What distinguishes the post-World War I use of economic sanctions from their predecessors is a fundamental shift in understanding – i.e., that they were now going to be used as an alternative to force and violence rather than as a complement to them. Thus, economic sanctions became, as President Woodrow Wilson infamously described them, the "peaceful, deadly, silent remedy" that would eliminate the need for force in resolving future conflicts.

Unsurprisingly, reality initially failed to match expectations. It was the high-profile failure of sanctions to deter the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, for example, that led to the demise of the League of Nations. During the Cold War, in turn, force became the instrument of choice to coerce uncooperative regimes. When sanctions were used at all, as in the cases of South Africa and Rhodesia, they were more designed to appease domestic constituencies or make overt moral-ethical statements than they were to change a regime’s behavior. Indeed, it was not until the 1990s that economic sanctions returned to play a prominent role in international affairs.

However, even though sanctions are now a common tactic used to try and bring problem states back into the international fold, questions persist. Are sanctions useful for anything more than weakening the errant and misguided, and collaterally cooling internal dissent? Do they actually lead to cooperation, or to heel-dragging? Because the answers to these questions (and more) remain as elusive as ever, this week we opted to pose the well-traveled overall question yet again – do sanctions really work?

On Monday, the Peterson Institute's Gary Hufbauer and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' Mark Dubowitz tackle the question head-on – with Dubowitz arguing in the affirmative and Hufbauer in the negative. We then provide Dubowitz with some ammunition – i.e., a positive case study of UN Security Council sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro in the early 1990s. (In fact, it’s one of the few cases where the use of sanctions has been unequivocally successful.) On Wednesday, we then look at a much more equivocal example of sanctions. The University of Notre Dame's Dr George Lopez discusses UNSC sanctions against Iraq between 1990 and 2003. Next, the Oxford Research Group's Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi analyses the many dimensions of current US, EU and Security Council sanctions against Iran. Finally, the GCSP's W Pal Sidhu concludes the week by exploring how sanctions may be used to help combat weapons proliferation in the future.