Sleepwalking To Sanctions, Again

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 Energizer 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. And the fact that 15 years ago Aung San Suu Kyi supported them makes me pause. I admire her moral courage tremendously. But that does not mean that every specific policy prescription of hers is right. I can think of other moral giants—Gandhi, Martin Luther King—who could also, sometimes, be wrong on policy. Iran's leading dissident—Akbar Ganji—does not support broad sanctions against his country.

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, enough evidence that in 2003 the then State Department spokesman Richard Boucher acknowledged it but expressed the hope that over time sanctions would change Burma. 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.

One of the lessons of Iraq surely is that a prolonged sanctions regime will destroy civil society and empower the worst elements of the country, those who thrive in such a gangland atmosphere. If the purpose of sanctions is to bring about a better system for that country, devastating its society is a strange path to the new order. Burma is a particularly complicated place for such an experiment because it is riven with ethnic divisions and conflict. The Burmese government has been fighting 17 ethnic rebel groups for more than 50 years. Many of the rebels now control territory and run their own drug and resource cartels. The country is a failed state waiting to happen. Its one functioning national institution is the Army. Bringing liberal democracy to the country is going to be a challenge anyhow, and it is being made more difficult by the evisceration of its society.

In the early 1990s, after refusing to accept the results of an election in which Suu Kyi won, the Burmese regime began—haltingly—to open up the economy. But Western sanctions quickly put an end to such moves. Thant Myint-U, a former senior U.N. official and author of "The River of Lost Footsteps," a wonderful and affectionate portrait of Burma, argues that had that process of trade, travel and investment been encouraged, "Burma today would look more like Vietnam. It would have many more connections with the world, much more economic and social activity, and the regime would be far more constrained and reluctant to use force or engage in crackdowns."