The burmese government’s grotesque crackdown on pro-democracy protests will have one certain effect. The United States and the European Union will place more sanctions on the country. Its economy will suffer, its isolation will deepen. And what will this achieve? Sanctions are the Energiser Bunny of foreign policy. Despite a dismal record, they just keep on ticking. With countries like Burma, sanctions have become a substitute for an actual policy.

Sanctions do hurt. The Burmese junta’s reference to them last week makes clear that they feel the pain. By design, sanctions shrink a country’s economy. But the parts of the economy they shrink most are those that aren’t under total state control. The result, says Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who has authored a wide-ranging study on the topic, is that “the state gains greater control of a smaller pie. And it shifts resources in the country toward groups that support (the state) and away from those that oppose it.” In other words, the government gets stronger. We can see this at work from Cuba to Iran. “Even in Iraq,” says Pape, “there were far fewer coup attempts in the era of sanctions than in the previous decades.”

In Burma, one effect of Western sanctions was to shut down the country’s textile exports during the late 1990s, forcing hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs. There is evidence that many of the women ended up in the sex trade. In addition, as legitimate businesses dry up, black markets spring up, and the thugs and gangs who can handle these new rules flourish. Burmese gems are now traded actively in this manner. Then there are drugs, whose production and supply multiply. In all of this, the military, which controls border crossings, ports and checkpoints, always prospers.

... contd.