Sanctions, Blockades, and You: The Nationstates’ Player’s Guide to International Maritime Law
Introduction:
Introduction:
Unfortunately speaking, the questions of international maritime law meet at the intersection of two things - things that come up a lot in NationStates roleplay, and a very complicated issue that most NationStates roleplayers don’t really have a good understanding of. This often leads to heated arguments between NS players, both IC and OOC. In light of this, and in light of the fact that I’ve been repeatedly asked questions on maritime law by people on NS, I’ve decided to summarize what I know (with the help of some friends who have knowledge of international law) in a way that’s accessible to NS players. In this I’m aided by some of my RL knowledge (I’m writing a dissertation on maritime history), and also by the experience of 16 years of NationStates roleplays. I’m willing to admit, ahead of time, that there are many people on those forums that probably know much better than me (just as with all the other topics I’ve written about prior to this), but unfortunately a lot of them are busy people who have actual lives, so it falls to me to write this thing down.
To start with, we need to explain the basic terms, which I’m going to outline here in no particular order.
To start with, we need to explain the basic terms, which I’m going to outline here in no particular order.
Important Terms in International Relations
International law: One important misconception is that ‘international law’ means a set of mandatory rules which all nations must follow, much like the regular law is a set of rules that all members of a society must follow. This is sort of true, but only sort of. In the real world, ‘international law’ is mainly a set of treaties which are signed by almost the entirety of the world’s nations. It is binding on those nations not due to some overreaching global government making it ‘law’ for them to comply but, simply speaking, due to the fact they’ve voluntarily signed those treaties.
However, there is a subset of arrangements which are viewed as not requiring such a formal assent. These are known as ‘customary’ international law, as in a set of agreements to which all countries are expected to abide by long-standing traditions of international relations, even if they did not sign up to them. The exact definition of what falls under such customary law is a controversy between lawyers and diplomats even in the real world, but it’s worth noting that this is typically held to prohibit, at a minimum, various awful crimes against humanity such as genocide, slavery, torture, wars of aggression, etc. In other words, Don’t Be Hitler.
In NationStates roleplays, nations are often expected to abide by broad rules of behavior by which real-world nations abide. For example, in NS people typically expect a nation’s national waters to extend 12 nautical miles from its shores. There’s no treaty or agreement in NS that says ‘12 nautical miles’, and yet people typically expect this to be the rule. This is an example of ‘customary’ international law’.
Sovereignty: Nations typically believe themselves to be sovereign, that’s to say, to have a right to make law within their borders, and generally remain free of foreign rule. All sorts of international standards exist to make nations’ sovereignty actually effective (for example, nations’ sovereignty typically extends to their embassies, the decks of their ships while in international waters), and so forth.
However, this sovereignty is limited in two important ways:
One, a nation that acts in ways that fly completely in the face of international law can expect an international intervention. Obviously, in practice, these international reactions are dependent on a bunch of stuff. For example, if a nation is very powerful, or if it is due to some geopolitical reason very hard to invade, it can typically expect to get away with awful human rights violations, including even genocide. But conversely, it’s important to remember that if your nation is acting in a way that causes international outrage, this may open it up to intervention by foreign powers (for example, if they stand to benefit).
Two, there are ways in which countries can retaliate against each other without, technically speaking, violating each other’s sovereignty. We are going to discuss these next.
International sanctions: The news media have caused a lot of people to misinterpret the term ‘sanctions’. The word seems to imply some manner of penalties imposed by some legal authority. But that’s not really what sanctions are.
Sanctions are in fact restrictions imposed by one nation, or a group of nations, against a member of the world community, an individual, or an organization. Usually we expect sanctions to be applied by a more powerful nation, or a group of nations (such as the USA, or the EU) against a less powerful one (such as Russia or North Korea or Iraq). But less powerful nations sometimes also apply sanctions. After sanctions have been applied by Western countries against Russian businesses in 2014, Russia ‘retaliated’ by restricting the importation of a range of agricultural and food products into Russia.
