When Sanctions Worked: The Case of Rhodesia Reexamined

IN JANUARY 1966 British Prime Minister Harold Wilson promised African states at the Commonwealth Summit in Lagos that recently imposed sanctions would bring down the minority Rhodesian regime in 'weeks, not months'.1 This rash prediction later became established as an implicit criterion showing the failure of sanctions. Rhodesia's survival, years later, was ipso facto proof, for popular opinion as well as for many scholars, that 'sanctions don't work'. Zimbabwe is independent now, but Rhodesian sanctions have not been a major subject of scholarly inquiry for some years. After the initial wave of studies2, many scholars lost interest. Sanctions were written offas a dismal failure. A handful of studies, such as those by Strack, Losman, Doxey, and Renwick, analysed the Rhodesian case shortly before or after Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.3 Yet they too considered that sanctions, as an economic tool intended to effect political change, had had relatively limited success. Writing in 1978, Strack claimed that not only were Rhodesian sanctions 'ineffective' in terms of securing policy objectives, they were possibly 'counter-productive', causing 'the deterioration of a situation they were designed to alleviate'.4 The following year, Losman wrote that 'political success has not been forthcoming' as a result of the Rhodesian embargo, 'despite sanctions having some very damaging economic results'. He attributed Rhodesian willingness to negotiate to the increased costs of the