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Definitions of Economic Sanctions

Economic sanctions are actions taken to harm another
countries economy
Collins English Dictionary 2009

[Dictionary.com, Accessed 7/17/13,

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/economic%20sanctions, chip]
economic sanctions pl n: any actions taken by one nation or group
of nations to harm the economy of another nation or group, often to
force a political change

Economic sanctions are restrictions on international trade

Investor Words
[Investorwords.com, Web Finance Inc., Accessed 7/17/13,
http://www.investorwords.com/1649/economic_sanctions.html,]
Economic Sanctions- Definition: Restrictions upon international trade
and finance that one country imposes on another for political
reasons

Economic sanctions include trade embargoes, denial of

loans and assets- diplomacy, military and quid pro quos
are excluded
Rennack, Analyst in Foreign Policy Legislation and Shuey,
Specialist in U.S. Foreign Policy and National Defense,
1997

[Dianne E. Rennack, Robert D. Shuey, 10/20/97, Economic Sanctions to

Achieve U.S. Foreign Policy Goals: Discussion and Guide to Current Law, CRS
Report for Congress, Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division,
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/crs-sanction.htm, chip]
Generally, economic sanctions might be defined as "coercive
economic measures taken against one or more countries to force a
change in policies, or at least to demonstrate a country's opinion about the
other's policies.'' The most-often quoted study on sanctions defines the term
as "...the deliberate, government-inspired withdrawal, or threat of
withdrawal, of customary trade or financial relations."2 Economic
sanctions typically include measures such as trade embargoes;
restrictions on particular exports or imports; denial of foreign
assistance, loans, and investments; or control of foreign assets and
economic transactions that involve U. S. citizens or businesses. These
definitions of economic sanctions would exclude diplomatic demarches,
reductions in embassy staff or closing of embassies, mobilizing
armed forces or going to war--tools clearly intended to change another
country's behavior through other than economic means. The use of
"carrots" (e.g., granting most-favored-nation status for another year; or

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selling advanced military aircraft to Taiwan to change China's behavior)
would not qualify as a sanction.

Economic sanctions entail military weakening and

punishment
Baldwin, a Senior Political Scientist at the Woodrow
Wilson @ Princeton, and Pape, Professor of Political
Science @ UChigago, 1998
[David A. Baldwin and Robert A. Pape, Evaluating Economic Sanctions,
International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2 pp. 189-198, The MIT Press,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539384, accessed 7/17/13, chip]
Rather than treating economic sanctions as tools of statecraft, Pape defines
them in terms of a particular strategy for using such tools (pp. 93-98). He
then proceeds to differentiate this strategy (i.e., economic sanctions) from
two other strategies for using economic instruments of statecraft-trade wars
and economic warfare-in terms of the differing goals of each strategy. From
this perspective, economic sanctions, trade wars, and economic warfare are
not alternative policy options to be considered with respect to a particular set
of foreign policy goals. Each is defined in terms of a different set of goals.
Definitional ties between particular policy instruments and particular goals do
not facilitate the comparative evaluation of the utility of policy instruments
with respect to a given set of goals. In offering his definition of economic
sanctions, Pape creatively interprets my posi- tion in the following passage:
"Recently, however, Baldwin has argued that the concept of economic
sanctions should be broadened to encompass all aspects of
'economic statecraft' including not only economic coercion for
political purposes (the traditional understanding of sanctions), but also
coercion for economic goals (trade disputes) as well as goals other
than changing the target state's behavior, such as engaging in
economic warfare, rallying domestic political support, demonstrating
resolve to third- party audiences, or simply inflicting punishment" (p.
95). I have never argued in favor of broadening the concept of economic
sanctions to encompass all aspects of economic statecraft. I have argued that
the concept of economic statecraft is preferable to such concepts as
economic coercion, economic warfare, economic leverage, and economic
sanctions-partially on the grounds that such concepts usually fail to maintain
a clear distinction between ends and means.3 I have noted that one of the
common meanings of "economic sanctions" corresponds with the
concept of economic statecraft and have sometimes used the terms
interchangeably. Although the concept of economic statecraft, as I use it,
allows for a wide range of possible goals, all of these involve attempts to
change the target state's behavior. Attempts to weaken another state's
economic poten- tial in order to weaken it militarily (Pape's "economic
warfare"), demonstrating resolve, and inflicting punishment are
included in my conception of economic statecraft only to the extent
that they are potentially relevant to changing the behavior of the
target state(s).4 This "behavior" is defined broadly to include beliefs,
attitudes, opinions, expectations, emotions, and/or predispositions to act.5

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And although I would not deny that economic sanctions are sometimes used
for "rallying domestic political support," I have excluded such domestic
considerations from my analyses of economic statecraft.6 Contrary to Pape's
suggestion, I have never used "rallying domestic political support" as a
criterion for judging the success of economic sanctions.

