Tag: Iran
Over 100 International Law Experts Warn: U.S. Strikes on Iran Violate UN Charter and May Be War Crimes
The United States and Israel initiated strikes on Iran over one month ago, on February 28, 2026. The attack was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter. The conduct of the war, and statements of U.S. officials, also raise serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes. We have written the below statement together with over 100 U.S.-based international law experts, to detail our profound concerns about the war. The letter is signed by international law experts across the United States, including senior professors; leaders of prominent international law associations, non-governmental organizations, and legal clinics; former government legal advisors; and military law experts and former Judge Advocates General (JAGs).
We, the undersigned U.S.-based international law experts, professors, and practitioners write to express profound concern about serious violations of international law and alarming rhetoric by the United States, Israel, and Iran in the present armed conflict in the Middle East.
Due to our connection to the United States, our focus here is on the conduct of the U.S. government, but we remain concerned about the risk of atrocities across the region including the continuing risks posed by the Iranian government to Iranians through violent crackdowns on dissent, and to civilians across the Middle East through Iran’s ongoing unlawful strikes on civilian infrastructure using explosive weapons in densely populated areas.
One month has passed since the United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran. The initiation of the campaign was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter, and the conduct of United States forces since, as well as statements made by senior government officials, raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.
We collectively affirm the importance of equal application of international law to all, including countries that hold themselves out as global leaders. Recent statements from senior U.S. government officials describing the rules governing military engagement as “stupid” and prioritizing “lethality” over “legality” are profoundly alarming and dangerously short-sighted. These claims, particularly in combination with the observable conduct of U.S. forces, are harming the international legal order and the system of international law that we have devoted our lives to promoting.
The war, which is costing U.S. taxpayers between $1-2 billion each day, is imposing significant harm to civilians in the region, has resulted in the loss of hundreds of civilian lives across the Middle East, and is causing serious environmental and economic harms.
We write to express our concern about 1) jus ad bellum, or the decision to go to war, 2) jus in bello, or the conduct of hostilities, 3) rhetoric and threats from senior U.S. officials and their allies, which portend further abuses, and 4) the decimation of civilian harm mitigation structures within the U.S. government as a part of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “gloves off” approach to warfare.
- Jus ad bellum concerns: The strikes launched by the United States and Israel on February 28, 2026 clearly violated the United Nations Charter prohibition on the use of force. Force against another state is only permittedin self-defense against an actual or imminent armed attack or where authorized by the UN Security Council. The Security Council did not authorize the attack. Iran did not attack Israel or the United States. Despite the Trump administration’s varied and sometimes conflicting claimsto the contrary, there is no evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat that could ground a self-defense claim. Many international law experts have concluded that Israel and the United States’ actions violate the UN Charter, including the President and President-elect of the American Society of International Law, and the President of the American Branch of the International Law Association; UN Secretary-General António Guterres also condemned the attacks as undermining international peace and security.
- Concerns about violations of international humanitarian law: The laws of armed conflict constrain the conduct of hostilities of all parties to the ongoing conflict. We are concerned that these fundamental rules may have been violated, including in the context of reported strikes on civilians and civilian objects such as political leaders who have no military role, oil and gas infrastructure, including South Pars, and water desalinationplants. On March 19, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemnedstrikes on energy infrastructure, noting their “disastrous” impacts for civilians.
We are seriously concerned about strikes that have hit schools, health facilities, and homes. The Iranian Red Crescent reports that “67,414 civilian sites have been struck, of which 498 are schools and 236 health facilities.” A report by leading civil society organizations found that at least 1,443 Iranian civilians, including 217 children, were killed by U.S. and Israeli forces between February 28 and March 23.
The strike on Minab primary school is particularly concerning. On February 28, Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, Iran, was struck, resulting in the deaths of at least 175 people, many of them children, according to Iranian officials. Based on easily accessible online information and commercially available satellite imagery, it appears the building had been used as a school for a decade. President Trump denied U.S. responsibility, falsely stating that “It was done by Iran.” However, a preliminary investigation by the Department of Defense reportedly determined that the U.S. conducted the strike, and the targeting had been based on outdated intelligence. The strike likely violates international humanitarian law, and if evidence is found that those responsible were reckless, it could also be a war crime. The strike is among the deadliest single attacks by the U.S. military on civilians in recent decades.
