Economic war against civilians is a centuries-old phenomenon. Sanctions were and are different: rather than being seen as an act of war, they were often supposed to prevent it
Economic war against civilians is a centuries-old phenomenon. During the Hundred Years’ War English troops launched countless brutal sieges against French garrisons, often starving them into submission. Blockades were an important part of the toolkit of the naval wars of the 18th century. Sanctions were and are different. Rather than being imposed by one country on another, they often involved groups of countries coming together to punish rogue states.
The role of finance truly distinguished sanctions from previous economic warfare. In 1870-1914 annual capital flows averaged 4% of global. The Allied powers controlled the world’s main financial centres. Economists, as well as traditional military types, thus helped design sanctions. They aimed to hit aggressor states where they were weakest: in their financing requirements.
William Arnold-Forster, a British administrator, argued that sanctions could “make our enemies unwilling that their children should be born”. Indeed, they could have horrific effects. Of the three main weapons targeting civilians during the period—air power, gas warfare and economic blockade—blockade was by far the deadliest, Mr Mulder argues. “Pens seem so much cleaner instruments than bayonets,” Arnold-Forster wryly noted.
Sanctions sometimes failed because of insufficient political will. For a long time American opinion had it that sanctions were fundamentally un-American, an anachronistic form of European-style imperialism. In other cases financial globalisation constrained, rather than widened, sanctioners’ room for manoeuvre. Britain refrained from imposing a severe financial blockade of Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s in part because British banks held huge amounts of German debt.
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