Using Economic Sanctions to Prevent Deadly Conflict Elizabeth S ...

experience of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) sounds a cautionarynote. It illustrates the difficulties involved in moving IFIs away from their traditional banking missiontowards an active consideration of political conditions in recipient countries. 78VI. CONCLUSIONSEconomic sanctions have not historically been used for the purpose of preventing deadlyconflict. They should be. Conditions for using economic sanctions for this purpose are more auspicioustoday than in the past and should remain so for the foreseeable future. The Iraq, Haiti, and Yugoslaviacases show that when an international coalition applies immediate and total sanctions, the sanctions canpay policy dividends. The Haitian case shows that even badly designed sanctions, once corrected, canhelp sender states to achieve their policy goals.Economic sanctions are more effective than most analysts suggest. Their efficacy is underratedin part because unlike other foreign policy instruments, sanctions have no natural advocate orconstituency. Business leaders tend to dislike sanctions because they disrupt international commerce.Most governments have counterparts to the U.S. State Department, CIA, and Defense Department.These bureaucracies are natural advocates for the use of78 EBRD was founded in May 1990 to help the states of Eastern and Central Europe make the transition fromcommand to market economies. Unlike other IFIs, its charter explicitly obligated the bank to lend money only tocountries committed to "the principles of multiparty democracy, pluralism and market economics." However, over thelast three years the bank has moved steadily away from active political conditionality to become "an operationallyapolitical institution wholly focused on financial transactions." Cited in Melanie H. Stein, "Conflict Prevention inTransition Economies: A Role for the European Band for Reconstruction and Development?" In Preventing Conflict inthe Post-Communist World, 341, 352.