Sanctions Work When Tied to Clear Political Objectives

Sanctions are economic or diplomatic penalties meant to change the behavior of states, groups, or individuals in pursuit of foreign-policy objectives. Herbert McMaster argues that their value lies neither in offering an easy solution to geopolitical conflict nor in inflicting punishment for its own sake. They work when they serve realistic objectives and are integrated with diplomacy, military power, and cooperation among like-minded partners.

McMaster’s operating test is five-part: establish clear objectives; enforce restrictions rigorously; preserve humanitarian access; adjust pressure and relief as behavior changes; and act in time to affect a target’s calculations. Sanctions can deter aggression, incentivize behavioral change, and constrain hostile regimes’ resources, he says—but only if those conditions turn formal restrictions into usable leverage.

McMaster places sanctions within a broader competition with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, which he describes as authoritarian regimes seeking to reshape international discourse toward authoritarian governance and statist economies. Democracies and free-market economies, he says, must compete with diplomatic, military, and economic tools. Sanctions are one instrument among those tools, not a substitute for them.

He cites sanctions that, in his view, helped free Nelson Mandela and end apartheid in South Africa; helped end Slobodan Milosevic’s dictatorship in Yugoslavia and incentivize his extradition to The Hague; and pressured political leaders and government entities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, and Zimbabwe in support of peace, fundamental rights, and human security.

The first requirement is to identify the conduct to be stopped, the concession to be secured, or the capacity to be constrained. Without that connection, McMaster argues, severe economic damage may leave a target regime intact or even strengthen its political control.

He contrasts Cold War measures against the Soviet Union with sanctions imposed on Iraq in the early 1990s. The United States and its allies used sanctions to isolate the Soviet Union from global trade and finance, McMaster says. He argues that the measures weakened the Soviet economy and helped defeat communist totalitarianism and bring down the Iron Curtain.

Iraq illustrates the opposite result in his account. The sanctions lacked clear objectives, were sweeping, and proved difficult to enforce. They crippled Iraq’s economy, but Saddam Hussein used their effects to tighten his grip on power and hurt his opponents. Broad pressure, in this case, did not itself make the ruler more compliant.

Iran beginning in 2010 is McMaster’s example of a more defined bargain. The sanctions were intended to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and included a ban on oil exports, freezes on regime officials’ assets, and prohibitions on nuclear-technology transfers. Combined with the threat of Israeli military action, he says, they convinced Iranian leaders to trade verifiable restrictions on nuclear activities for phased sanctions relief.

The intended outcome was therefore not permanent punishment. It was an exchange: specified limits on nuclear activity in return for specified relief.

Clear objectives establish the intended bargain, but enforcement and timeliness determine whether pressure reaches the target before it adapts.

McMaster returns to Iran to make the enforcement point. Although sanctions brought Iran to negotiations, he says, loopholes and insufficient enforcement undermined their effectiveness. Iran hid critical components of its nuclear program from inspection and verification while evading sanctions through Chinese banks, shell companies, and ghost ships.

Timing poses a related risk. Following Nicolás Maduro’s fraudulent claim of victory in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, McMaster says, the United States took six weeks to impose sanctions on Maduro and his regime.

According to McMaster, that delay helped Maduro consolidate power and suppress the opposition. The point is not speed for its own sake, but action while sanctions can still change a regime’s calculations and the political balance around it.

Sanctions design must distinguish between a regime and the population it governs. McMaster argues that effective restrictions should allow food, medicine, and aid to continue flowing so that civilians do not bear avoidable harm.

He points to Syria, where humanitarian exemptions enabled the delivery of aid while sanctions targeted Bashar al-Assad’s regime elites and the financial networks McMaster says sustained the regime’s murderous and brutal repression of Syrians. The objective is to concentrate pressure on the people and networks sustaining a regime while preserving humanitarian access for the public.

Flexibility is the counterpart to that precision. Sanctions should be adjusted, expanded, or lifted in response to a regime’s behavior, McMaster says. Relief is not an afterthought in this model; it is part of the incentive structure, giving the target a concrete reason to comply.

Libya is his example. Decades of sanctions, he says, helped convince Muammar Gaddafi to halt and dismantle his nuclear weapons program. Once Libya complied in 2003, a phased agreement gradually lifted sanctions. The sequence reflects McMaster’s preferred design: pressure tied to defined conduct, followed by calibrated relief when that conduct changes.