Joint Resolution 114 of the Congress of the United States stipulates that if the president decides to use force he must certify why “diplomatic or other peaceful means” will not adequately meet U.S. interests. This report shows that peaceful and diplomatic options are available and can be successfully implemented to achieve U.S. objectives.
“Disarming Iraq: Nonmilitary Strategies and Options” by David Cortright and George A. Lopez, Arms Control Today, vol. 32, no. 7 (September 2002), pp. 3-7.
This study outlines practical policy options for reducing and containing the Iraqi weapons threat without resort to armed force. It suggests steps for reformulating UN sanctions in Iraq. It proposes a diplomatic bargaining strategy for gaining Iraqi compliance with renewed UN weapons inspections. And it calls for the development of an “enhanced containment” system of financial controls and externally based border monitoring to limit Iraq’s military potential and prevent the regime from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
This report provides preliminary analysis of what recent arms embargo cases reveal about how to improve the implementation and enforcement of arms embargoes. It also discusses some of the recommendations for arms embargoes formulated at the recently concluded Bonn-Berlin high level meetings on this policy area.
Following the publication of The Sanctions Decade — lauded as the definitive history and accounting of United Nations sanctions in the 1990s — David Cortright and George Lopez continue their collaboration to examine the changing context and meaning of sanctions and the security dilemmas that the Security Council now faces.
In recent years, international attention has turned toward the use of targeted, “smart” sanctions that minimize unintended humanitarian consequences and focus coercive pressure on responsible decision makers. Some of the world’s leading sanctions experts and practitioners join together in this book to provide the first published account of the emerging theory and practice of smart sanctions. The essays examine recent uses of targeted financial sanctions, travel sanctions, and arms embargoes, and offer recommendations for improving their design and implementation.
“A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions” by David Cortright, The Nation, December 2001.
The Security Council has significantly improved UN sanctions policy in recent years. Most notable have been steps toward sharpening sanctions design, applying more targeted measures called ‘smart sanctions,’ strengthening monitoring and enforcement, and prioritizing humanitarian concerns. Yet these advances have been compromised by competing political agendas among the five permanent members of the Security Council, inadequate compliance by member states, and a lack of institutionalized UN capacity for monitoring and enforcement.
This report discusses these countervailing trends in detail and sketches some ways in the near term in which the Security Council could improve the effectiveness of sanctions.
This study explores the possibility of an alternative to the UN comprehensive embargo that has been in place since 1990. Our investigation is prompted by the continued erosion of the economic sanctions and the possible breakdown of controls on Iraq’s production of weapons of mass destruction. To the extent that there is a bias in this report, it is in the direction of affirming the role of sanctions as a viable tool of Security Council action when global norms are violated, while aiming that such sanctions be as humane as possible.
“Re-energizing Sanctions,” by David Cortright and Alistair Millar in San Francisco Chronicle, 18 January 2001.