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AT: Cap K
The intent of the sanctions is to prevent the success of
the Cuban socialist model.
Lamrani, specialist on Cuba-US relations, 2013
(Dr. Salim Lamrani is a lecturer at Paris Sorbonne Paris IV University and Paris-Est Marne-la-Valle
University and French journalist, specialist on relations between Cuba and the US, The Economic War
Against Cuba: A Historical and Legal Perspective on the U.S. Blockade, p. Kindle Edition, Location 945)

According to Cuban authorities, this is the objective of the

economic sanctions and the reason for maintaining them over two
decades after the end of the Cold War. The former Cuban Minister
of Foreign Affairs, Felipe Perez Roque, has denounced this state of affairs
before the United Nations and provided an interpretation: Why does
the U.S. government not lift the blockade against Cuba? I will answer:
because it is afraid. It fears our example. It knows that if the
blockade were lifted, Cuba's economic and social development
would be dizzying. It knows that we would demonstrate even more
so than now, the possibilities of Cuban socialism, all the potential
not yet fully deployed of a country without discrimination of any kind,
with social justice and human rights for all citizens, and not just
for the few. It is the government of a great and powerful empire, but it
fears the example of this small insurgent island. Thus, in the light of
international conventions, the United States imposes on the
Cuban population living conditions that seriously undermine their
well-being and their physical and mental security.

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NEG

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AT: Intervening Actors

Blame can be shared-if one predicts that another actor
will commit murder because of ones actions, it is morally
equivalent to intending the murder
Zimmerman, UNC-Greensboro philosophy professor, 85
(Michael, Philosophical Quarterly, Intervening Agents and Moral
Responsibility,
http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/M_Zimmerman_Intervening_1985.pdf, KR)
"Hence"? Why think this? One reason might be put as follows: "Our idea
of responsibility requires that it should be uniquely ascribed." 29 But
this is false. If two people pick up a heavy rock and chuck it on a
third person's head, both will be responsible for the consequent
injury. But, it might be retorted, in su ch a case the responsibility is
shared, while in the original cases it is clear that the intervening agent is
fully responsible; hence the responsibility cannot be shared; hence the
original agents are not responsible. This, too, seems to me clearly false. To
say that someone is fully responsible is not to say that he is solely
responsible; responsibility is not to be cut up, like a pie, so that the
more people that join in a wrongdoing, the less responsibility to be
allocated to each. On the contrary, responsibility may be multiplied;
for to be fully responsible is to be totally without excuse, and many
persons may each be totally without excuse with respect to one and
the same event.30 This seems to me clearly true in the rock - throwing
case, and I see no reason to think that a secondary agent cannot be
fully responsible for what he does qua agent. (Surely we have
learned not to automatically excuse someone who was "only
following orders", even though we also blame the one who gave the
orders.) I suppose that someone might seek to "combine" (4b) and (4c)
thus: (4d) P1 is not morally responsible for El, if P2 is not P 1 's secondary
agent with respect to El and P2 is (full y) morally responsible for El. But,
again, why accept this? If I knowingly give a murderer an opportunity
to murder not intending that he should murder, mind you, but
"merely" waiting to see what he will do, given the chancesurely I
am to blame for the death that results. 31

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Discourse Not Key

Discourse doesnt shape reality truth exists externally to social construction and
even if it doesnt we must approach policymaking from this perspective

Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, 1996

[Alan, A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies,
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/ling
ua_franca_v4
.html]
Why did I do it? While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly
serious. What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and
sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy
thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or
(when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their
practical relevance. At its best, a journal like Social Text raises important
questions that no scientist should ignore -- questions, for example, about
how corporate and government funding influence scientific work.
Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the discussion of
these matters. In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist
thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the
problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not
simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not
merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What
sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary
academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these
obvious truths -- the utter absurdity of it all being concealed
through obscure and pretentious language. Social Text's acceptance
of my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory -- meaning
postmodernist literary theory -- carried to its logical extreme. No wonder
they didn't bother to consult a physicist. If all is discourse and ``text,''
then knowledge of the real world is superfluous; even physics
becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies. If, moreover, all is
rhetoric and ``language games,'' then internal logical consistency is
superfluous too: a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally
well. Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue; allusions, meta phors and
puns substitute for evidence and logic. My own article is, if anything, an
extremely modest example of this well-established genre. Politically, I'm
angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from
the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volteface. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with
science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought
and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are
incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful -not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent
turn of many ``progressive'' or ``leftist'' academic humanists and social
scientists toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this
worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for
progressive social critique. Theorizing about ``the social construction

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of reality'' won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or
devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we
combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if
we reject the notions of truth and falsity.