- Concerns about rhetoric and threats from senior officials. We are deeply concerned about the dangerous rhetoric government officials have engaged in during the war, including:
- Threatened denial of quarter: On March 13, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stated“We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” In international law, it is “especially forbidden” to “declare that no quarter will be given,” a prohibitionalso set out in the Department of Defense’s own law of war manual. Hegseth’s statement likely violates international humanitarian law as well as the U.S. War Crimes statute 18 U.S.C. 2441. Ordering or threatening no quarter is a war crime.
- Dismissal of rules of engagement and international law: Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s “no quarter” statement followed similarly alarming statements by the Secretary, including on September 25, 2025and March 2, 2026that the U.S. does not fight with “stupid rules of engagement.” On January 8, 2026 President Trump had made the disturbing comment that “I don’t need international law.” On March 13, he stated that the U.S. may conduct strikes on Iran “just for fun.”
- Threats on energy infrastructure: President Trump threatenedon March 13, 2026: “I could take out things within the next hour, power plants that create the electricity, that create the water… We could do things that would be so bad they could literally never rebuild as a nation again.” International law protects from attack objects indispensable to the survival of civilians, and the attacks threatened by Trump, if implemented, could entail war crimes. On March 21, President Trump further threatenedto “obliterate” power plants in Iran. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, defended power plant attacks the next day, and also said that striking nuclear power plants was not off the table. It is prohibited to attack civilian energy infrastructure. If a power plant has both civilian and military purposes (“dual-use”), it may be considered a military objective where it makes “an effective contribution to military action” and the attack “offers a definite military advantage.” However, any strike must respect the principles of proportionality and precautions in attack. The proportionality principle prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental civilian harm that would be excessive in relation to the military advantage. The civilian harm to be considered includes foreseeable reverberating or indirect harm. In any attack, “all feasible precautions” must be taken to avoid civilian harm.
Attacks on nuclear power plants, even if they have a military purpose, require particular care because of the high risk of releasing radiation and radioactive material and consequent severe harm to the civilian population. Such a strike could harm the health and safety of millions of civilians. On March 23, 2026, the ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger expressed her deep concern, noting that “War on essential infrastructure is war on civilians” and described threats to nuclear power plants as “Most alarming.”
- Concerns about institutional safeguards against further violations: Since the start of the second Trump administration, the Defense Department under Secretary Hegseth has deliberately and systematically weakenedthe protections meant to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law. This includes removing senior military lawyers without publicly citing misconduct, and replacing the Army, Navy, and Air Force judge advocates general, directly undermining legal oversight of combat operations. It has also abolished “civilian environment teams” and other mechanisms specifically designed to limit harm to civilians during operations. The 2026 National Defense Strategy omits references to civilian protection and international law entirely. These changes are especially concerning in light of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s comments that rules of engagement interfere with “fighting to win.”
We are gravely concerned that the conduct and threats outlined here are causing serious harm to civilians in the Middle East, and that they also contribute to escalating the conflict, damaging the environment and the global economy, and that they risk degrading the rule of law and fundamental norms that protect every nation’s civilians. Public statements by senior officials indicate an alarming disrespect for the rules of international humanitarian law accepted by states, and which protect both civilians and members of the armed forces.
We urge U.S. government officials to uphold the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, and human rights law at all times, and to publicly make clear U.S. commitment to and respect for norms of international law.
We remind all states of their legal obligations not to aid or assist the United States, Israel, or Iran in the commission of internationally wrongful acts, as well as to cooperate to bring to an end through lawful means serious breaches of peremptory norms of general international law (jus cogens) including the prohibition of aggression and the basic rules of international humanitarian law.
We also urge the U.S. governments’ allies and cooperating partners to take steps to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law, in line with Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions and associated customary international law. The United States has itself acknowledged that states should seek to promote adherence by others to international humanitarian law. The International Committee of the Red Cross 2016 Commentary on the First Geneva Convention of 1949 provides that a state is “in a unique position to influence the behavior” of partner states where the state “participates in the financing, equipping, arming or training of the armed forces of a Party to a conflict, even plans, carries out and debriefs operations jointly with such forces.”
