This is the first of a three-part series examining the effectiveness of sanctions. Here we will analyze the historical cases of Cuba, Iraq, and North Korea; part II will look at the effectiveness of incentives and of threatening sanctions, while part III will apply the results of the previous work to the current situations in Iran, China, and Israel/Gaza.

Below the fold, a description of the motivating incident, goals, methods, and results of sanctions against Cuba, Iraq, and North Korea, along with general conclusions.

A. Cuba
Motivating incident: Here is a detailed timeline . Short version: US companies resist Soviet economic expansion into Cuba, Castro nationalizes US companies, US imposes embargo. Half a year later comes the Bay of Pigs invasion and 1.5 years after that the Cuban missile crisis and that pretty much puts US-Cuban relations into a deep freeze that has persisted for almost half a century now.
Goals: Evolving, but essentially the overthrow of Castro and an end to the socialist state in Cuba.^[1] During the Cold War it seems to me there were two secondary (somewhat conflicting) goals: to curtail Soviet influence in the Americas and to force the USSR to spend money propping up the Cuban economy.
Methods: A fairly comprehensive embargo on trade and tourism, which has only recently developed some notable exceptions.
Results: Failure. Castro has maintained power and Cuba has remained a repressive socialist nation.
Comments: Our stance towards Cuba has begun to seem an antiquated holdover of an us-vs-them Cold War mentality that is hurting Cubans and Americans alike. Here's Rep. Flake (large pdf ):

I'm the first to concede that some American dollars, tourist dollars, if we open up travel to Cuba, will end up in the hands of Castro. There's no way to avoid that. No way. But there's also no way to avoid money going to people, and that's what we have far too little of right now. The invisible hand does not discriminate. You can't simply say it works in China or North Vietnam or else where, but it won't work in Cuba. It has and is working in Cuba.

The rest of the world condemns our actions: The UN General Assembly has voted for a 16th consecutive year to recommend that the US ends its trade embargo on Cuba, imposed more than four decades ago. There are cracks being opened and widened, and it seems likely that post-Bush and post-Castro we will re-evaluate the necessity and effectiveness of our sanctions against Cuba. American farmers are already permitted limited trade with Cuba and would like increased access to Cuban markets; not surprisingly, they view free trade as a more effective instigator of democracy than these sanctions have proven to be:

A 2005 Texas A&M study showed Arkansas leading the nation with exports to Cuba, with an estimated $167 million in trade a year. Alabama was second at $120 million, followed by California ($98 million), Iowa ($71 million) and Texas ($54 million). Many Alabama farmers would like to see that business expand further.

"It's a global world we live in," says Grace, 51, whose farm produces about 110,000 chickens a year. "We need markets for what we produce. Unlike the American market, the Cuban market prefers dark meat, so that's beneficial. We trade with countries around the world. Why not Cuba?"

[...] "Who knows, maybe expanded trade with Cuba could lay the groundwork for real change in that country," Peak says. "Sooner or later, the markets in Cuba, all the markets, are going to open up."

B. Iraq
Motivating incident: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait led to UN sanctions , which remained in place after the Gulf War.
Goals: Post-war, to restrict Iraqi usage of oil money with the aim of preventing arms purchases, and to pressure Saddam and perhaps motivate regime change. This sounds vague, and indeed these sanctions were widely criticized as being essentially punitive or collective punishment.
Methods: Initially an embargo, then the oil-for-food system was developed to enable Iraq to purchase humanitarian goods.
Results: Mixed/failure. Iraq attempted to circumvent the oil-for-food limitations with a bribery and kickback scheme , and while Saddam wasn't able to reconstitute his weapons program to the degree of posing a significant risk, he was able to remain firmly in power while Iraqi civilians suffered.
Comments: There was undoubtedly a significant human cost to these sanctions, but many estimates of sanction-caused deaths are exaggerated^[2]; these numbers seem reasonable to me:

Garfield has recently recalculated his numbers, based on the additional findings of the Ali and Shah study, to arrive at an estimate of approximately 350,000 through 2000. Most of these deaths are associated with sanctions, according to Garfield, but some are also attributable to destruction caused by the Gulf War air campaign, which dropped 90,000 tons of bombs in forty-three days, a far more intensive attack than the current strikes against Afghanistan. The bombing devastated Iraq's civilian infrastructure, destroying eighteen of twenty electricity-generating plants and disabling vital water-pumping and sanitation systems. Untreated sewage flowed into rivers used for drinking water, resulting in a rapid spread of infectious disease. Comprehensive trade sanctions compounded the effects of the war, making it difficult to rebuild, and adding new horrors of hunger and malnutrition.