Placing representations and discourse first trades off with

concrete political change and makes no difference to
those engaged in political struggles.
Taft-Kaufman, Professor of Speech at Carnegie Mellon
University, 5
[Jill, Southern Comm. Journal, Spring, v. 60, Iss. 3, Other Ways, Proquest]
The postmodern passwords of "polyvocality," "Otherness," and
"difference," unsupported by substantial analysis of the concrete
contexts of subjects, creates a solipsistic quagmire . The political

sympathies of the new cultural critics, with their ostensible concern for the
lack of power experienced by marginalized people, aligns them with the
political left. Yet, despite their adversarial posture and talk of opposition,
their discourses on intertextuality and inter-referentiality isolate them
from and ignore the conditions that have produced leftist politics-conflict, racism, poverty, and injustice. In short, as Clarke (1991) asserts,

postmodern emphasis on new subjects conceals the old subjects, those

who have limited access to good jobs, food, housing, health care, and
transportation, as well as to the media that depict them. Merod (1987)
decries this situation as one which leaves no vision, will, or commitment
to activism. He notes that academic lip service to the oppositional is
underscored by the absence of focused collective or politically active
intellectual communities. Provoked by the academic manifestations of this
problem Di Leonardo (1990) echoes Merod and laments: Has there ever
been a historical era characterized by as little radical analysis or activism
and as much radical-chic writing as ours? Maundering on about
Otherness: phallocentrism or Eurocentric tropes has become a lazy
academic substitute for actual engagement with the detailed histories
and contemporary realities of Western racial minorities, white women, or

any Third World population. (p. 530) Clarke's assessment of the

postmodern elevation of language to the "sine qua non" of critical
discussion is an even stronger indictment against the trend . Clarke

examines Lyotard's (1984) The Postmodern Condition in which Lyotard

maintains that virtually all social relations are linguistic, and, therefore, it is
through the coercion that threatens speech that we enter the "realm of
terror" and society falls apart. To this assertion, Clarke replies: I can think
of few more striking indicators of the political and intellectual
impoverishment of a view of society that can only recognize the
discursive. If the worst terror we can envisage is the threat not to be
allowed to speak, we are appallingly ignorant of terror in its elaborate
contemporary forms. It may be the intellectual's conception of terror
(what else do we do but speak?), but its projection onto the rest of the
world would be calamitous....(pp. 2-27) The realm of the discursive is
derived from the requisites for human life, which are in the physical
world, rather than in a world of ideas or symbols.(4) Nutrition, shelter,

and protection are basic human needs that require collective activity for
their fulfillment. Postmodern emphasis on the discursive without an

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accompanying analysis of how the discursive emerges from material
circumstances hides the complex task of envisioning and working
towards concrete social goals (Merod, 1987). Although the material

conditions that create the situation of marginality escape the purview of

the postmodernist, the situation and its consequences are not overlooked
by scholars from marginalized groups. Robinson (1990) for example,
argues that "the justice that working people deserve is economic, not just
textual" (p. 571). Lopez (1992) states that "the starting point for
organizing the program content of education or political action must be
the present existential, concrete situation " (p. 299). West (1988) asserts

that borrowing French post-structuralist discourses about "Otherness"

blinds us to realities of American difference going on in front of us (p. 170).
Unlike postmodern "textual radicals" who Rabinow (1986) acknowledges
are "fuzzy about power and the realities of socioeconomic constraints" (p.
255), most writers from marginalized groups are clear about how discourse
interweaves with the concrete circumstances that create lived experience.
People whose lives form the material for postmodern counter-hegemonic discourse
do not share the optimism over the new recognition of their discursive
subjectivities, because such an acknowledgment does not address
sufficiently their collective historical and current struggles against
racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice. They do not
appreciate being told they are living in a world in which there are no
more real subjects. Ideas have consequences. Emphasizing the discursive
self when a person is hungry and homeless represents both a cultural and humane
failure.