Source: Just Security
Thought Iraq was a blunder? Iran is far worse
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes politico‘s From Across the Pond column.
Trump’s decision to join Israel in a war against Iran is a far bigger strategic error, and one with far bigger strategic consequences.
Like many, I used to believe that former U.S. President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the biggest strategic mistake America had made, at least since the Vietnam War.
That is, until now.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in a war against Iran is a far bigger strategic error, and one with far bigger strategic consequences. The reasons for this are many, ranging from the immediate impact on the region and the global economy to the longer-term upshots for Russia and China, as well as the repercussions for U.S. alliances and America’s global standing.
That much is already clear — and we’re only three weeks in.
Let’s start with the similarities: Much like the Iraq War, the war against Iran began based on the presumption that the regime in power would swiftly fall and that a new, more moderate and less antagonistic one would take its place. In both instances, the idea was to remove the greatest destabilizing threat in the Middle East — Saddam Hussein’s regime in the initial case, the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran in the latter — through the swift and decisive use of military force.
But while Bush understood that defeating a regime required ground forces, it seems Trump simply hoped that airpower alone would suffice. As a result, Hussein’s regime fell swiftly — though Bush did vastly underestimate what would be required to rebuild a stable, let alone a democratic, Iraq in its place. But the Iranian government, as U.S. intelligence officials themselves have testified, “appears to be intact” despite Israel killing many of its key political and security leaders through targeted strikes.
Focusing on the region at large, Bush’s misjudgment eventually contributed to a large-scale insurgency, which strengthened Iran’s influence in Iraq and the wider Middle East. In contrast, Trump’s miscalculation has left in place a regime that, aside from assuring its own survival, is now singularly focused on inflicting as much damage on the U.S. and its allies as it possibly can.
Iranian drones and missiles have already attacked Israel and the Gulf states, targeted critical energy production facilities and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, which hosts one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas export transits.
Less than a month in, the world is now witnessing the largest oil and gas disruption in history. And as the fighting escalates to include gas and oil production infrastructure, the global economic consequences will be felt by every single country for months, if not years, to come — even if the conflict were to end soon.
The damage that has already been inflicted on the global economy is far greater than the economic consequences of the Iraq War in its entirety.
But that’s not all. Geopolitically, the U.S.-Israel war with Iran will also have far greater reverberations than the war in Iraq ever did.
For one, the Bush administration spent a lot of time and effort trying to get allies on board to participate in and support the war. It didn’t fully succeed in this, as key allies like Germany and France continued opposing the war. But it tried.
Trump, by contrast, didn’t even try to get America’s most important allies on board. Not only that, he even failed to inform them of his decision. And yet, when Iran responded predictably by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. president then demanded allies send their navies to escort tankers — despite the U.S. Navy so far refusing to do so.
And while it’s true that Iraq left many U.S. allies — even those that joined the war, like the U.K. — deeply scarred, Iran has convinced U.S. allies they can no longer rely on the U.S., and that Washington is now a real threat to their economic security.
That, too, will have a lasting impact well beyond anything the war in Iraq did.
Finally, the fact remains that when Bush decided to invade Iraq, Russia and China were still minor global powers. Russian President Vladimir Putin was only just starting his effort to stabilize the economy and rebuild Russia’s military power, while China had just joined the World Trade Organization and was still a decade or more away from becoming an economic superpower. In other words, America’s blunder in Iraq occurred at a time when the strategic consequences for the global balance of power were still manageable.
Trump’s Iran debacle is occurring at a time when China is effectively competing with the U.S. for global power and influence, and Russia is engaged in the largest military action in Europe since the end of World War II.
US-Israel Attack on Iran: Time to Implement the Global Security Initiative
Starting on 28th February 2026, the United States of America working hand-in-hand with Israel have been striking at Tehran with heavy military artillery in an operation that has come to be dubbed “Epic Fury.” Less than a day in, several high ranking officials in Iran’s establishment had already lost their lives most notably, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Gen Mohammad Pakpour, the Defence Minister Brig Gen Aziz Nasirzadeh, and the Defence Council secretary Ali Shamkhani.
With the Red Crescent reporting that at least 200 Iranians have already lost their lives too and more than 700 injured, the US-Israel assault has undoubtedly raised questions pertaining to its legitimacy under international law.
