occupy the space between a diplomatic protest and the use of force.
That position explains both their popularity and their mixed record.
A government that imposes them has visibly acted without accepting the costs of a war.
Comprehensive , common until the nineteen-nineties, have largely been abandoned.
They populations, strengthened the position of those controlling scarce goods and rarely changed policy.
Targeted measures against individuals and entities were designed to answer that objection.
They are more defensible and considerably easier to .
Ownership can be restructured in an afternoon, and enforcement depends on institutions in jurisdictions that may not cooperate.
The measures that bite are those attached to the financial system rather than to trade.
Access to dollar is a because almost every cross-border transaction touches it.
Using that repeatedly has produced a predictable response.
States that consider themselves exposed have built alternative arrangements, none of them yet efficient.
Each use of the instrument therefore slightly reduces its future power, which is a cost that no single decision registers.
Evaluating success requires a counterfactual that is unavailable.
rarely reverse a decision already taken and may still a decision not yet taken elsewhere.
That rent effect is real, unmeasurable and therefore usually claimed by both sides of any argument.
What can be measured is the humanitarian consequence, and the record there is poor.
for food and medicine exist on paper and fail in practice, because no bank will process a payment it cannot be certain is lawful.