Pascale Solages, an anti-corruption activist from Haiti, burst into tears of joy last month when she heard that the U.S. Treasury Department had finally slapped sanctions on Michel Martelly, a former president of Haiti who is accused of drug trafficking, money laundering and fueling violent gangs in Port-au-Prince. It was a sign that the U.S. government, which once supported Mr. Martelly, was actually listening to the Haitian people. And it raised her hopes that Mr. Martelly, who lives in Miami, might finally lose his political influence and be brought to justice.
“It’s a really important step,” she told me.
Her words struck me because I’ve been critical of the proliferation of U.S. sanctions in recent years, after binge-reading research papers on the collateral damage they cause. The more I read, the more convinced I became that crippling sanctions on entire countries — as in the case of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela — are counterproductive. They create widespread misery but strengthen autocrats’ grip on power by bankrupting independent businesses that might have served as counterweights. Those left standing become beholden to the regime or to criminal networks that can help them sidestep U.S. laws.
Sanctions also backfire by driving adversaries like Cuba, Iran and Venezuela further into the arms of Russia and China, solidifying what has been called an “axis of the sanctioned.” Don’t take my word for it. Read the analysis The Washington Post published this summer about how even senior U.S. officials fear that sanctions, which have become a tool of first resort, are being overused. Or read the letter that hundreds of legal scholars from around the world wrote to President Biden last month, in which they described sanctions on Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea as “collective punishment.”
But asset freezes and visa bans on individuals — like the former Haitian president — can be a different story. Targeted sanctions like those are often the only way kleptocrats and human rights abusers ever get held accountable. While the sanctions might not change behavior, they send a strong signal and impose a stigma that can serve warnings to others. They cause less collateral damage, and they provide more opportunities to craft deals that can change the status quo. After being imposed, they give the United States a valuable bargaining chip, such as the promise to unfreeze assets if the offender releases political prisoners or steps down from power.
Thomas J. Biersteker, who advises the United Nations and several governments on designing effective targeted sanctions, told me that targeted sanctions on individual people “offer more choices and opportunities” than sweeping sanctions on entire countries. He thinks governments should be more strategic about how they are used, and the governments should experiment more often with rolling them back to see if that produces a change in behavior. “That’s why I say that sanctions are overused but underutilized,” he said.
They aren’t perfect. Questions about due process — how much proof of bad behavior should be required to impose sanctions on someone, and whether their spouses or children are fair game — remain unresolved.
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