Per the United Nations Charter (Article 2(4)), it is established that states are to refrain from the use of force targeting other sovereigns. What Washington has sought to do then, is argue that its mission in Iran is covered by the exception of self-defence provided for in the said instrument’s Article 51. In their public statements, they have described the attacks as “pre-emptive.”
In the history of warfare however, one will hardly find a party who upon resorting to violence does not bother to justify their conduct as warranted. Consequently, standards have been devised overtime for the international community to test claims of this nature. For self-defence, as Marko Milanovic a public international law scholar at the University of Reading has explained, the party seeking to rely on it must provide unambiguous evidence either of the harm already caused or destruction likely to have been caused if the measure in question had not been taken. In other words, they cannot rely on speculation or generalizations.
Unfortunately, all that President Trump has said so far falls short of this bar. The American leader for instance, has purported that Tehran is pursuing development of Nuclear weaponry something that is not only denied by the Middle Eastern nation but is also disputed by third parties. The International Energy Atomic Agency thus, has severally retained that there is no information supportive of Washington’s assertions. Oman’s Foreign Minister who also doubles as the chief mediator of the US-Iran talks coming immediately before all hell broke loose has equally confirmed that Iran had committed to “never, ever have nuclear material that will create a bomb.”
What these developments appear to be depicting then is but an extension of aggression that has come to be the hallmark of Trump 2.0. Think here about the tariffs regime that even his own Supreme Court declared illegal, the threats to forcefully takeover Greenland and Canada, the invasion of Venezuela etc. If the world does not wake up to the new reality in time, we risk plunging ourselves in a global order ruled by the laws of the jungle where survival for the fittest becomes the order of the day.
In response to this state of affairs, one of the most convincing alternatives is the Global Security Initiative (GSI) put forward by President Xi Jinping of China in 2022 at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference. In part, the GSI can be understood as a modification of Beijing’s broad approach to foreign policy to fit the needs of international peace. Three of its six core tenets thus (i.e. “respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries”, “peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation”, and “taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously”) directly replicate the principles of “win-win” and “mutual respect” that the global power has championed elsewhere.
At the same time, GSI seeks to reimagine norms devised many years ago in order to suit the changing times. Emphasis on “abiding by the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter” is one such example the other being “commitment to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.” The latter also best understood as the principle of indivisible security (IS) goes back to the Cold War particularly upon the entry into force of the Helsinki Final Act. What the Communist Party of China (CCP) has done for IS is to contend that a country’s security interests are not only inseparable from those of her immediate neighbours but also those of the rest of the world just as much. This becomes especially important given how much globalization has taken effect.
Crucially, GSI has proven itself to be thorough including through Beijing’s position papers on Afghanistan and the Israel-Palestine war as well as mediation that the CCP has done between Iran and Saudi-Arabia, Fighting factions in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia etc. If the world could build on this momentum, there is a good chance that the voices of hegemony and repression will be defeated.
Joshua Kingdom is a Research Fellow at the Development Watch Centre.
Saudi-Iran Pact Brokered by China points to a New Era of Peace and Budding New Global Order
By Mosh Israel
During Modi-Putin heart-to-heart talk held on the on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Summit in Samarkand last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed to the Russian president that ‘today’s era is not of war…’ This comment was made in an effort by India to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. Sadly, war hawkers in some Western Capitals and the Media hysterically ran with the phrase and used it to reprimand Russia over Ukraine Crisis.
However, it is naïve to believe that this reaction came out of an honest aversion to war, rather than a grand opportunity to virtue signal against the wars that do not serve Washington’s interests. However, it didn’t take long before Washington’s embrace of a ‘war free era’ came to a screeching halt once China put the ‘not an era of war’ mantra into practice by brokering the Saudi-Iranian deal to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries. Both countries have had no diplomatic relations for seven years after Iranian protestors stormed the Saudi embassy in Teheran following the execution of a Shi’ite cleric in Saudi Arabia in 2016. The two rivals have since fought a proxy war in Yemen and brought a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the region. Therefore, a pact promising peace between the two heavy weights in the middle east is a step in the right direction.
