually intended to solve anything, more of a procedural effort that says “clean up your act fast or we’re gonna be invading.” Out of the six nations who made the incentives package, what are they all saying?
Washington has said the six powers will move quickly to adopt sanctions if Iran disregards the deadline. But Britain, Germany and France have been less conclusive in public.
Russia and China, both trade partners of Iran, have been unwilling and could veto sanctions in the Council.
Okay, so really it’s just us. It’s the US making all of the iron-fisted claims about imposing sanctions and “you’d better not or else”. Once again it’s us against the world. Iran worries me, but honestly I’m thinking that if we’re alone again, maybe we should take a step back and think about things. Sanctions aren’t really a good idea, and Bush’s history with them is certainly poor.
Naturally, the last thing we’d want is a military attack. The Middle East as a whole is already unhappy with us. Our response to Israel attacking Lebanon won us no friends and the Iraq War is still being used as a “see how evil America is?” card by every extremist in the region. I’d call it a baaaaad idea to start up another conflict.
I’m not holding my breath on that, though.
[tags]iran, iraq, sanctions, nuclear, united nations, war, bush[/tags]