Importantly, sanctions are not, in fact, violations of a country’s sovereignty in a direct way. For example, under the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, the USA restricted entry to the USA to a range of Russian officials accused of being responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky in Russian custody. Obviously, the United States, as a sovereign country, is generally held as having the right to bar anyone from entering its borders. In retaliation for this, Russia barred a range of American officials from entering Russia, as well as restricting adoption of Russian children by US citizens. All of these actions are, again, within the prerogative of both Russia and the USA to do, for any reason, regardless of whether we may feel they are wise actions.
In the real world, countries like the USA can use their economic and political weight to ensure that a sanctions regime restricts not only their citizens, but also foreign citizens, from interacting with a certain nation. For example, the USA may forbid any banks that do business with Iran from doing business in the USA - which obviously means many international banking companies refuse to do business with Iran rather than forgo the much more important US market. In the Nationstates multiverse this is much more difficult to do.
Embargo: An embargo is the idea of sanctions brought to its fullest extent - a prohibition against one’s citizens doing business with a certain country. (An arms embargo is obviously a prohibition on weapons sales to a certain country or area, perhaps to a country portrayed as a rogue state, or an area where a civil war is ongoing. The most famous embargoes are the United States embargo on Cuba, which commenced in the form of an arms embargo against the Batista regime and continues in various forms to this day, and Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807, in which the United States, quite seriously, attempted to embargo its trade with essentially the entire world. (Spoiler alert: this did not work, and achieved none of its objectives).
Blockade: A blockade is a substantially different action from the above, in that, unlike an embargo or a sanctions regime, a blockade is in fact an act of war. Many NationStates players will sometimes post they are declaring a blockade as a step short of declaring war, and so it’s worth stating this clearly - a blockade is entirely different from the other restrictive measures. In a sanctions regime or embargo, a nation essentially only controls things that are within the purview of its sovereignty. A blockade, on the other hand, is an attempt to physically control access to the enemy nation through the sea or air.
It’s important to note that in the real world, blockades are subject to a range of rules. A blockading power must, first of all, announce to the world that a blockade is in place. This entitles the blockading power to stop any neutral shipping that approaches the nation or port being blockaded, and request that it stop and allow itself to be boarded, in order to be searched for contraband. (Ships that are boarded can be diverted to a nearby port for a more thorough search, and ships that refuse to be boarded may be attacked).
In this context, the word ‘contraband’ refers specifically to military equipment or items that are necessary for its production (for instance, certain metals, factory equipment, and so on). However, in the real-world, blockades erected for the sole purpose of starving the civilian population of a nation are considered to be a war crime.
It should also be noted that, although blockades may not be - under customary international law at least - used as a means of genocide, any effective blockade is likely to lead, at least, to economic damage to the nation that’s being targeted, and civilians will inevitably suffer to some extent.
Another phenomenon that must be discussed is ‘blockade running’, the phenomenon of bypassing blockades by means of small or fast vessels that sneak past the blockading force. This was a viable means of smuggling in the Age of Sail, where the only means for ships to detect other ships was to have them spotted by the naked eye, and where ships could not meaningfully communicate with other ships beyond the horizon. Any substantial modern cargo ship is running the serious risk of being spotted by aircraft or satellites, and even if it maintains perfect radio silence and evasion, there is still the fact modern container ships may only unload at ports, which are easily monitored as points of entry. This, together with the increased range of modern armament essentially limits blockade running either to small smuggling boats, or, in a somewhat more fantastic context, cargo submarines.
However, there is a subset of arrangements which are viewed as not requiring such a formal assent. These are known as ‘customary’ international law, as in a set of agreements to which all countries are expected to abide by long-standing traditions of international relations, even if they did not sign up to them. The exact definition of what falls under such customary law is a controversy between lawyers and diplomats even in the real world, but it’s worth noting that this is typically held to prohibit, at a minimum, various awful crimes against humanity such as genocide, slavery, torture, wars of aggression, etc. In other words, Don’t Be Hitler.
