Pierre Lemieux has an excellent post discussing President Trump’s decision to call off the military strike on Iran. Like Pierre, I welcome this decision. However, I’d like to point out that there is a sense in which we are already at war with Iran.
Trump’s decision to place increasingly tight economic sanctions on Iran, and also to punish any third country that trades with Iran, is effectively an act of economic warfare. It is intended to severely damage the Iranian economy. And economic sanctions don’t just have economic effects, they kill.
Early studies of the impact of previous American sanctions on Iraq estimated excess deaths at as high as 1 million. It turns out that these initial estimates were probably too high, but even later estimates were quite horrific. Here’s The Nation:
The two most reliable scientific studies on sanctions in Iraq are the 1999 report “Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children,” by Columbia University’s Richard Garfield, and “Sanctions and Childhood Mortality in Iraq,” a May 2000 article by Mohamed Ali and Iqbal Shah in The Lancet. Garfield, an expert on the public-health impact of sanctions, conducted a comparative analysis of the more than two dozen major studies that have analyzed malnutrition and mortality figures in Iraq during the past decade. He estimated the most likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be 227,000. Garfield’s analysis showed child mortality rates double those of the previous decade.
I don’t wish to replay debates about who is to blame for all this; I am fully aware that Saddam Hussein invaded two other countries, tried to annex territory, and then used poison gas on minorities within his own country. If one ever wanted to use a Hitler analogy, Saddam would be one of the least bad choices. Rather my point here is technical. If we use economic sanctions, we will end up killing children. It is effectively an act of war, and we need to understand that.
Sanctions can also lead to military escalation. Some historians believe that the US sanctions placed on Japan contributed to Japan’s decision to bomb Pearl Harbor. It seems plausible that Trump’s decision to put sanctions on Iran might have contributed to some recent strikes in the Persian Gulf.
Just to be clear, I don’t believe the Iran sanctions will lead to nearly as large a loss of life as the Iraq sanctions. For all its many faults, the Iranian government is not as cruel and inept as Saddam’s regime. Nonetheless, there is abundant evidence that health is positively correlated with wealth, and sanctions will certainly make Iran poorer.
I am also not saying that we should never use sanctions, just as I am not claiming that we should never use military force. We may wish to deter aggressive nations. But we should be very judicious in the use of sanctions, just as with the use of force. I worry that sanctions are viewed as a “non-violent” or antiseptic alternative to warfare. They may be less bad than the outright use of force, but only marginally so.
In my view, the administration did not present sufficient evidence that Iran was violating the nuclear agreement negotiated by President Obama to justify the draconian sanctions that are currently being imposed.
READER COMMENTS
Lorenzo from Oz
Jun 24 2019 at 7:27pm
The fate of the Iran agreement is an object lesson in why the US Constitution requires ratification by the Senate. Either you can get a reasonable level of consensus among federal political factions or it is not worth signing any sort of binding agreement.
Either The Donald should have put it up for Senate ratification or he should have cancelled it. (The former might have been cleverer, as he could have paraded as a constitutionalist while saying “it is not me, it’s the Senate.)
Benjamin Cole
Jun 24 2019 at 7:28pm
Let us hope that Trump does a Syria or Venezuela—- that is, he loses interest and moves on to the next issue, fabricated or otherwise. Perhaps Trump will learn to ignore the globalist – interventionist narrative that is Washington.
Trump should hew to his usual business man’s instinct to avoid foreign entanglements.
Bedarz Iliachi
Jun 25 2019 at 12:38am
Yes, the sanctions are economic warfare but who fired the first shot in the war? Were it not the Iranians that have chanted Death to America for a generation? Did they not sponsor terrorism against America and other friendly countries? Do they not threaten to wipe out Israel?
Mark
Jun 25 2019 at 7:12am
It’s telling that two of those three things are talk; impoverishing tens of millions of people in response is hardly proportionate.
Bedarz Iliachi
Jun 26 2019 at 12:29am
And Hitler was all talk too on 30 Jan 1939 when he promised to rid Europe of Jews.
Would it be rational for any country to take lightly such talks?
Mark
Jun 26 2019 at 9:59am
Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia before 1939. It was not all talk—and it would not have been justified for a foreign country to go to war with Germany over talk.
Hitler also had control of arguably the world’s greatest military power at the time, whereas Iran is a medium-sized third-world country.
