Could there be a way to make economic sanctions more mission oriented?

Guest:	Lt. Col. Mary Hossier
Title:	Department of the Air Force senior military fellow, Center for a New American Security
Summary:	One of the main tools foreign policy leaders have to exert pressure on other governments is through the use of economic tools. Sanctions, export controls, investment restrictions, and financial measures have been used with much more frequency, rather than more invasive methods. But has their recurring use made it more difficult to lose sight of their main purpose in the first place?

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Interview transcript: 

Lt. Col. Mary Hossier I think what’s missing most is conceptual clarity that’s built from a pragmatic review of history. In simple terms, what works, what has not worked, and if it’s possible to determine why that is.

Eric White Without that, you are arguing here for a doctrine of economic coercion. And that may be able to put on a little bit more of a strategic mindset to towards using these tools. Why do you think that would help? And can you kind of just lay out for us a little bit what the doctrine approach necessarily means, for those of us who are not in the military world?

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Lt. Col. Mary Hossier Absolutely. The military has put a lot of work into doctrine, and the best way I can describe that is the fundamental principles and guide in a given field. So that means something a little unique for military, for the different branches of service, how we apply different weapons systems, but I think of it in simple terms like an instruction manual. You want to assemble a piece of furniture, you’re going to look at that manual. It’s going to tell you what all the parts are, what that piece is supposed to look like put together, and a relative order of sequencing on how to do that. The other example I thought of was that it also captures what we universally know to be true in a given field that is free of kind of partisan influence. It’s just looking at what is true throughout time. So as a runner, I’ll say something like the 80-20 rule in running, which is that 80% of your running should be easy, 20% should be at an up-tempo pace. That captures something coaches and practitioners have known for a while that if you start to exceed that 20% rule in your training, eventually you’re going to hit a wall, you’re going to start to get fatigued, you’re going to start start to get injured, and it’s not a rule anyone is enforcing. Every time you step out and run, you can do what you want to do, but if you start to violate this principle that we have discovered over time, it will start to have an impact on the effects you want to achieve, which is probably running a fast time.

Eric White Okay, so let’s stick with that analogy. What is the 20% that the tactical operational strategic levels of the U.S. policy when they’re using economic tools like this? What part are they are they doing too much of? Or is it a factor of just not sticking with the plan and readjusting and moving the goalposts, if we want to keep the sports references going?

Lt. Col. Mary Hossier Sure, using kind of the levels of application, I think one of the most challenging levels is the operational level — and this is true for the military and the economic — so often it can still be challenging, but you can develop very clear strategic goals. And with some thought and intention, that’s achievable. What becomes more challenging is that organizing framework at the operational level that turns into lines of effort of, how do we think this will help us achieve our goals? So if we do these things, this should result in victory, which in the military we’d call the theory of victory. Again, there’s a part of that that’s a little hypothetical, but it’s translating something that is a little more conceptual into something very tangible. And so that can be a sticking point for many people.

Eric White So if I understand you correctly, this is the idea of, we want this country to stop doing this, let’s sanction them, but not sanction them as in we’re going to sanction them and then they’ll immediately stop. Let’s sanction them with the goal of achieving this that may lead to them stopping this behavior. Am I breaking it down semi-correctly?

Lt. Col. Mary Hossier That’s exactly right. And that’s where the concept of campaigning can be really effective, because it can start to look broader, not only from one economic tool, you can look broader in the economic coercion tool set. And we have a report coming out in a few weeks that will go into economic pressure, which is a broader spectrum of how to exert economic influence. But at that operational level is also where you can integrate across the instruments of power. So if you want to back up those measures with potentially military or diplomatic or other informational tools of power and start to sequence those over time, that’s really where you can start to have more significant effect or can also give you some some warning signs that, hey, maybe we’ve achieved as much as we can in this area and we need to back off.

Eric White Yeah, the concept that we’ve heard from foreign policy officials in government over the years has been the red line. If this happens, this happens; if this happens, this happens. That’s sort of in the breadth of what you’re looking at, right? Or is that just oversimplifying things and you’re still saying that, okay, so a red line is crossed, the goal still needs to be kept in mind, even if the other side ramps up that behavior that we’re trying to stop, and I’m sorry if I’m getting a little too abstract here.

Lt. Col. Mary Hossier No, you’re not. I think doctrinally, it’s actually one level before that. So I think when we start talking about red lines, we’re really talking about planning and application. Doctrine is a lens through which to look at these different methods. And so it helps you start to select different COAs, or at least at a minimum to know, what is the conventional wisdom on these things? So as administrations turn over, high-level decision-making positions in the government tend to be somewhat transient, that you’re not starting from scratch in a given area. So often there’s expertise on these senior decision makers, but it allows you to look at the playbook and say, okay, what do we know has worked? What do we know has not worked? So now we’re not trying to use just a fundamentally ill-suited tool. Again, can you use a screwdriver like a hammer? Technically yes, it won’t work very well, and doctrine would tell you that with respect to economic pressure.

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Eric White Going forward, you said that you have some more research on this coming out in the future. Anything else that you are looking at in ways of maybe getting this in front of the right people to see if it could be of use the next time that we are looking to take this out of the holster?

Lt. Col. Mary Hossier So, the report we have coming out in a few weeks, I think, is going to be really helpful as a starting point. This is a dynamic instrument of power, so certainly no one person or agency has all the answers on this, but as we’ve started to hear thought among colleagues in this arena, it is definitely a useful tool to start the conversation. So the report we had looks back about 30, 40 years at different case studies, looking at, sanctions are one of the chapters, but tech denial, export controls, looking at how we’ve used those over time in different geopolitical contexts, different administrations, different conditions and what has worked well, what hasn’t, and then we take a stab at economic pressure. We use that term a little more broadly to start the conversation on some principles that we can start to build from to capture what we know has been true and we think will be true going forward.

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