Bryan R Early

A primary goal of arms embargoes is to mitigate the humanitarian effects of conflict within target states by restricting access to foreign weaponry. Within this study, we investigate how embargoed governments adapt their violent strategies in response to restrictions on arms imports. We theorize that arms embargoes that undermine governments’ military strength may inadvertently increase their reliance on civilian repression as an alternative approach to countering domestic threats. However, we expect that targeted governments’ ability to acquire weapons from non-participating or non-compliant suppliers will have a mitigating effect. A global examination of the effects of arms embargoes between 1989 and 2004 supports our argument and also suggests that both the levels of arms received and who supplies them matter. Our findings suggest that policymakers who employ arms embargoes should consider increased violence against civilians as a potential unintended consequence and closely monitor target governments’ use of repression.

Evidence suggests that firms frequently over-comply with U.S. sanctions—a process also known as “de-risking.” We argue that U.S. enforcement of its economic sanctions has contributed to this phenomenon to the extent that we can observe a systematic relationship between U.S. sanctions enforcement and third-party trade with U.S. sanction targets. Specifically, we theorize that, the greater the frequency and severity of sanctions enforcement penalties imposed by the U.S. against sanctions violators, the more third-party trade with U.S. sanction targets will decline. Analyzing data from 2003 to 2015, we find that U.S. sanctions enforcement actions correlate with significant declines in dyadic trade between third-party states and U.S. sanctions targets, even when enforcement actions target parties external to that dyad. This suggests that the U.S.’s enforcement of its sanctions magnifies the harm that U.S. sanctions inflict on target economies.