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Unilateral Economic Sanctions and Protecting U.S. National Security

Hastings International and Comparative Law Review

Volume 44, Number 2 Summer 2021, Article 5

Summer 2021

Fatemeh Bagherzadeh

Visiting Research Fellow at Fordham Law School; LL.M in Banking, Corporate and Financial law, Fordham Law School; LL.M in International Commercial Law, Pennsylvania State University; Master of Laws in Criminal law and Criminology, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran; B.A in Law from Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran; Attorney at Law, Central Bar Association, Tehran, Iran.

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Recommended Citation Fatemeh Bagherzadeh, Unilateral Economic Sanctions and Protecting U.S. National Security, 44 HASTINGS INT’L & COMP. L. Rev. 168 (2021). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_international_comparative_law_review/vol44/ iss2/5

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  1. Abstract:
  2. Table of Contents

Abstract:

Terrorism remains the most important national security concern. Multi-national economic organizations around the world have increasingly established counter-terrorism commissions to assess the magnitude of the threat posed by terrorism. Economic sanctions have been a counter-terrorism measure for many decades and remain an essential tool of U.S. foreign policy and a mechanism to protect the U.S. national security interests.1 In recent years, the internationalization of terrorism and emergence of non-state terrorist actors has led the U.S. to use smart targeted sanctions to dismantle financial support of terrorism. Yet, conventional country-specific nationwide sanctions that penalize a single target nation, continue to be used despite their limited success.2

Nation-wide sanctions operate on the theory that by depressing the economy of the target country, and to a certain extent its leadership, the target county will have no choice but to comply with the policy objective of the sanction imposing country. However, there is growing evidence of an inverse relationship between the length of the sanctions and their effectiveness.3 Moreover, justifications for the use of nation-wide sanctions to punish countries supporting terrorism has become obsolete. Today, we are witnessing the internationalization of terrorism and emergence of non-state adversaries. Hence, imposing nation-wide sanctions that are overreaching and

1. Mergen Doraev, The “Memory Effect” of Economic Sanctions Against Russia: Opposing Approaches to the Legality of Unilateral Sanctions Clash Again, 37 U. PA. J. INT’L L. 355, 381 (2015).

2. Maarten Smeets, Can Economic Sanctions Be Effective? 4, (WTO Economic Research and Statistics Division, Geneva, Working Paper No. ERSD-2018-03, 2018), https://doi.org/10.30875/0b967ac6-en.

3. Id. at 12.

punish society as whole is inconsistent with today’s realities. Furthermore, the negative effects of nation-wide sanctions on the socioeconomic conditions of the target country help establish a setting for dissatisfaction amongst the citizens of the target country and hostility towards the sanction imposing country that encourages ideological extremism and terrorism.4 For this reason, nation-wide sanctions should only used as a short-term measure, not as a permanent solution to terrorism. For economic sanctions to function as a successful counter-terrorism policy, they must use a combination of smart sanction and antipoverty initiatives.

4. Kevin J. Fandl, Terrorism, Development & Trade: Winning the War on Terror Without the War, 19 AM. U. INT’L L. REV. 587, 602-3 (2004).

Table of Contents

  • I. Introduction

  • II. Conventional Nation-Wide Sanctions

  • III. Legislative Bases of U.S. Unilateral Economic Sanctions Regulations

    • A. Country-Specific Sanctions

    • B. Activity-Based Sanctions

  • IV. National Security Challenges to the U.S. Unilateral Economic Sanctions and the Fight Against Terrorism

  • V. Effectiveness of U.S. Unilateral Sanctions

  • VI. Unilateral Economic Sanctions and the Fight Against Terrorism VII. Alternative Solutions

  • VIII. Conclusion

Table of contents