BLOCKADES AND SANCTIONS

The laws of international relations deal with three broad categories of actions in response to disagreements among nations, or four, if one option is to do nothing and maintain the current situation. The three categories are: (1) amicable measures short of war; (2) nonamicable measures short of war; and (3) war. The first of these are formal understandings among nations designed to avoid warfare. They are usually based on some mutual agreement – the product of negotiations that could include mediation or arbitration. The second represents an attempt to avoid warfare through the adoptions of policies that impose a sufficiently high cost on the targeted nation that the target submits to certain terms to avoid military action. These policies – often termed “sanctions” – include measures of an economic, political, or diplomatic nature that are imposed unilaterally by one nation or by a coalition of nations. Among economic sanctions are Pacific blockades and various other forms of restrictions on trade, financial flows, and the movement of people. What types of sanctions to impose, and what their appropriate breadth and magnitude should be, are necessary questions that must be answered by any potential targeting nation (or nations); and the answers to those questions indicate the wide range of actions that are possible.

War involves a declared military action among two or more nations, although there remain questions of exactly what actions constitute a war and what the participants choose to call those actions.