Milosevic’s Downfall Seen as a Rare Success for Economic Sanctions

Just when the world had about concluded that economic sanctions are close to useless against entrenched dictators, the sudden downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia has sent a different message. Sometimes the strategy seems to work.

No analyst is claiming that the economic and political isolation imposed on Yugoslavia by the United States and its allies is the only reason Milosevic was forced from power. But there is a growing consensus that the sanctions were more effective than even their staunchest backers had dared to hope just a few weeks ago.

A public opinion poll taken in Yugoslavia just before massive demonstrations forced Milosevic to quit indicated that the sanctions and their consequences were a major force for change. In the survey commissioned by the U.S. National Democratic Institute, 1,780 Yugoslav voters were asked what was the most important issue that determined their choice in the Sept. 24 election won by opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica.

More than half cited either the economic crisis that was exacerbated by the sanctions, or the sanctions themselves.

As policymakers in the United States and Europe begin a critical “lessons learned” study of events in Yugoslavia, they are pondering a crucial question: Why did sanctions help topple Milosevic when they have failed to oust dictators or force policy changes in Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and elsewhere?

Proponents of sanctions acknowledge that conditions in Yugoslavia were far more favorable. Critics of sanctions, such as much of the U.S. business community, agreed. These critics also cautioned that the policy would not necessarily achieve its goals elsewhere.

Gary Litman, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s managing director for Europe and Eurasia, said: “Yugoslavs found themselves in isolation while the other Eastern European countries were getting ready to join the European Union. That showed them that they were on the wrong side of history. We don’t have that anywhere else.”

Based on the Yugoslav experience, U.S. officials and nongovernmental experts said sanctions can prove effective when:

* They are imposed--and rigorously enforced--by most of the world’s governments.

* The target country has nothing that the rest of the world needs, like Iraq’s oil, which encourages evasion.

* The targeted regime is not an iron-clad tyranny and it has at least some independent organizations.

* The policy is carefully designed to hit hard at the government and its leaders through visa bans affecting only named individuals and through restrictions affecting the business interests of the leadership. However, some impact on ordinary citizens is inevitable and possibly even desirable.

All of these factors came into play in the case of Yugoslavia, while none pertain to Iraq.

U.S.-imposed sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Libya are not supported by the rest of the world, and North Korea is the sort of dictatorship that seems to enjoy its international isolation, making sanctions ineffective.

Most experts, including critics of sanctions, agree that the biggest success for the policy before the Yugoslav experience was in South Africa, where the white-minority government was squeezed until it agreed to hold all-race elections.

Like Yugoslavia, the South Africa of that era was a police state with democratic trappings, the kind of regime most susceptible to sanctions. And, as on Yugoslavia, the isolation had a heavy impact.

Generally speaking, U.S. officials favor sanctions in dealing with rogue states, regarding the policy as preferable to military force. European countries generally oppose sanctions because they interfere with trade, crucial to a continent with fewer natural resources than the United States.

Religious and humanitarian groups frequently oppose sanctions because they say the impact is greater on a country’s innocent population than on its government.

“Sanctions are a very difficult tool to gauge,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, a scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington who has made a study of U.S. sanctions policy. “Often, you don’t know if they work until after it is over.”

She added: “The sanctions gave Milosevic something to blame for all of Serbia’s ills. But it is certainly worth asking if more people had been prospering under Milosevic, which would have been the case without the sanctions, would so many have taken to the streets? If more people had been more comfortable, they would have been less willing to take action.”

Just as important, Yugoslavia was never a completely totalitarian state in the mold of Iraq or North Korea. So public opinion mattered, both when Milosevic was able to bend it, and when it turned on him.

“This has always been a regime with a democratic facade,” said Daniel Serwer, director of the Balkan initiative at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Washington think tank. “People started to take the facade seriously and found they could use it to remove Milosevic.”