Iraq : assessing UN sanctions from Bush I to Bush II, 1990-2003

Abstract

Four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on the 2nd of August 1990, the Security Council subjugated Iraq to a series of financial and trade sanctions. Since then, comprehensive and partial sanctions became the security Council's favourite arm-twisting tool used at sixteen instances and against eleven countries compared to only two cases during its first forty-five years of operation. Economic sanctions fall theoretically somewhere between diplomacy and war. Their effectiveness as a coercive measure depends on multiple parameters concerning the socio-economic structure of the sanctioned state. Several characteristics have rendered sanctions against Iraq a case sui generis to be studied. this post-war assessment of sanctions on the Iraq aims at: - Pursuing a comprehensive and objective assessment of the Security Council's sanctions on Iraq ; - Probing the functionality of this coercive means in the light of its subsequent humanitarian, political and economic impact, given that the humanitarian crises resulting from the sanctions in Iraq were more devastating than the actual war, thus defeating the basic rationale of sanctions as being less than an actual war ; - And assessing the probable future of the UN, and the increasing unipolar influence of the United States. the research also sheds light on the old-new question of realism and legalism as it relates to sanctions. Based on the analysis of the aforementioned factors and after assessing the legitimacy and morality of imposing such sanctions, the research is concluded by some recommendations that may ameliorate the usage of this tool in future cases.