Sanctions are one of those political issues that can make amiable dinner conversation turn unpleasant, as the battle lines are drawn down the table between those for and against. Sanctions have certainly had mixed success, starting with the first recorded case of a trade embargo some 2,400 years ago between Athens and neighboring Megara. The embargo failed, sparking war. Sanctions have never worked since then, argue some. “That is too reductionist,” may come the reply, while others prefer to pick-and-mix examples from embargoes through the ages to argue their case. The more pragmatic approach would be to not ask whether sanctions “work,” but to consider when and under what circumstances. Sanctions that are meant to oust a dictator but result in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians — Iraq for instance — can be considered counter-productive. Sanctions preventing a particularly nasty regime from getting hold of, say, chemical weapons,
