[Richard Nephew, The Art of Sanctions. A View from the Field. Columbia University Press. Chichester. New York, 2018. 216 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

International sanctions often arouse a lively discussion between those who defend them as a legitimate instrument of interaction between States and those who consider that their application has hardly been more effective than that of increasing the suffering of entire populations through no fault of their own.

To the question of whether these sanctions, which can be of various kinds but are mainly of an economic nature, are of any use, Richard Nephew replies that it depends. And it is not an evasion, but in the end the defense of his own tools by a mechanic of American diplomacy (Nephew was director for Iran in the committee National Security Agency and Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions of the department "Sanctions do not fail or succeed. Rather, sanctions help or do not help to achieve the desired result the end of a sanctioning state (...) Tools can only perform well when they are used with the right strategy; The saw cannot be blamed if it fails to perform the work of a screwdriver."

Nephew is not a sanctions theorist, but a "practitioner"; the content of his book comes from experience ("A View from the Field" is the subtitle of the work). That experience makes him convinced of the usefulness of such measures provided that they are properly implemented. Basically, he gives the example of two cases: that of Iraq, where sanctions did not achieve the goal sought due to a misguided approach to international pressure, which finally led to war in 2003, and that of Iran, where the regime of punitive measures on the Islamic Republic had its effect and in 2015 a treaty was signed. agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program.

An active participant in the Iran sanctions architecture, Nephew expands especially on the case of the negotiations with Tehran, after first briefly addressing the Iraq chapter. From all this, it draws conclusions and presents its own decalogues on how sanctions must be addressed in order to be effective. In the last pages, he tries to advise on how to conduct a new package of sanctions on Iran, to control its missile program and contain its activity abroad through proxies, but without breaking the agreement achieved (JCPOA) as the Trump Administration has done; how to manage the pressure on Russia in relation to Ukraine, and how to confront North Korea's attitude. It does not address situations other than the discussion on sanctions, such as Trump's harshness towards Cuba, in the framework of a decades-long embargo that has produced no changes on the island, or the siege on Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Rules for Successful Sanctioning

Nephew's main conclusion is that "the knowledge of one's opponent, their tolerances and vulnerabilities, is the most important predictor about the chances of success of a strategy that focuses on sanctions. In fact, for sanctions to work, one really has to know the enemy better than the enemy knows himself."

That's what, in his opinion, went wrong in Iraq. Sanctions were certainly effective, in that they prevented Saddam Hussein from returning to a weapons of mass destruction program, but they did not prevent war. And this is because the psychology of the president, who was ready for anything, was not taken into account subject of suffering – which he passed on to the population, without fear that they could take power away from him – rather than admit that he did not have the powerful arsenal that supposedly elevated him among the regional leaders. The international community did not understand how important it was for him to maintain this pretense, in his pretense of credibility and prestige, above the pressure of any package of sanctions.

In addition, there were other shortcomings in the Iraqi process, according to Nephew: maximum sanctions were applied from the beginning, with no room for an incremental policy, and over time there was a variation in the goal, going from wanting to prevent the rearmament of the regime to proposing a change of the regime itself (even if Saddam Hussein had accepted the conditions put before him, Washington would not have admitted his continuation in power).

Those errors led to a greater understanding of the mechanisms at play, which were refined in the attention with Iran. Mr. Nephew said that in order to get to know the country subject to potential sanctions, one should take into account its political institutions, its macroeconomic and financial system, its trade relations, its cultural values, its recent history, its demographics and the population's access to external sources of information. This will make it possible to identify the vulnerabilities and the pain threshold that the government of the day is willing to absorb. Therefore, both the sanctions and the assumptions themselves must be continuously recalibrated, following a well-defined strategy. It is also important that the State targeted by the sanctions be clearly presented with the conditions necessary for the pressure to be lifted, in the context of the framework of a negotiation of clear terms. Finally, we must be willing to help the state that is pressuring itself to get out of a labyrinth whose way out it may not perceive, or even to accept lower goals if these are a problem. result also reasonable.

The author states that the three most common causes of the failure of a sanctions regime are: falling short, overdoing it, and confusing objectives. These labels can easily be applied to past processes, but it is not so simple to fix the steps of a coercive diplomacy of this one. subject in ongoing conflicts or that may occur in the future.

Thus, Nephew himself would not have full guarantees of success with the sanctions he suggests for a new negotiation with Iran in order to limit its missile program and its action through groups such as Hezbollah. At odds with the Trump Administration, he would have preferred to keep the agreement on the 2015 nuclear program (known by its acronym JCPOA) and the consequent lifting of the previously applied sanctions regime, to move on to other sanctions that seek that other goal. It is true that the usefulness of Trump's move remains to be seen, but it is hard to believe that Tehran will renounce these other actions because of pressure that would in no case be so international (China and Russia only lent themselves to a front against Iran because it was at stake that this country would become a nuclear power).