In NationStates roleplays, nations are often expected to abide by broad rules of behavior by which real-world nations abide. For example, in NS people typically expect a nation’s national waters to extend 12 nautical miles from its shores. There’s no treaty or agreement in NS that says ‘12 nautical miles’, and yet people typically expect this to be the rule. This is an example of ‘customary’ international law’.
Sovereignty: Nations typically believe themselves to be sovereign, that’s to say, to have a right to make law within their borders, and generally remain free of foreign rule. All sorts of international standards exist to make nations’ sovereignty actually effective (for example, nations’ sovereignty typically extends to their embassies, the decks of their ships while in international waters), and so forth.
However, this sovereignty is limited in two important ways:
One, a nation that acts in ways that fly completely in the face of international law can expect an international intervention. Obviously, in practice, these international reactions are dependent on a bunch of stuff. For example, if a nation is very powerful, or if it is due to some geopolitical reason very hard to invade, it can typically expect to get away with awful human rights violations, including even genocide. But conversely, it’s important to remember that if your nation is acting in a way that causes international outrage, this may open it up to intervention by foreign powers (for example, if they stand to benefit).
Two, there are ways in which countries can retaliate against each other without, technically speaking, violating each other’s sovereignty. We are going to discuss these next.
International sanctions: The news media have caused a lot of people to misinterpret the term ‘sanctions’. The word seems to imply some manner of penalties imposed by some legal authority. But that’s not really what sanctions are.
Sanctions are in fact restrictions imposed by one nation, or a group of nations, against a member of the world community, an individual, or an organization. Usually we expect sanctions to be applied by a more powerful nation, or a group of nations (such as the USA, or the EU) against a less powerful one (such as Russia or North Korea or Iraq). But less powerful nations sometimes also apply sanctions. After sanctions have been applied by Western countries against Russian businesses in 2014, Russia ‘retaliated’ by restricting the importation of a range of agricultural and food products into Russia.
Importantly, sanctions are not, in fact, violations of a country’s sovereignty in a direct way. For example, under the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, the USA restricted entry to the USA to a range of Russian officials accused of being responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky in Russian custody. Obviously, the United States, as a sovereign country, is generally held as having the right to bar anyone from entering its borders. In retaliation for this, Russia barred a range of American officials from entering Russia, as well as restricting adoption of Russian children by US citizens. All of these actions are, again, within the prerogative of both Russia and the USA to do, for any reason, regardless of whether we may feel they are wise actions.
In the real world, countries like the USA can use their economic and political weight to ensure that a sanctions regime restricts not only their citizens, but also foreign citizens, from interacting with a certain nation. For example, the USA may forbid any banks that do business with Iran from doing business in the USA - which obviously means many international banking companies refuse to do business with Iran rather than forgo the much more important US market. In the Nationstates multiverse this is much more difficult to do.
Embargo: An embargo is the idea of sanctions brought to its fullest extent - a prohibition against one’s citizens doing business with a certain country. (An arms embargo is obviously a prohibition on weapons sales to a certain country or area, perhaps to a country portrayed as a rogue state, or an area where a civil war is ongoing. The most famous embargoes are the United States embargo on Cuba, which commenced in the form of an arms embargo against the Batista regime and continues in various forms to this day, and Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807, in which the United States, quite seriously, attempted to embargo its trade with essentially the entire world. (Spoiler alert: this did not work, and achieved none of its objectives).
Blockade: A blockade is a substantially different action from the above, in that, unlike an embargo or a sanctions regime, a blockade is in fact an act of war. Many NationStates players will sometimes post they are declaring a blockade as a step short of declaring war, and so it’s worth stating this clearly - a blockade is entirely different from the other restrictive measures. In a sanctions regime or embargo, a nation essentially only controls things that are within the purview of its sovereignty. A blockade, on the other hand, is an attempt to physically control access to the enemy nation through the sea or air.
It’s important to note that in the real world, blockades are subject to a range of rules. A blockading power must, first of all, announce to the world that a blockade is in place. This entitles the blockading power to stop any neutral shipping that approaches the nation or port being blockaded, and request that it stop and allow itself to be boarded, in order to be searched for contraband. (Ships that are boarded can be diverted to a nearby port for a more thorough search, and ships that refuse to be boarded may be attacked).
