Freedom Line Blog

Esquire carries a piece by nationally-recognized strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett entitled “10 Reasons Why Sanctions on Iran Won’t Work”.  After my column earlier this week, it probably goes without saying that I agree with Barnett’s conclusion.

On top of being morally problematic (almost always doing more damage to a nation’s population as a whole than to the government), sanctions rarely achieve anything. The one exception I can think of in recent history was South Africa under apartheid, but that was essentially a western democracy with some illiberal policies — an atmosphere that is going to be more sensitive to economic downturns. Countries like North Korea and Iran don’t have the sense of economic entitlement that makes sanctions so painful in the West, and their undemocratic governments mean that there are only meaningful consequences to the government if the population is roused to revolt.

That being said, however, Barnett misses some key points. He compares Iran to 1970s China and notes that Obama doesn’t have Nixon’s ability to forge a diplomatic breakthrough (Michael Tomasky also entertains this notion in the UK Guardian today). But China was (and is) a conventional great power playing realpolitik games. Their interest was primarily strengthening their place in the international balance of power. But as I mentioned in my piece earlier this week, you can’t understand the regime in Iran without understanding their ideological motivations — something Barnett and Tomasky don’t factor in. That makes the regime in Tehran both more dangerous and less likely to soften than Mao’s China was.