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The belief that representations create everything would

destroy human condition and would collapse upon itself.
Postmodern representationalism actually alienates us
instead of liberating
Colebrook, Professor of English Lit University of Edinburgh,
2k
[Claire, Questioning Representation, SubStance Vol. 29 No. 2 Issue 92, p4767 JStor]
The second way in which postmodernity is characterized by the problem of
representation is in both the post-structuralist and conservative critiques of
the first position.' Representation is targeted in many post-structuralist
theories as the very problem of overcoming a history of Western thought that
has subordinated itself.2 The idea that there is a logican ultimate ground or
foundation of the giventies thought to some outside or some "proper
image" of itself. Ideas of being, truth, presence logic, or the real have defined
thought as re-presentation: the faithful image, copy or doubling of the
present.3 Western thought, it is argued, has always posited some
unquestioned "transcendence" or being that is there to be represented. To
liberate thought from representation would be to render thought
ungrounded. No longer an act of mimesis or recognition, thought
would have to be responsible for its own event. The postmodern idea
that all we have are representations of the world with no possibility
of an ultimate presence is still too foundationalistfor
representation then comes to stand in for some grounding logic or
condition. Thus, both Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault attack the very
notion of the "signifier," the idea that there is a representation, sign or token
that is other than some presence or sense (Derrida 1978, 281; Foucault 1972:
229). From this critique of representation as signification there are two
possibilities. The post-structuralist endeavor, undertaken by Foucault,
Derrida, Deleuze and Irigaray, is to question the very project of a grounding
logic, a project that they see as exemplified in the modern motif of
representation. This strand of poststructuralism is deeply critical of the
structuralist appeal to sign systems, semiotics and representational
conditions, conditions that attenuate the final moment in a Western tradition
of perpetual self-grounding (Deleuze 1994 xix; Derrida 1978, 155; Foucault
1970, 208; Irigaray 1985, 133). How can the representational domain be
posited as the limit point of our questioning? Surely one cannot remain
within some representational totalitysuch as a culture, discourse, or
epoch, for any recognition of such a totality implies the possibility of
questioning either its legitimacy or its limit. The post-structuralist
critique of postmodern representationalism often issues in an
apocalyptic or utopian projection of a point beyond representation, a
radical homelessness in which thought no longer locates itself within
a totality, logic or scheme. And this freedom from grounding or totality
would also overcome a sense of the world as being or presence, in
favor of a continual becoming, effect, or non-presence. Against the
location of thought within the point of view of a representing subject, this
anti-representationalism strives to think beyond all subjectivism.

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Focus on representations sanitizes powerful structures

and destroys the predictive power of IR
Stokes, Professor of Politics at Bristol University, No Date
[Doug, Gluing the Hats On: Power, Agency, and Reagan's Office of Public
Diplomacy,
http://web.archive.org/web/20060221025303/http://www.aqnt98.dsl.pipex.co
m/hats.htm, accessed 7/15/13, AR]
In her discursive practices approach, Doty argues that more poststructurally
inclined questions as to "how" foreign policy is made possible (that is, an
examination of the prior conditions of possibility) provides a more nuanced
account of foreign policy formation than questions which ask "why" (that is,
why a particular decision or policy was pursued). She rightly argues that
"why" questions pre-suppose a discursive matrix, a mode of being and a
background of social practices. Furthermore, these "why" questions fail to
account for "how these meanings, subjects, and interpretative dispositions
are constructed".66 However, in arguing for the superiority of analyses of
possibility conditions, she misses a crucial point and simplifies the very
nature of the "how" of foreign policy practice. Whilst it is important to analyse
the discursive conditions of possibility of policy formation, in failing to
account for how various discourses were employed and through what
institutional mechanisms, how some discourses gained ascendancy and not
others, and how social actors intervene in hegemonic struggles to maintain
various discourses, Doty seriously compromises the critical potential of her
analysis. By working with a notion of power free from any institutional basis
and rejecting a notion of power that "social actors possess and use",67 she
produces a narrative of foreign policy whereby the differential role of social
actors is erased from foreign policy processes and decision making. For Doty
it seems, power resides in discourses themselves and their endless
production of and play on meaning, not in the ability on the part of those who
own and control the means of social reproduction to manipulate dominant
social and political discourses and deploy them institutionally and
strategically. The ability to analyse the use of discourses by foreign policy
elites for purposeful ends and their ability to deploy hegemonic discourses
within foreign policy processes is lost through a delinking of those elites and
discursive production (her "dispersed" notion of power). Furthermore, Doty
assumes that the "kind of power that works through social agents, a power
that social actors posses and use" is somehow in opposition to a "power that
is productive of meanings, subject identities, their interrelationships and a
range of imaginable conduct". But these forms of power are not mutually
exclusive. Social agents can be both subject to discourse and act in
instrumental ways to effect discourse precisely through producing meanings
and subject identities, and delineating the range of policy options. Through
her erasure of the link between foreign policy processes and purposeful social
agents, she ends up producing an account of hegemonic foreign policy
narratives free from any narrator.68 This is particularly problematic because
the power inherent within representational practices does not necessarily
operate independently from the power to deploy those representations. The
power to represent, in turn, does not operate independently from differential