In this context, the word ‘contraband’ refers specifically to military equipment or items that are necessary for its production (for instance, certain metals, factory equipment, and so on). However, in the real-world, blockades erected for the sole purpose of starving the civilian population of a nation are considered to be a war crime.
It should also be noted that, although blockades may not be - under customary international law at least - used as a means of genocide, any effective blockade is likely to lead, at least, to economic damage to the nation that’s being targeted, and civilians will inevitably suffer to some extent.
Another phenomenon that must be discussed is ‘blockade running’, the phenomenon of bypassing blockades by means of small or fast vessels that sneak past the blockading force. This was a viable means of smuggling in the Age of Sail, where the only means for ships to detect other ships was to have them spotted by the naked eye, and where ships could not meaningfully communicate with other ships beyond the horizon. Any substantial modern cargo ship is running the serious risk of being spotted by aircraft or satellites, and even if it maintains perfect radio silence and evasion, there is still the fact modern container ships may only unload at ports, which are easily monitored as points of entry. This, together with the increased range of modern armament essentially limits blockade running either to small smuggling boats, or, in a somewhat more fantastic context, cargo submarines.
National and International Waters
Because of the importance of this concept, the concept of ‘national’ and ‘international’ waters merits a separate chapter all of its own.
What is typically called ‘national waters’ is, in the real world, typically 12 nautical miles outwards from the low-tide mark of a given nation’s shoreline, as well as any bodies of water inwards of said shoreline (rivers, inland seas, lakes, and the like). In legal documents, ‘national waters’ are also called ‘internal seas’, even though they may not, necessarily, actually lie to the interior of a nation. A nation typically has complete authority over its national waters, just the same as it has over events that occur within its land territory.
In areas of the world where one may have difficulties passing through a given area without passing through someone’s coastal waters, the concept of ‘innocent passage’ has been introduced. In brief, this means the passage of a ship in such a way that in no way affects the security or laws of a coastal nation - the ship neither fires any weapons, launches any aircraft, engages in any fishing or military activities, nor does it launch or receive any cargo, nor conduct any radio broadcasts aimed at destabilizing the coastal state. In short, it does not affect the coastal state in any way except that it happens to be passing by.
Nations that reside on an archipelago (such as Indonesia) can also exercise similar authority over waters lying within the archipelago as it does over its internal seas, except that they must allow innocent passage of ships through those territories.
About the 1940s, nations began realizing that the traditional ‘internal seas’ limit of 12 nautical miles wasn’t realistically practical for a range of applications. While it was perfectly decent for fending off smugglers and the like, it however did nothing to prevent the exhaustion of a nation’s fisheries and other resources. This led to a series of conflicts known as the Cod Wars. To summarize a complex issue, in the Cod Wars, the Icelandic Navy repeatedly chased away British fishing trawlers that entered fisheries near Iceland. While these fisheries were outside the traditional boundaries of Iceland’s territorial waters, the Icelanders insisted on limiting other countries’ access to them, for fear of an exhaustion of Iceland’s cod, on which its fishing industry depended. The Icelandic navy armed its ships with net cutters - a grapnel-like device that cut fishing trawlers’ nets - and proceeded to fend off trawlers. Not wanting to actually fight and kill over some fishing nets, NATO eventually backed down.
Today, two important forms of territory are recognized by the international community. One is the exclusive economic zone. This is an area of sea 200 nautical miles from a given nation’s shoreline. In this area, the nation exercises partial sovereignty - i.e. it is able to control the use of the sea’s resources, such as fisheries and the seabed, but not transit through the EEZ itself. Further, international law recognizes a continental shelf - territory approximately 300 miles from the nation’s shore, where it controls the seabed and its resources, but not transit. (Note that this right extends regardless of the actual extent of the continental shelf, which may be larger, or smaller, than this boundary).
