“Eat grass”: The problematic record of sanctions

Sanctions have an element of theatre. Nations that enact them can be seen to act, even if they have less than the desired impact.

Nash Weerasekera

Intended as a means of avoiding future deadly conflagrations, nations' refusal to impose sanctions and targeted countries' ability to circumvent them made them ineffective in many cases

“Eat grass”: The problematic record of sanctions

Steve Hewitt

last update on 28 Apr 2024

North Koreans would “eat grass” before their country would end its nuclear programme. So explained Russian President Vladimir Putin at a press conference in China in 2017.

It was a time of high anxiety over Kim Jong Un’s desire to maintain his country’s nuclear weapons in the face of international opposition and pressure.

The will of the North Korean regime to have its people endure suffering, explained Putin, outweighed the pressure that outsiders could bring to bear, including through economic sanctions.

Though widely publicised at the time, the origins of Putin’s “eat grass” comment and its implications for the effectiveness of sanctions more broadly received less attention.

The phrase had previously been used by another senior politician, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the then Foreign Minister of Pakistan.

He told the Manchester Guardian in 1965 that "If India makes an atom bomb, then even if we have to feed on grass and leaves or even if we have to starve-we shall also produce an atom bomb as we would be left with no other alternative."

In 1998, Pakistan detonated its first nuclear weapon.

Bhutto wasn’t explicitly referring to sanctions but rather the determination to overcome any obstacle in pursuit of an existential goal.

Nonetheless, that sentiment is relevant to the impact of sanctions, both in the past and present, where sanctions are everywhere in the news now.

There is talk of increased sanctions against Iran over its recent attack on Israel.

At the same time, the United States and the European Union have brought in sanctions—not against the Israeli government over its ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians but against several prominent Israeli settlers in relation to violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP — Israeli soldiers of the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox battalion "Netzah Yehuda" hold morning prayers as they take part in their annual unit training in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, near the Syrian border on May 19, 2014.

And, of course, there have been the extensive sanctions imposed on Russia in the aftermath of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

A 2,000-year-old practice

The imposition of sanctions is not a recent development. Over 2000 years ago, in 432 BC, the Athenian Empire imposed economic sanctions against the neighbouring city-state of Megara by prohibiting it from using ports controlled by Athens.

The actual impact of the measure imposed by Athens remains unclear, with some arguing it sparked the Peloponnesian War in which Megara allied with Sparta against Athens.

To have a modern sanctions environment, however, it was necessary for the rise of the current system of states followed by the creation of international organisations, such as the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations.

A landmark moment arrived in the aftermath of the death and destruction of World War I when the graphic cost of warfare on an industrial scale became readily apparent to all.

At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, at the war’s conclusion, US President Woodrow Wilson suggested sanctions as a means of avoiding future deadly conflagrations.

“Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy, and there will be no need for force. It is a terrible remedy. It does not cost a life outside of the nation boycotted, but it brings a pressure upon that nation which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist,” he said.

Under Article 16 of the League of Nations covenant, members agreed to in the future use economic sanctions as a primary means of averting the sort of war the world had just experienced.

Nevertheless, two consistent and often interconnected problems would arise with the arrival of sanctions: the refusal of nations to impose sanctions and the ability of targeted countries to circumvent them.

Wilson’s country, with the world’s largest economy, demonstrated the difficulty in imposing effective sanctions when the United States refused to join the League of Nations that it had helped create in 1920.

Two problems arose with the arrival of the modern sanctions regime after WWI: nations' refusal to impose sanctions and targeted countries' ability to circumvent them.

Mixed results

The League achieved successes in the 1920s when both Yugoslavia and Greece backed away from seizing territory in response to the threat of sanctions. But the effectiveness of sanctions in the face of an actual crisis was less than consistent.

In the mid-1930s, Italy, under the fascist leadership of Benito Mussolini, invaded Ethiopia, then referred to as Abyssinia. In a preview of future issues with sanctions, the League's rhetoric around punishing Italy did not match the reality.

Those imposed were done in a limited way to avoid an economic cost on those doing the sanctioning during a global depression and out of fear of a backlash from Italy.

Focusing on blocking Italy from access to oil was considered but ultimately rejected because there was no way to stop the United States—a major oil producer and non-League member—from selling the product to Mussolini.

Ironically, by 1940, sanctioning oil became a key weapon for the United States against Japan over the latter's ongoing invasion of China and threatened expansion elsewhere in East Asia.

After Japan seized French colonies in Indochina in the aftermath of the surrender of France to Nazi Germany in 1940, the blocking of oil sales proved pivotal. The impact of the sanctions came, however, not in the form of Japan reducing its military aggression but rather by an escalation of warfare.

Japan sought to access much-needed resources through conflict, and it attempted to land a knockout blow on the United States, beginning with an attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

Since World War II, and with the creation of the United Nations, there have been numerous high-profile efforts at imposing sanctions to change undesired behaviour by a variety of nations.

All had decidedly mixed results at achieving the desired outcome.

The Apartheid state of South Africa became a persistent target of international sanctions beginning in the 1960s. Pressure mounted on Pretoria in the late 1980s when the United States and United Kingdom participated in the sanctions in the declining years of the Cold War.

Apartheid came to an end in 1991, at least in part due to the decades of economic measures arrayed against South Africa.

RAMZI HAIDAR / AFP — Iraqi women mourn as they stand alongside a car carrying the coffin of an Iraqi child, 02 March, during a mass funeral in Baghdad for 33 children "victims" of the crippling sanctions the United Nations has imposed on Iraq.

Extensive sanctions were imposed by the United Nations on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s after the invasion of Kuwait. A military campaign expelled the Iraqis from Kuwait, and restrictions remained in place until Saddam was toppled in 2003.

Their effectiveness remains debated, but there is no doubt that the impact was felt by ordinary Iraqis and not those who held power in Baghdad.

And, of course, efforts to stop North Korea from obtaining a nuclear weapon involved sanctions. Yet the North Korean government proved adept at evading restrictions, famously aided by the father of the Pakistani nuclear programme, A.Q. Khan and his network.

In 2006, the country exploded its first nuclear weapon, leading to widespread sanctions but no sign of a willingness, as Putin noted, to give up the programme.

Element of theatre

There is an element of theatre to sanctions. Nations or organisations enacting them can be seen to act, even if the policy introduced will have less than the desired impact.

Imposing sanctions can draw international attention to ongoing problems and threats, and they can have an impact, although rarely a decisive one.

Nevertheless, in an increasingly polarised world with the rise of China as an economic superpower, the ability of Western nations to influence the behaviour of recalcitrant countries through sanctions has declined further.

The Russian example is pertinent: despite economic sanctions from the West, the Putin government has found new markets for its goods, including increased oil sales to India, and it has benefited from its ties to China and Iran to access much-needed weapons.

Given the lengthy history of sanctions, it is hard to imagine additional ones doing much to deter Iran in relation to its nuclear programme or its extensive activities across the Middle East.

It is not that the days of the international community or specific nations imposing their will through sanctions have disappeared; they never really existed in the first place.

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