Robert Pape: Bessent’s Sanctions Are Not An Off-Ramp To War; They’re An “Escalation Trap”
University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape discusses Iran on “Breaking Points,” arguing that there is no historical case in which sanctions alone have forced a government to capitulate.
SAAGAR ENJETI, ‘BREAKING POINTS’ CO-HOST: Joining us now is great friend of the show, Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, a great friend of our show. It’s great to see you, sir. Thank you for joining us. ROBERT PAPE, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: Oh, it’s so great to be with you this morning. ENJETI: Absolutely. So sir, we know we are gonna talk about South Korea, but we also know that an extensive part of your work is around economic sanctions. We just did an entire segment about China’s expected response. We could put C1 up here on the screen so you could give a little bit more of your analysis. China is saying that they will hit out at quote, illegal new US sanctions on Iran and its trading partners. Considering your expertise and your decades long research into the subject, what do you make of the Secretary Beston’s economic D-Day threats here against Iran and its trading partners? PAPE: Yes, what Scott Beston is doing is going through another route of the escalation trap. He’s presenting it as an alternative to war, but that’s not what it is. What it’s really going to lead to is another escalation trap. And if anything, if he in fact goes forward, it would be more military war. So for 30 years, I have studied, as we all know, air power, but also side by side with that, economic blockades and economic sanctions, publishing big articles, fat appendices, all the cases since World War I. And here’s what people need to know, that starting in World War I, the pattern is different before, but starting in World War I, economic blockades and economic sanctions have never, never on their own won a major war. They’ve never toppled a government on their own in a major war, and they have never led to capitulation of that government to the coercer’s demands. This is extremely important to know, because in World War I, there was massive British blockade on Germany. World War II, massive economic sanctions and US blockade on Japan. And in both those cases, that blockade did not stop a messy ground wars. In fact, they only ended with messy ground wars, and with Japan, the atomic bombs. If we look at Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, we imposed economic sanctions on Saddam Hussein after we kicked his forces out of Kuwait, and those stayed on for a dozen years. They dropped the economy’s GDP by 48% each year for 12 solid years, and did not stop us from having to invade with 150,000 ground forces. Iran, we’ve been slapping sanctions on Iran for decades. And also Putin, look at what happened with Russia after he invaded Ukraine. Now, we slapped economic sanctions on Russia. What has been the result in all of these cases? All of these cases, notice, they don’t lead to peace. They don’t lead to ceasefire. They lead to failure, strategic failure, and more war, more escalation. So Scott Besant is really not doing a good service to the world by saying that this is an off-ramp to escalation. And the one question the media should have asked at the press conference is, Secretary Besant, can you name one case since World War I over the last hundred plus years, just one case that fits your model? All we need is one, sir, one case. And you know what? There’s not a case. And this is something that’s important because there’s a second point I wanna make, which is you also see the targets lashing back. It’s the sanctions we slapped on Japan that led to the Pearl Harbor attack. This is not a controversial point at this point. This is well known. And we run the risk that if we go forward, what’s going to happen is Iran will lash back, then we’re going to spiral back, and that is the escalation trap. These are not off-ramps to war. They’re effectively the Western way of war because they persuade liberal audiences, done everything you could do, so force is a last resort. That’s how you get the liberals on board. For wars, they don’t wanna fight.