An astute reader may note that there are various circumstances in the real world where these rules cannot be fully applied. For instance, where two nations’ shores are less than 400 miles apart, obviously the countries cannot both have a 200-mile EEZ, and have to reach an arrangement. Some of the world’s seas are governed by special agreements (The Montreux Convention, for instance, governs access to the Black Sea, and the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea governs all governance issues for that body of water).
In NationStates, several important realities exist that a player sometimes must confront. First of all, as is obvious, players who roleplay in closed-world regions that are separate from the overall NationStates multiverse can make their own rules and these are obviously not covered in this primer as I have no knowledge of them. (However, if you’re a closed-region roleplayer, please feel free to share your experience with us below! Don’t be shy!).
Second, one phenomenon that often exists in NationStates is that of ‘regional waters’. That is to say, a region that has an established in-character geography, can, through a consensus of the nations there, or perhaps through the brute-force domination of the most powerful nations, have its own rules that apply to waters within the region.
As an example, the region of Haven, which was once far more active than it is today, used to have the legal concept of ‘regional waters’, i.e. waters that were governed in common by all region members. Nations that were not residents of the region were not permitted to enter the Haven Straits (the region’s largest body of water) with war fleets. The region of Greater Prussia, currently under the leadership of yours truly, also designates most of the international waters within the region as ‘regional waters’, where joint sovereignty is exercised by the crown of Greater Prussia (mainly, again, prohibiting the entry of extra-regional warfleets).
A more fantastic element of NationStates roleplay that may exist in some nations is the presence of settlements and entire civilizations either on the sea surface (for example, in the form of seasteads and other floating settlements), or perhaps even in the ocean itself (if you accept the existence of sapient creatures that live underwater, they might have cities and entire nations under the sea). In the real world, the former are not recognized as sovereign, (and are almost non-existent) and the latter don’t exist at all, but it’s easy to imagine that a floating city of 100,000 or a population of underwater creatures, if they were capable of civilization and industry, would require some form of legal recognition (perhaps in the form of a national maritime boundary extending 12 miles from the outer edge of the settlement).
In NationStates, nations typically assume that - outside the national waters of one nation or another - their ships are sovereign national territory, and may not be boarded by other nations’ law enforcement of navies. This is broadly the tradition as is followed by NS roleplayers, but several things are worth noting:
1) Some nations don’t really observe this right, and in some cases it is violated quite flagrantly (for example, its often violated in relation to ships that are subjected to carrying slaves).
2) In the real world, treaties have existed since the 1970s to limit this right, in terms of the fact that law enforcement vessels may stop and search ships in international waters for contraband (typically IRL this means drugs). No such treaties exist in NS, as there’s no NS consensus to what constitutes ‘contraband’. Nations in NationStates have more or less gotten away with attacking slave-carrying vessels, but they’ve not - in NationStates - gotten away with attacking whaling ships.
What is typically called ‘national waters’ is, in the real world, typically 12 nautical miles outwards from the low-tide mark of a given nation’s shoreline, as well as any bodies of water inwards of said shoreline (rivers, inland seas, lakes, and the like). In legal documents, ‘national waters’ are also called ‘internal seas’, even though they may not, necessarily, actually lie to the interior of a nation. A nation typically has complete authority over its national waters, just the same as it has over events that occur within its land territory.
In areas of the world where one may have difficulties passing through a given area without passing through someone’s coastal waters, the concept of ‘innocent passage’ has been introduced. In brief, this means the passage of a ship in such a way that in no way affects the security or laws of a coastal nation - the ship neither fires any weapons, launches any aircraft, engages in any fishing or military activities, nor does it launch or receive any cargo, nor conduct any radio broadcasts aimed at destabilizing the coastal state. In short, it does not affect the coastal state in any way except that it happens to be passing by.
Nations that reside on an archipelago (such as Indonesia) can also exercise similar authority over waters lying within the archipelago as it does over its internal seas, except that they must allow innocent passage of ships through those territories.