This agreement goes further than just the normalization of relations between the two, and also includes a drive towards enhancing regional and international peace and security. To any layman who is neither a political bureaucrat nor a media propagandist, the deal presents a historic milestone towards the stabilization of the middle East, a region that has suffered innumerable conflicts that have cost the lives of many innocents. Furthermore, the involvement of Iraq and the Sultanate of Oman is an indication of an inclusive peace. No peace is long lasting without the input of well-wishing neighbors. The two states also agreed to re-open their embassies within two months. Furthermore, Iran and Saudi Arabia will restore a 22-year-old security pact that requires them to cooperate on issues of terrorism, drug smuggling and money laundering. A renewal of the 1998 trade and technology deal was also agreed upon.
It is not helpful to jump the gun and declare that the middle east shall be all roses and no guns from now on. The road to a peaceful middle east is long and winding. Fortunately, China has decided to be the adult in the room and start walking the road to peace. The brokering of this deal should be a pointer to the significance of a multi-polar world and the urgent need for powerful countries to champion peace and put an end to the destructive war machine. China’s pursuit of win-win partnerships maybe scoffed at in several western capitals, but that means nothing if the strategy is yielding undeniable results.
Many in Washington hold the wrong view that the Saudi-Iran pact is a challenge to US hegemony because it was brokered by China. This mindset needs to drastically change among certain circles in Washington. A peace deal is a peace deal and should be praised. So far, it is a good sign that the European Union has welcomed the resumption of ties between the two countries. It is important that regional powers possess an independent foreign policy that serves the interests of their respective regions rather than have other countries dictate to them foreign policies that only bring destruction.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping observed while advocating for China’s proposal of Global Security Initiative (GSI), for the world to attain sustainable peace, “we need to work together to maintain peace and stability in the world. The Cold War mentality would only wreck the global peace framework, hegemonism and power politics would only endanger world peace, and bloc confrontation would only exacerbate security challenges in the 21st century.” Therefore, as President Xi emphasized, all efforts that focus at creating conducive environment for harmony must be supported by all peace-loving people of the world and firmly “oppose unilateralism, and say no to group politics and bloc confrontation; stay committed to taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously, uphold the principle of indivisible security, and oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security; stay committed to peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation.”
While Saudi-Iran peace deal is a diplomatic victory for China in the gulf region, instead of painting it as anything else, all other countries should observe and embrace the correct order of conducting international relations. Perhaps, the next step should be to involve Israel in a daring middle eastern peace framework that would suspend hostilities in the region for the next 100 years. If any country can achieve this, it is China under the current CCP and president Xi Jinping’s objective of playing a ‘constructive role in appropriately handling hotspot issues in today’s world in accordance with the wishes of all countries’ and demonstrate China’s ‘responsibility as a major country.’ This very sentiment was expressed by China’s State Councilor and top diplomat Mr. Wang Yi who was deeply involved in the entire process.
African countries should keenly observe the events in the middle east and seek to learn from them. One of the major takeaways, is the fact that China is here to advance peace and cooperation within the framework of a multi-polar global order. The other lesson is that any hostilities between nations can be resolved diplomatically if the parties involved do not allow countries with harmful ulterior motives to take part in a peace-seeking process. Finally, African countries should make it clear to Washington, Paris, and London that the continent is not a playground for political games, Africa values genuine partnerships based on mutual respect and the continent’s embrace is large enough for both the west and China. Therefore, our cooperation with one bloc is not a rejection of the other but rather an indication of goodwill politics in a new multi-polar world order.
Mosh Israel is a Research Fellow with Development Watch Centre.
It’s time to end senseless, endless sanctions.
By George A. Lopez
Thirty years ago this week the United Nations Security Council responded to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait with mandatory, comprehensive economic sanctions. By 2000 the UNSC, led by the United States, had imposed powerful embargos in 11 other cases of threats to international peace and security. Despite developing more targeted “smart sanctions” aimed primarily at group and national leaders, elongated sanctions episodes continued to wreak disastrous consequences on civilians through the present day. The Trump Administration’s use of maximum pressure sanctions, which some see as targeted, plus trade sanctions on steroids, have devastated civilians in North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela, thus solidifying wide acceptance that sanctions constitute economic war.
