American Sanctions and Transatlantic Relations

Economic sanctions have been a favorite foreign policy instrument in the United States since the early days of the republic. In this century, economic sanctions became part of the Wilsonian vision of an international order based upon democracy and collective security; economic boycotts were seen as an alternative to military force. During the East-West conflict, sanctions, mostly export controls, were an important element of containment, but their use was not confined to East-West relations. Since the 1970s, sanctions played an important role in human rights and nonproliferation policies. In the 1990s, economic sanctions seem to have become the hallmark of American foreign policy in the 1990s. 1