Who said sanctions deter?

For 40 years, economic sanctions on North Korea have not prevented that nation from continual nuclear weapons build-ups, and the government recently announced they consider preemptive nuclear strikes legal, if they believe their state is in danger. Kim Jong Un also said that the North would never give up their nuclear weapons even in the face of “100 years of sanctions”.

UN Resolution 661 which placed economic sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq didn’t deter him from further tightening his grip on Kuwait, and neither did the sanctions campaign in the aftermath of the Gulf War deter him from continuing to hold power in the country.

Sanctions in the form of an oil embargo were placed on Imperial Japan during World War II, as a means of deterring them from colonizing much of the Asia Pacific and continuing their war crimes in China. They shortly attacked the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor afterwards, and then attacked several other large Asian island nations like the Philippines, Malaysia, and New Guinea, which resulted in millions of deaths.

During the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, sanctions were placed first on Serbia and Montenegro, then called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, during the Bosnian War, which failed to deter them from fighting in the later Kosovo War, despite the fact that by then the sanctions had become a total embargo of trade, scientific and cultural exchanges, and travel.

History can produce no witness of an instance where harsh sanctioning has deterred aggressive actions. Experts might argue the reasons, but other experts might argue that nowhere would history repeat itself more clearly than if China decided to take Taiwan by force.

Taiwan is entirely dependent on the importation of fossil fuels for its energy. 11 days of blockade would exhaust the country’s supply of natural gas, which services 35.7% of her energy grid. 39 days would exhaust the gasoline supply.

Taiwan’s miracle microchip industry, the largest in the world, consumes 12.5% of all electricity, and accounts for 38% of the country’s exports.

It would hardly take World War II effort for the Chinese to relegate Taiwan to a third-world country, but the good news is that many experts see a forceful transition of power as very unlikely.

The Joint War Committee (JWC) of insurers based in London, which classifies the world’s waters according to risk, actually don’t rank the Taiwan Straits as a waterway with a heightened risk for shipping. China and Taiwan are each other’s closest trading partner, and China certainly doesn’t benefit from interfering with the production of 60% of the world’s computer chip manufacturing, and 95% of advanced chip manufacturing.

Sanctions on China would be terribly disruptive to the United States. China is currently the nation’s largest goods trading partner with $559.2 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2020. Goods exports totaled $124.5 billion; goods imports totaled $434.7 billion, and trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $56.0 billion. WaL

PICTURED ABOVE: PLAAF Shenyang-11 fighter jets over China in 2020.