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access to the principal conduits of discursive production, sedimentation and
transmission (for example, the news media).69 Thus, Doty's account fails to
provide an adequate analysis of the socially constructed interests that
constitute the discursive construction of reality. As Stuart Hall argues "there
are centers that operate directly on the formation and constitution of
discourse. The media are in that business. Political parties are in that
business. When you set the terms in which the debate proceeds, that is an
exercise of symbolic power [which] circulates between constituted points of
condensation."70 The overall critical thrust of poststructurally inclined IR
theorists is blunted by both the refusal to examine or even acknowledge the
limits and constraints on social discourses and the denial of any linkage
between identity representations and the interests that may infuse these
representations.

The assumption that language shapes reality is

empirically flawed they must support their claim by
proving that we meant to be derogatory
Roskoski & Peabody, Florida State Debaters, 91

[Matthew and Joe, 1991,

A Linguistic and Philosophical Critique of Language "Arguments,
http://debate.uvm.edu/Library/DebateTheoryLibrary/Roskoski&PeabodyLangCritiques, accessed 7/15/13, AR]
Initially, it is important to note that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does not
intrinsically deserve presumption, although many authors assume its validity
without empirical support. The reason it does not deserve presumption
is that "on a priori grounds one can contest it by asking how, if we
are unable to organize our thinking beyond the limits set by our
native language, we could ever become aware of those limits"
(Robins 101). Au explains that "because it has received so little
convincing support, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has stimulated little
research" (Au 1984 156). However, many critical scholars take the
hypothesis for granted because it is a necessary but uninteresting
precondition for the claims they really want to defend. Khosroshahi
explains: However, the empirical tests of the hypothesis of linguistic
relativity have yielded more equivocal results. But independently of its
empirical status, Whorf's view is quite widely held. In fact, many social
movements have attempted reforms of language and have thus taken
Whorf's thesis for granted. (Khosroshahi 505). One reason for the hypothesis
being taken for granted is that on first glance it seems intuitively valid to
some. However, after research is conducted it becomes clear that this
intuition is no longer true. Rosch notes that the hypothesis "not only
does not appear to be empirically true in any major respect, but it no
longer even seems profoundly and ineffably true" (Rosch 276). The
implication for language "arguments" is clear: a debater must do more than
simply read cards from feminist or critical scholars that say language creates
reality. Instead , the debater must support this claim with empirical
studies or other forms of scientifically valid research. Mere intuition
is not enough, and it is our belief that valid empirical studies do not

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support the hypothesis. After assessing the studies up to and including
1989, Takano claimed that the hypothesis "has no empirical support"
(Takano 142). Further, Miller & McNeill claim that "nearly all" of the studies
performed on the Whorfian hypothesis "are best regarded as efforts to
substantiate the weak version of the hypothesis" (Miller & McNeill 734). We
additionally will offer four reasons the hypothesis is not valid. The first reason
is that it is impossible to generate empirical validation for the
hypothesis. Because the hypothesis is so metaphysical and because it
relies so heavily on intuition it is difficult if not impossible to
operationalize. Rosch asserts that "profound and ineffable truths are
not, in that form, subject to scientific investigation" (Rosch 259). We
concur for two reasons. The first is that the hypothesis is phrased as a
philosophical first principle and hence would not have an objective
referent. The second is there would be intrinsic problems in any such test.
The independent variable would be the language used by the
subject. The dependent variable would be the subject's subjective
reality. The problem is that the dependent variable can only be
measured through selfreporting, which - naturally - entails the use of
language. Hence, it is impossible to separate the dependent and
independent variables. In other words, we have no way of knowing if the
effects on "reality" are actual or merely artifacts of the language
being used as a measuring tool.