Should the international community impose sanctions on Zimbabwe to punish its president, Robert Mugabe, for not adhering to the electoral verdict of the people? Mugabe recently ‘won’ a run-off election marred by violence in which at least 86 opposition supporters were killed and 200,000 displaced. The United States and Britain have pressed for a vote in the United Nations to impose international sanctions, measures which would include an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.

Emphasising that these sanctions are ‘smart’ and ‘targeted’ only at the Mugabe regime elites, they announced travel restrictions on senior Zimbabwean officials and their families. Other plans include freezing the assets of the Zimbabwean elite, similar to the technique used in Iraq and North Korea. The International Cricket Council has still not taken a decision on expelling the Zimbabwean cricket board.

Sanctions stand between statements and soldiers. Military action is not a feasible tool as proven by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Countries use sanctions for three types of purposes: to compel compliance with international laws, to contain a conflict, and to express outrage without a clear political goal. Zimbabwe fits the third category, albeit with a political goal: to make the Mugabe regime relinquish power. To assess whether sanctions are the right way to pressure the Mugabe regime, we must make a distinction between the actual imposition of sanctions, and the use of sanctions as a threat.

Those opposed to sanctions focus on the ways the action produces deleterious effects on a country’s economy and citizenry. Sanctions are counterproductive because, as Fareed Zakaria has pointed out, they shrink a country’s economy, especially those parts that are not under government control. Private businesses suffer most, and are liable to shut down or at least shrink. The government ends up controlling — in the words of University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape — a smaller pie, and shifts resources to groups it can control and away from those that oppose it. In addition, social scientists Simon Chesterton and Beatrice Pouligny have demonstrated how sanctions result in a criminalisation of the economy. For instance, the Burmese junta have stifled all protests while engaging in black marketeering in gems and drugs. In the Balkans, sanctions resulted in the establishment of crime networks.

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