About the 1940s, nations began realizing that the traditional ‘internal seas’ limit of 12 nautical miles wasn’t realistically practical for a range of applications. While it was perfectly decent for fending off smugglers and the like, it however did nothing to prevent the exhaustion of a nation’s fisheries and other resources. This led to a series of conflicts known as the Cod Wars. To summarize a complex issue, in the Cod Wars, the Icelandic Navy repeatedly chased away British fishing trawlers that entered fisheries near Iceland. While these fisheries were outside the traditional boundaries of Iceland’s territorial waters, the Icelanders insisted on limiting other countries’ access to them, for fear of an exhaustion of Iceland’s cod, on which its fishing industry depended. The Icelandic navy armed its ships with net cutters - a grapnel-like device that cut fishing trawlers’ nets - and proceeded to fend off trawlers. Not wanting to actually fight and kill over some fishing nets, NATO eventually backed down.
Today, two important forms of territory are recognized by the international community. One is the exclusive economic zone. This is an area of sea 200 nautical miles from a given nation’s shoreline. In this area, the nation exercises partial sovereignty - i.e. it is able to control the use of the sea’s resources, such as fisheries and the seabed, but not transit through the EEZ itself. Further, international law recognizes a continental shelf - territory approximately 300 miles from the nation’s shore, where it controls the seabed and its resources, but not transit. (Note that this right extends regardless of the actual extent of the continental shelf, which may be larger, or smaller, than this boundary).
An astute reader may note that there are various circumstances in the real world where these rules cannot be fully applied. For instance, where two nations’ shores are less than 400 miles apart, obviously the countries cannot both have a 200-mile EEZ, and have to reach an arrangement. Some of the world’s seas are governed by special agreements (The Montreux Convention, for instance, governs access to the Black Sea, and the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea governs all governance issues for that body of water).
In NationStates, several important realities exist that a player sometimes must confront. First of all, as is obvious, players who roleplay in closed-world regions that are separate from the overall NationStates multiverse can make their own rules and these are obviously not covered in this primer as I have no knowledge of them. (However, if you’re a closed-region roleplayer, please feel free to share your experience with us below! Don’t be shy!).
Second, one phenomenon that often exists in NationStates is that of ‘regional waters’. That is to say, a region that has an established in-character geography, can, through a consensus of the nations there, or perhaps through the brute-force domination of the most powerful nations, have its own rules that apply to waters within the region.
As an example, the region of Haven, which was once far more active than it is today, used to have the legal concept of ‘regional waters’, i.e. waters that were governed in common by all region members. Nations that were not residents of the region were not permitted to enter the Haven Straits (the region’s largest body of water) with war fleets. The region of Greater Prussia, currently under the leadership of yours truly, also designates most of the international waters within the region as ‘regional waters’, where joint sovereignty is exercised by the crown of Greater Prussia (mainly, again, prohibiting the entry of extra-regional warfleets).
A more fantastic element of NationStates roleplay that may exist in some nations is the presence of settlements and entire civilizations either on the sea surface (for example, in the form of seasteads and other floating settlements), or perhaps even in the ocean itself (if you accept the existence of sapient creatures that live underwater, they might have cities and entire nations under the sea). In the real world, the former are not recognized as sovereign, (and are almost non-existent) and the latter don’t exist at all, but it’s easy to imagine that a floating city of 100,000 or a population of underwater creatures, if they were capable of civilization and industry, would require some form of legal recognition (perhaps in the form of a national maritime boundary extending 12 miles from the outer edge of the settlement).
In NationStates, nations typically assume that - outside the national waters of one nation or another - their ships are sovereign national territory, and may not be boarded by other nations’ law enforcement of navies. This is broadly the tradition as is followed by NS roleplayers, but several things are worth noting:
1) Some nations don’t really observe this right, and in some cases it is violated quite flagrantly (for example, its often violated in relation to ships that are subjected to carrying slaves).
2) In the real world, treaties have existed since the 1970s to limit this right, in terms of the fact that law enforcement vessels may stop and search ships in international waters for contraband (typically IRL this means drugs). No such treaties exist in NS, as there’s no NS consensus to what constitutes ‘contraband’. Nations in NationStates have more or less gotten away with attacking slave-carrying vessels, but they’ve not - in NationStates - gotten away with attacking whaling ships.
