| > The inability of the Soviet Regime to freely trade with the west greatly contributed to it's demise Ah yes, the demise of the USSR is everyone's pet reason for [insert policy here], be it sanctions, military build-up (by Reagan predominantly), Afghanistan, economic factors and even cultural influence. Sanctions against the USSR lasted ~50 years and had limited effectiveness [1] > When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a major debate broke out over the contribution that the campaign of economic sanctions had made toward the fall of the Soviet empire. Many former officials in the Reagan administration credited sanctions with a significant role in the disintegration of the Soviet economy and therefore of the Soviet Union itself. On the other hand, the leading work on the effectiveness of economic sanctions—Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (vol. 1, p. 137)—concludes that although the United States did succeed in denying some arms and key technologies to the Soviets, the collapse stemmed from internal inefficiencies rather than U.S. economic sanctions. > That makes no sense. First of all most of the sanctions are not "punishment". Of course they're punishment. Or do you want to play semantics and argue it's mere "coercion"? Here's an exercise: set up a store selling whatever. I'll put a cordon around it and say no one can buy from you or sell to you because you don't pay your workers enough. Then tell me it's not "punishment". [1]: https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Embargoes-and-S... |