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Patriots and Profiteers: On Economic Warfare, Embargo Busting, and State-Sponsored Crime
Everyone knows that by enforcing trade sanctions and arms embargoes, modern democracies make tin-pot dictators and rogue states mend their ways – right? The application of economic pressure is easily the most effective way to curb aggression and encourage respect for human rights – isn’t it? Not exactly.
R.T. Naylor demonstrates, graphically, entertainingly, and conclusively, that economic warfare fails almost everywhere it is attempted. And even when it succeeds, it has consequences that are not only unintended, but also frequently the precise opposite of their advertised result. Sanctions helped make South Africa, for example, the continent’s military powerhouse. Embargoes drove Cuba into the awkward embrace of the Soviet Union. Everywhere that economic pressures have been used to either replace or augment military actions, the result has been confusion leading into criminality. From east to west, from before the First World War to the recent confrontations with Pakistan, Bosnia, Iraq, the legacy of economic warfare has been money laundering, gun-running, drug smuggling, and evasion of the rule of law.
Naylor’s approach is at once epic and anecdotal. His survey is populated by a bizarre underworld of warriors and smugglers, gangsters and spies, whose singular careers would be funny if they weren’t absolutely real.
R.T. Naylor demonstrates, graphically, entertainingly, and conclusively, that economic warfare fails almost everywhere it is attempted. And even when it succeeds, it has consequences that are not only unintended, but also frequently the precise opposite of their advertised result. Sanctions helped make South Africa, for example, the continent’s military powerhouse. Embargoes drove Cuba into the awkward embrace of the Soviet Union. Everywhere that economic pressures have been used to either replace or augment military actions, the result has been confusion leading into criminality. From east to west, from before the First World War to the recent confrontations with Pakistan, Bosnia, Iraq, the legacy of economic warfare has been money laundering, gun-running, drug smuggling, and evasion of the rule of law.
Naylor’s approach is at once epic and anecdotal. His survey is populated by a bizarre underworld of warriors and smugglers, gangsters and spies, whose singular careers would be funny if they weren’t absolutely real.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
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