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.
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 report addresses currently deployed and stored arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons on the one hand, and problems related to the potential for future development of low-yield, bunker buster, earth penetration tactical nuclear weapons on the other. Each category of tactical nuclear weapons, whether old, new, or on the drawing board, presents risks to global security that have been exacerbated by the marked increase of the threat of terrorist attacks.
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.
The report recommends that an interim goal for the Bush administration should be to cap India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programs below the deployment threshold. However, the U.S. should also seek to persuade and pressure India and Pakistan to roll back and eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons programs. Diplomatic engagement and other incentives can play a major role in convincing India and Pakistan to curb their nuclear weapons programs. However, inducements on their own will fail to influence South Asian nuclear decision makers unless they are accompanied by sanctions which constrict the flow of critical materials to South Asia.
Report — June 2000
“Positive Inducements in International Statecraft” by David Cortright in Fraser Forum. Based on a paper of the same title commissioned by the Fraser Institute (June 2000).
To gain a more accurate picture of sanctions-related mortality in Iraq, the Fourth Freedom Forum and Kroc Institute commissioned public health specialist Richard Garfield of Columbia University to conduct an independent study. In this study the author evaluates the studies that have been conducted on Iraq to date and takes a fresh look at possible new methodologies for determining sanctions-related mortality, especially for children under five years of age.
This report was commissioned by the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs to provide a multifaceted research review of the impact of multilateral sanctions, including the development of a methodology for data gathering and assessing such impact that could be used by UN agencies, researchers and others.
This report is the result of the most comprehensive independent investigation ever conducted of Pakistani attitudes toward nuclear weapons. Based on more than 900 30-minute interviews with educated professionals in eight Pakistani cities, it provides candid evidence that concerns about India are the predominant justification for nuclear weapons in Pakistan.
This essay examines whether tougher economic measures against the Nigerian junta would be politically effective. Is the oil weapon the most powerful tool available, short of military intervention, for restoring basic human rights and Nigerian democracy, or are more effective and humane alternatives available?