Jon Murphy
Jun 25 2019 at 8:27am
One could also point to the facts that the US government overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian government and replaced it with a dictator in the 1950’s, gave aid and arms to a major invading power in the 80’s, currently gives arms and aid to other nations who’ve chanted “Death to Iran” for centuries, and has virtually encircled Iran by placing military bases in countries all around them and having a large naval presence in the waters off their coast.
No one is blameless here, so to suggest the US is merely responding to unprovoked aggression is a gross simplification.
Bedarz Iliachi
Jun 26 2019 at 12:31am
America was friendly to Shah’s Persia and would be still friendly to Ayatollah’s Iran if they did not believe themselves to be in existential war with the Great Satan.
Jon Murphy
Jun 26 2019 at 6:41am
America was friendly to the Shah. That’s exactly the problem. See my point above about overthrowing a democratically elected government and replacing it with a dictator.
Thaomas
Jun 25 2019 at 6:05am
I think that US sanctions can lead to undermining the use of the US dollar and the US financial system in international trade and investment. It’s just another example (trade wars/increased full employment deficits/fewer H1B visas) of how anti-business/growth the Trump Administration has been.
Philo
Jun 25 2019 at 4:14pm
“I am also not saying that we should never use sanctions, just as I am not claiming that we should never use military force.” You may be right that sanctions and military force are sometimes permissible, but I object to your use of the term ‘we’. I am part of we, but I am not involved in any decision to impose sanctions or to use military force: such decisions are made by others, and simply imposed on me.
Robert EV
Jun 26 2019 at 12:07am
Any enfranchised citizen of a republic or democracy can use the republican or democratic “We”. It’s the pronoun referring to the state itself in which the citizen has voting power. It doesn’t refer to any other aggregate.
Scott Sumner
Jun 26 2019 at 1:04pm
Philo, Fair point.
TMC
Jun 25 2019 at 4:24pm
Obama and everyone else knew they were cheating. At least now we’re not footing the bill for it.
https://www.newsweek.com/why-obama-ignoring-iran-cheating-nuke-deal-479689
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bret-stephens-iran-cheats-obama-whitewashes-1416872790
But I think you are right – I can’t see where sanctions have really ever changed the way a truly authoritarian government works. The people take the brunt of it with sanctions. Maybe we are better off with a surgical strike against leadership only, but that’s also lead to unintended consequences I’m sure.
Philo
Jun 26 2019 at 8:37am
The linguistic practice you describe would be undesirable, since it erroneously suggests that enfranchised citizens of a republic or democracy are (at least somewhat) personally responsible for the actions of the government.
By the way, why the limitation to enfranchised citizens? Government officials purport to be acting on behalf of all residents, including minors, convicted felons, and resident aliens—even illegal aliens. And why the limitation to republics and democracies? As Hume remarked, public opinion influences the actions of all governments.
nobody.really
Jun 26 2019 at 4:16pm
I was not aware that the administration presented ANY such evidence. Rather, Obama failed to get the Senate to ratify the treaty; as such, it never had the effect of law, and the next administration was free to ignore it–which they largely did.
A bit of context: The US was (and is) concerned that Iran would develop a nuclear weapon. So the Obama Administration negotiated this deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This deal was never designed to turn Iran into the US’s lap dog. Iran continued to do all kinds of things that the US (and Europe) didn’t like, especially regarding Israel.
The Trump Administration, backed by a conservative pro-Israel faction, noted that Iran refused to comply with the US’s preferences regarding many things, notwithstanding the fact that we’d signed a nuclear deal. This fact–and a desire to repudiate all things Obama–drove the Trump Administration to abandon the Iranian nuclear deal.
Whether this seems like a good policy is largely driven by what alternatives you think we have. Trump seems to think that, with enough sanctions, he’ll be able to turn Iran into a lap dog. Time will tell.
But, in any event, I don’t believe that Trump had any legal obligation to find fault with Iran before abrogating the “treaty.” An unratified treaty has no force and effect.
[HTML fixed—Econlib Ed.]
Jon Murphy
Jun 26 2019 at 4:57pm
Fine, but irrelevant. That Iran is violating the deal is the justification being supplied for the sanctions and such. Without evidence, it remains an empty justification.
nobody.really
Jun 26 2019 at 6:02pm
According to ABC,
Neither compliance with, nor violation of, the nuclear deal had anything to do with the current sanctions.
Jon Murphy
Jun 27 2019 at 9:27am
Your quoted bit from ABC says otherwise…
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