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Can economic sanctions provide a viable alternative to military force in addressing security challenges? Under what conditions do sanctions enhance diplomacy, reinforce international law, and minimize humanitarian suffering?

Over the past 36 years, Kroc Institute Emeritus Professors George A. Lopez and David Cortright, have grappled with these questions and spearheaded groundbreaking academic research and policy analysis. Starting with United Nations sanctions on Iraq in August 1990, Lopez and Cortright convened a dynamic community of practitioners and scholars to help the U.N. assess and later reform sanctions regimes. Their writing, such as The Sanctions Decade:  (2000) and Smart Sanctions: (2002), became essential reading for anyone interested in policy conversations in Geneva, New York, Washington, and beyond about how to make sanctions smarter and more humane. Their documentation and insistence in policy briefs and establishment journals (2002-03) that sanctions and inspections worked in disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction—and that war was unnecessary—was a singular achievement.

As we begin Kroc Institute’s 40th anniversary year, this Peace Policy issue reflects on what we have learned about the relationship between economic sanctions and conflict-related challenges.

In this issue, Lopez and Cortright reflect on lessons from studying sanctions that should inform current policymaking to defuse widening global conflicts. Alistair Millar, their longtime collaborator and president of the Fourth Freedom Forum, provides a critical perspective on how a mismatch of sanctions and incentives is undermining efforts to control nuclear proliferation and end the war in Iran. Richard Nephew, the inaugural U.S. Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption, and now a member of the new Economic Statecraft Taskforce, considers the role that sanctions can play in disrupting corruption that underpins today’s wars and makes them harder to end. Justyna Gudzowska, former Treasury official and executive director of The Sentry, outlines how sanctions should be designed to isolate and punish war criminals and human rights abusers. Joy Gordon, the Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. Chair in Social Ethics at Loyola University of Chicago, advocates for sanctions scholars and policymakers to bring to light the many ways that sanctions raise questions of legality, legitimacy, and accountability. Finally, Hana Attia of Georgetown University-Qatar, argues that nations must develop new principles and norms to govern the use of sanctions and reduce their negative humanitarian impact.

In my work in the U.S. government, especially in responding to conflicts in Africa, I saw the need for more precision and creativity in how sanctions are applied to reduce violence and support diplomatic strategies. This need is only growing as policymakers contend with sustained levels of record-breaking global violence. We hope this issue—and more broadly, the Kroc Institute’s work on economic statecraft, past, present, and future—can provide ideas and perspectives for how to align sanctions with strategic peacebuilding.

–Peter J. Quaranto
Visiting Professor of the Practice & Global Policy Fellow, Keough School of Global Affairs