U.S. Sanctions and the Global South: Navigating Networked Resistance, Competing Narratives, and Unintended Consequences

Economic sanctions are long-standing instruments of national power used to coerce rogue actors, deny access to resources, and deter would-be copycats. When the U.S. imposes sanctions, political leaders assume that America has sufficient clout to isolate a target politically and impose economic costs to incentivize a change in behavior. Yet the unipolar moment following the Soviet Union's demise has passed, and the U.S. no longer has unrivaled political and economic hegemony. U.S. economic sanctions, pursued unilaterally or with a small coalition of the willing, must increasingly navigate a more contested marketplace.

This policy brief explores how international sanctions applied by the U.S. and its allies are perceived and received in low- and middle-income countries, versus in the advanced economies that have most often deployed these tools. It analyzes a novel data source of articles written by scholars from 71 sanctioned, sanctioning, and third countries on sanctions. As U.S. policymakers employ sanctions in an era of heightened great power competition, our analysis surfaces three challenges to their use as a tool of economic statecraft. First, target countries have evolved from isolated defiance to networked resistance. Second, U.S. sanctions are vulnerable to damaging counter-narratives. Third, U.S. sanctions must avoid unintended consequences from isolating target countries. The brief concludes with seven specific opportunities for action around sanctions for policymakers to consider as part of a robust foreign policy toolkit.

This brief was originally published as a chapter in Sanctions and the Symphony of Power: Revitalizing American Economic Statecraft, a research volume commissioned by the Gates Global Policy Center to inform the Third Gates Forum on Economic Statecraft and Sanctions, held at William & Mary in December 2024.