Practicality:
One final note here should be the practicality of all of this stuff. It should be noted to that some important points apply.
1) Nations in NS can get away with doing some pretty awful stuff if they have a sufficient degree with hard or soft power. For example, nations (including my own!) have gotten away, for many years, with doing all sorts of things that would have otherwise been considered irresponsible or even illegitimate, except that we’ve targeted slaveowning states, and these are rarely very popular on NS. (IRL, the British Empire had used fighting slavery as a pretext to invade a whole range of countries, and while they did fight slavery, in the narrow sense of people owning other human beings as property, they did also gain lots of foreign policy benefits from this.
2) Sanctions are not very useful IRL (for a range of complex economic reasons) in terms of affecting the behavior of target states, especially if the states in question are big, and have a broad trade network like China or the USSR. In NS, where a country may literally have hundreds or thousands of trade partners, and where it is even more difficult to get a consensus of nations about not trading with a specific nation (though it might work better in a closed region).
3) Blockades are substantially more useful at inflicting real economic damage on countries than sanctions. At a minimum, an effective blockade is going to cause real economic setbacks, and in some cases (during the World Wars, for instance) it’s going to cause actual starvation and widespread deaths. However, a national economy can have substantial reserves of ‘fat’ that it can use by switching resources from its civilian to its military manufacturing, or to other vital industries, and so a blockade may take literally years to reduce a nation to compliance.
One of the most brutal blockades known is Nigeria’s blockade of Biafra. Over two and a half years of civil war, Nigeria denied the Biafrans access to vital food supplies, principally meat and protein, which caused the death of between half a million to two million Biafrans. Yet it was only when Biafran soldiers started literally losing consciousness from malnutrition that the Nigerians were finally capable of claiming victory. This was after two and a half years’ worth of effort with the assistance of the British, American, and Soviet governments.
So to be clear - all of this is complicated business. It is not - as some imagine - a quick, bloodless, and easy alternative to war, and should not be engaged in without some understanding of the context of the specific nation you’re confronting, and the international and economic relations of this nation.
1) Nations in NS can get away with doing some pretty awful stuff if they have a sufficient degree with hard or soft power. For example, nations (including my own!) have gotten away, for many years, with doing all sorts of things that would have otherwise been considered irresponsible or even illegitimate, except that we’ve targeted slaveowning states, and these are rarely very popular on NS. (IRL, the British Empire had used fighting slavery as a pretext to invade a whole range of countries, and while they did fight slavery, in the narrow sense of people owning other human beings as property, they did also gain lots of foreign policy benefits from this.
2) Sanctions are not very useful IRL (for a range of complex economic reasons) in terms of affecting the behavior of target states, especially if the states in question are big, and have a broad trade network like China or the USSR. In NS, where a country may literally have hundreds or thousands of trade partners, and where it is even more difficult to get a consensus of nations about not trading with a specific nation (though it might work better in a closed region).
3) Blockades are substantially more useful at inflicting real economic damage on countries than sanctions. At a minimum, an effective blockade is going to cause real economic setbacks, and in some cases (during the World Wars, for instance) it’s going to cause actual starvation and widespread deaths. However, a national economy can have substantial reserves of ‘fat’ that it can use by switching resources from its civilian to its military manufacturing, or to other vital industries, and so a blockade may take literally years to reduce a nation to compliance.
One of the most brutal blockades known is Nigeria’s blockade of Biafra. Over two and a half years of civil war, Nigeria denied the Biafrans access to vital food supplies, principally meat and protein, which caused the death of between half a million to two million Biafrans. Yet it was only when Biafran soldiers started literally losing consciousness from malnutrition that the Nigerians were finally capable of claiming victory. This was after two and a half years’ worth of effort with the assistance of the British, American, and Soviet governments.
So to be clear - all of this is complicated business. It is not - as some imagine - a quick, bloodless, and easy alternative to war, and should not be engaged in without some understanding of the context of the specific nation you’re confronting, and the international and economic relations of this nation.