Just as U.S. policy should end our endless wars, sanctions as part of protracted war — as in Iraq and Afghanistan — or sanctions that make war on general populations should also end. Whoever wins the presidency in November must rethink how sanctions can be an essential, yet prudent, tool of U.S. economic statecraft. Such a reformulation should rely on lessons learned from sanctions research and include reconstructing the U.S. government vision and architecture for sanctions policy.
When, why, and how do sanctions work
Sanctions work best when they are one of a number of diverse tools employed to achieve a clearly defined and consistent set of policy goals. Sanctions must not only bite and enrage the targeted group or nation, but actually engage them in continued diplomacy focused on the behavior needed to lift the sanctions. At best, sanctions achieve compliance from their targets in about one-third of cases, with that compliance occurring within two and a half years. Short of full success, the greater the active diplomacy accompanying sanctions, the stronger the constraints stifling the target’s goals.
Historically, multilateral sanctions are more successful than unilateral. Recent decisions by the U.S. to maximize implementation through expanding targeted designations and imposing crippling banking sanctions has led to greater negative impact on civilians, thus eroding international cooperation. Sanctions fail in various ways but most often when the policy goals are diffuse, unrealistic in making multiple demands, or when obsession with adding more sanctions lead sanctions to become the policy, rather than a means to policy.
Understanding the nuances of sanctions success in issue areas important to the U.S. is critical to improving their effectiveness in future U.S. policy. Regarding human rights, neither unilateral nor multilateral sanctions have ever toppled a brutal dictator. Nor have sanctions, by themselves, ever forced rights violators to desist in their worst acts. Most effective, however, are two sanctions strategies. The first lies in the standard mantra, “follow the money,” which most often applies to sanctions concerns with terrorist networks or when U.S. banking and currency markets are in jeopardy. But as organizations like the Sentry Project have demonstrated, sanctions policy actions can identify brutal rights abusers for the kleptocrats that they are, freeze their worldwide assets, and hold them to full account.
Second, as pre-atrocity indicators increase in a society, sanctions can play a significant prevention or mitigation role through asset seizures and travel bans on a range of mid-level economic and political enablers who strengthen and shield brutal dictators. These include bankers, industrialists, and police and military networks in and outside a rights abusing regime. U.S. leaders must mobilize anew the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act as the strongest mechanism for action against kleptocrats and enablers.
To constrain nuclear non-proliferation, the U.S. needs a similar new awareness and agility. Sanctions cannot bludgeon a nation into giving up what it considers as its most powerful security protection. But nuclear reversal has occurred in Iran, Ukraine, South Africa, Brazil, and Libya when sanctions deny money and material critical to the development of arsenals, while new security guarantees are forged from intense problem-solving diplomacy. In addition, these agreements are accompanied by a versatile array of economic inducements from a number of nations which motivates and sustains the target renouncing nuclear development.
Creating a “whole of government” approach to U.S. sanctions
To launch a new, diplomacy-dominated sanctions era, future U.S. presidents must create a new architecture featuring a whole of government approach to ensuring sanctions success. This entails reinvigorating some agencies and redefining the roles of others to improve sanctions design and impact assessment.
Such restructuring begins with re-establishing the key role of the State Department in policy formulation and negotiation by restoring its Office of Sanctions Policy that was dissolved in 2017. A similar re-injection of sanctions expertise will be needed in the National Security Council and in the Policy Planning Staff at State. These reforms, in turn, must lead to a rebalance of power with the Treasury Department where the Secretary’s Office and the Office of Foreign Asset Control has had extensive sway over the politics of sanctions.
In this reorganization, OFAC and Treasury will still have important but different roles to play. The more than 8,000 entries on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List in Treasury results from the discovery of networks trading in prohibited materials, money laundering, and establishing shadow banks and financial institutions as sanctions evasion strategies employed by targeted governments or groups.
The next administration should de-politicize this listing procedure and keep them more narrowly defined as the international criminal activity they are. The tasks of “outlawing” actors via sanctions has convoluted the delicate diplomacy needed to produce the compliance the U.S. seeks from national leaders. Sanctions policy benefits if OFAC pursues criminal charges in the legal realm and not in the political lane.
