What Sanctions Epidemic? U.S. Business' Curious Crusade

Jesse Helms

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 1999

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Summary:  Business lobbyists are peddling wildly inflated statistics to claim that sanctions are used too often, but America cannot have a principled foreign policy without them.

Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In the past year, a handful of Washington business lobbyists have waged a blistering campaign to persuade the world that Congress has been engaged in a spasm of sanctions proliferation.

Reliance on unilateral sanctions, these lobbyists warn us, is a disturbing new epidemic. Their campaign has sparked dozens of news articles and editorials decrying the "sanctions frenzy" and castigating Congress' "voracious appetite" for sanctions. Normally responsible journalists parrot statistics -- conveniently furnished by these business lobbyists -- alleging that in the last few years the United States has placed anywhere from one-half to two-thirds of the world's population under the yoke of unilateral economic sanctions. The New York Times clamors that "more than 60 laws or executive orders authorizing sanctions . . . have been enacted in the last five years." Even President Clinton jumped on the antisanctions bandwagon, announcing in 1998 that the United States has gone "sanctions happy."

This is sheer nonsense. The statistics peddled by these lobbyists are grossly inflated and intentionally misleading. Half of the world is not living under American sanctions -- nowhere near it. There is no epidemic. Congress has been cautious and circumspect, passing just a handful of carefully targeted sanctions laws. And unilateral economic sanctions are by no means new: they have been vital weapons in America's foreign policy arsenal for more than 200 years. I have been and continue to be a friend of American business. But the distortions spread by this small cabal of lobbyists in the name of American business are inexcusable. The time has come for a reality check.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS

The statistic has become conventional wisdom: in just four years the United States has imposed sanctions 61 times, burdening 2.3 billion people (42 percent of the world). That would be pretty awful, save for one thing -- it is not true. These figures have been circulated by the antisanctions business group USA Engage, based on a study by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). They are a fabrication. At my request, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) evaluated the NAM claim that from 1993 through 1996, "61 U.S. laws and executive actions were enacted authorizing unilateral sanctions for foreign policy purposes." CRS reported that it "could not defensibly" justify the number. "We find the calculation used in . . . the NAM study to be flawed, even if the specific [sanctions] were fairly characterized, which is not always the case," CRS concluded.

How did NAM come up with 61 sanctions? The study alleges that 20 laws were passed by Congress and 41 were imposed by presidential action. This is a gross distortion. Nearly three-quarters of the congressional measures were not sanctions at all but conditions, limitations, or restrictions on U.S. foreign aid. One measure placed conditions on assistance to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Another barred aid for military or police training to Haitians involved in drug trafficking or human rights abuses. One "sanction" blocked assistance to countries knowingly harboring fugitives wanted by the international ...

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