Abstract The deployment of US troops and the maintenance of US bases abroad is a manifestation of the commitments of both the United States and its partners to their security alliance. Does security cooperation lead to greater compliance with US sanctions regimes? Our research explores trade-based sanctions busting from 1990 to 2018 to understand whether the magnitude of the US military’s presence impacts the propensity of a host nation to bust US sanctions and the magnitude of sanctions-busting trade exchanged. Using the Global Sanctions Database and US global military deployments data (1990–2018), we argue that larger and long-term deployments both reduce the probability of trade-based sanctions busting and lessen the magnitude of sanctions-busting trade for states with defense pacts with the United States. Overall, we find that host nations that have signed defense pacts with the United States with more troops and longer troop durations exercise greater restraint on the likelihood of sanctions busting and reduced volumes of trade. However, we also find that the effect of alliance commitments dissipates after troop durations of 40 years. Third-party states without defense pacts see far fewer constraints on their likelihood to bust sanctions or the magnitude of their trade. Lastly, we note that the magnitude of sanctions-busting trade is more difficult to predict.
Willis et al. (Wed,) studied this question.