Viewpoint Peace and trade, not sanctions, will change
Iraq
By ROBERT A. SIRICO
The Vatican has come under pressure
from the United States to shun Iraq, the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham,
during the travels of Pope John Paul II. The State Department is reportedly
concerned that the popes scheduled December visit will be manipulated by
Saddam Hussein for political purposes.
No doubt Saddam will try to do so. But there are few heads of
state anywhere whose political motivations are more suspect than Saddams;
meanwhile the popes motivations are unquestionably religious and
humanitarian. It should be clear whose message will prevail.
The real trouble is, from the U.S. point of view, that the pope is
a vocal opponent against U.S. sanctions against Iraq, just as he has opposed
sanctions against Cuba, another country he visited against U.S. wishes. Indeed,
the pope has emerged as a leading critic of sanctions generally, just as the
United States has emerged as a leading practitioner of sanctions around the
world.
In the popes view, articulated in many sermons, and
undergirded by three magisterial encyclicals on economics, forbidding world
trade in nonmilitary goods and services harms the poor, engenders rather than
quells conflict and forestalls political changes consistent with human
rights.
Indeed, last months United Nations report on the
effect of sanctions against Iraq seems to support this view: Half a million
children under the age of 5 have died since 1991. Every month, another 4,000
Iraqi children die due to lack of medicine, food and clean water. Malnutrition
and disease is widespread. Oil-for-food exchanges have addressed only a tiny
part of the problem. The pope cannot be expected to overlook the reality and
cause of a crisis of this magnitude.
The problem of sanctions isnt limited to Iraq. The United
States maintains some form of economic sanctions against 78 countries -- which
is nearly half the countries in the world. On the list are some holdovers from
the Cold War, like Cuba, North Korea and China, as well as the usual lineup of
rogue states, including Libya and Iran. Lobbying groups have pushed Congress to
impose sanctions for the most menial of infractions. Even Costa Rica, Italy and
the tiny island of Vanuatu have found themselves on the receiving end of U.S.
trade sanctions.
Along with the rise of sanctions mania, sweeping academic studies
have appeared -- like Gary Hufbauers Economic Sanctions
Reconsidered (1999) -- which have shown sanctions to be economically
harmful to the most vulnerable part of the population in the targeted country.
Neither do they achieve their stated military or political objectives. After
all, Fidel Castro, Muammar al Qaddafi and Hussein still rule their
much-sanctioned domains. In each case, sanctions have served to underscore the
image of the leader as an embattled opponent of foreign empire.
In contrast, Catholic social teaching has long embraced peaceful
international economic relations as an expression of human solidarity. As I saw
first-hand on my last visit to Cuba, forbidding trade means barring people from
having access to the means of material improvement, which is a sin against
charity. It also means using a policy of coercion, rewarding some and injuring
others, where peaceful exchange would be more fruitful.
Faced with a long string of failures, the case usually cited in
defense of trade sanctions is that of South Africa. After all, didnt the
United States join a global boycott of South African products and thereby bring
about the fall of the apartheid regime? Isnt this a case of trade
sanctions doing exactly what they were intended to and hence leading to greater
recognition of human rights?
Philip I. Levy of Yale University, writing in the American
Economic Review (May 1999), has shown that sanctions did not play the
decisive role in bringing down apartheid. Sanctions werent adopted until
1986, and already the regime had been showing signs of serious strain, dating
back to at least 1974. That was when a previous economic growth rate of 4.9
percent per year, dating back decades, downshifted to a 1.8 percent that lasted
until 1987.
A key reason was the internal inefficiencies and injustices
associated with apartheid itself. As for the sanctions, it is unclear how much
damage they caused the regime. The major victims were foreign firms that
withdrew from the economy, who sold their assets to local white businessmen who
in turn scaled down the operations at the expense of their black and colored
workers.
The biggest surprise in Levys study is what he credits with
finally bringing the regime and its most-vocal opponents to the negotiation
table: not the sanctions but the fall of the Soviet Union. Absent this
political change, combined with bondholder pressure and economic restructuring,
the regime might have continued to survive the sanctions -- as Cuba, Iraq and
Libya have done.
Weve known since Athens embargo against Megara in 431
B.C. set off the Peloponnesian War that sanctions are no way to conduct
international policy. If we want a world where human rights are respected, the
path of peace and trade is to be preferred to a path of ongoing belligerence.
Rather than being harassed by the Clinton administration, Pope John Paul II
should be praised for setting an example of political independence in the face
of a misguided U.S. policy against so many countries.
Fr. Robert A. Sirico is president of the Acton Institute for
the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich.
National Catholic Reporter, September 24,
1999
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