New thinking should also be brought to the role of the Commerce Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in attaining sanctions goals from an inducement perspective. Commerce could build on its recent success in bolstering ventures in Sudan in that nation’s early post-dictatorship era. USAID can inject assistance to areas of a post-sanctions economy in most need of recovery.
The role of Congress in validating a new and vigorous sanctions plan by providing additional funding for such foreign policy priorities cannot be overlooked. So too Congress might finally pass into law a proposal offered 20 years ago by the late Senator Richard Lugar that imbeds a two year sunset clause into U.S. sanctions. To extend sanctions beyond that would require the administration to certify the national security role of the sanctions, state their current effectiveness, and document they were not harming civilians.
Finally, based on past experiences, international relief agencies and the NGO community can claim quite rightly that humanitarian sanctions are an oxymoron. Therefore, a new, nimble and sensible sanctions policy would incorporate their experiences and remedies into the definition of rules governing their travel, delivery of supplies, and additional exemptions they need for preventing and mitigating humanitarian crises. With their guidance, U.S. sanctions design, implementation, and enforcement can reduce dramatically the duration and depth of the negative impact sanctions have on innocent civilians.
However difficult the task may be for U.S. leadership to develop sanctions that “do no harm” to the general population, the time for constructing these tools has come. Such action and the policy goals it would support could end senseless and endless sanctions.
George A. Lopez
Source: Responsible State Craft.
Desperate Measures: The Effects of Economic Isolation on Warrying Powers.
Erik Sand.
Scholars and strategists have long debated whether cutting off an opponent’s trade is an effective strategy in war. In this debate, success or failure has usually been judged based on whether the state subjected to economic isolation surrenders without being defeated on the battlefield. This approach, however, has missed a more important way in which economic isolation affects its target: strategy. Economic isolation constrains a state’s strategic choices and leaves its leaders to choose from the remaining options, which are almost always riskier. As analyses of German decision-making in World Wars I and II demonstrate, these riskier strategies often involve escalating the conflict at hand.
How does a state’s access to the international economy affect its strategy to prevail in war? This question bears on some of the most important international challenges facing the United States today. Economic sanctions have become a frequent tool in American foreign policy — witness the current campaigns of “maximum pressure” against Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela as well as increased economic sanctions against Russia and the return of the embargo against Cuba.1 The United States would almost certainly expand such measures as part of its strategy were one of these disputes to escalate into open conflict. More importantly, perhaps, a strategy of economic isolation is already being explicitly discussed as an option in the event of a war between the United States and China. China is highly integrated into the international economy, and some U.S. strategists argue that blocking the Strait of Malacca to disrupt China’s supply of oil would be a good alternative to the “AirSea Battle” concept, whose advocates call for strikes against sensors and long-range weapons located in mainland China to reduce threats to U.S. forces in the region at the start of a conflict.2 On the other hand, not all potential U.S. adversaries are so well connected to the international economy. North Korea, for example, maintains a national ideology of self-sufficiency and does its best to isolate itself from the world, to avoid being vulnerable to such maneuverings. If the United States found itself at war with either of these countries, what would a strategy of economic isolation accomplish? Would it lead to victory?
The traditional scholarly answer is “no”: Industrial economies are sufficiently robust and economic isolation is sufficiently difficult such that states facing economic isolation can easily adapt, except in extraordinary circumstances.3 This article challenges that claim. While economic isolation alone may not lead directly to defeat, it places important constraints on a power’s strategic decision-making by limiting the options that are available. Economically isolated powers tend to pursue riskier strategies, often launching attacks that expand the conflict at hand. These broader conflicts then frequently end in defeat. Moreover, this effect holds regardless of a state’s prewar level of economic integration.
In the first section of this article, I begin by reviewing the debate surrounding the potential U.S. strategies in the event of a conflict with China, before discussing the principal existing arguments about how prewar economic integration affects wars and the effects of economic isolation during war. In section two, I develop a theory of how economic isolation leads to risky decision-making, identifying two ways in which economic isolation impacts a country’s decision-makers as well as two types of obviously risky strategies. I briefly discuss case selection before exploring two critical examples of economic isolation in sections three and four: Germany in World Wars I and II. I conclude the article with a discussion of the relevance of these two cases today and the implications of my analysis.
Source: Read full article on Texas National Security Review.