It must be noted that there were areas where these sanctions did function as intended, with civilians able to receive necessary humanitarian aid but Saddam unable to utilize oil money for rearmament. Where the UN was allowed to run the relief program, aid reached its intended target :

The differential between child mortality rates in northern Iraq, where the UN manages the relief program, and in the south-center, where Saddam Hussein is in charge, says a great deal about relative responsibility for the continued crisis. As noted, child mortality rates have declined in the north but have more than doubled in the south-center. The difference is especially significant given the historical pattern prior to the Gulf War. In the 1970s child mortality rates in the northern Kurdish region were more than double those in the rest of the country. Today the situation is reversed, with child mortality rates in the south-center nearly double those in the north. The Kurdish zone has enjoyed a favored status in the relief program, with per capita allocations 22 percent higher than in the south-center. The region contains most of the country's rain-fed agriculture. Local authorities have welcomed the continuing efforts of private relief agencies, and have permitted a lively cross-border trade with surrounding countries. But these differences alone do not explain the stark contrast in mortality rates. The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned but UN-administered north, are also the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly manage the UN humanitarian relief effort.

The sanctions didn't succeed in toppling Saddam, the oil-for-food program was laudible in theory but flawed in practice, but in those places where the UN was able to directly oversee aid the effects of the sanctions were mostly shielded from civilians.

C. North Korea
Motivating incident: North Korea's nuclear test resulted in UN sanctions , although it's not clear how advanced the NK nuclear program ever really was.
Goals: To get NK to return to discussions aimed at persuading it to give up its nuclear weapons program
Methods: Targeted sanctions that prevented the export to NK of arms or dual-use technology and of luxury goods.
Results: Success. NK agreed to resume talks shortly after. Caveat: (economic and diplomatic) pressure from China was probably as important as the UN sanctions in leading to this result.
Comments: The talks were also successful and NK agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid :

Kim Jong Il's regime signed a six-nation accord in February with the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Russia and China to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for energy aid and normalized relations with the governments in Washington and Tokyo. North Korea shut down its Yongbyon reactor, which produced weapons-grade plutonium, in July. It agreed on Oct. 3 to disclose its nuclear operations and disable its Yongbyon complex by the end of the year.

The disarmament is progressing on schedule:

A team of U.S. technicians began disabling on Monday [Nov. 5] the reclusive communist nation's nuclear complex which produces weapons-grade plutonium, the U.S. State Department said.

[...] Under last February's agreement, the impoverished North will receive 1 million metric tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid in exchange for shutting down its Yongbyon nuclear plant and admitting U.N. nuclear monitors.

D. Discussion
The sanctions against Cuba had a broad goal (topple Castro) and were broadly applied (sweeping embargo); they did not succeed in accomplishing their goal (Castro remains in control of an oppressive socialist regime). The sanctions against Iraq had both broad and narrow goals (topple Saddam, prevent Iraqi militarization) and were semi-targeted (oil-for-food); they were partially successful at accomplishing their goal (Saddam remained in power, but did not significantly reconstitute his weapons program). The sanctions against North Korea had a narrow goal (curtail NK's nuclear weapons program) and were narrowly applied (ban on selling NK military technology or luxury goods); they were successful in accomplishing their goal (NK agreed to disarm and accept inspectors in return for aid). The obvious conclusion here is that targeted sanctions with a precise goal can be effective while all-encompassing sanctions with a vague goal of regime change are unlikely to work.

There are two further critical differences between the NK sanctions and the Cuba/Iraq sanctions: China leaned on NK, and we offered NK energy aid to drop their nuke program. When a country with significant leverage puts complementary pressure on the sanctioned country, the sanctions are naturally more powerful. The addition of genuine "carrots" (generally economic incentives) can further persuade the sanctioned country to alter their behavior.

So, no stunning insights but some useful rules of thumb: use targeted sanctions to accomplish specific and limited goals (and to minimize civilian suffering), and supplement this pressure by offering incentives and getting allies of the sanctioned country to help push for change. Up next: how effective is it to merely threaten sanctions? How useful are incentives at shaping behavior, and what sort of incentives are best? On deck: a look at what this all means for the current situations in Iran, China, and Israel/Gaza.

^[1] An alternative interpretation (large pdf) of our goals sanctioning Cuba and dictatorships in general:

Embargoes by definition imply that you're imposing some economic pain on to the citizenry of a given country. Now, in a democracy, the people feel that pain and they have a way to reflect that upward through their political process which could then lead to some form of regime change. In dictatorships, that obviously does not happen because there is no connection between the dictator and the mass of people at large. Saddam Hussein, Kim Jung Il, Fidel Castro all fall into this. So what an embargo against a dictatorship does is it denies resources to the regime. It makes it more difficult for them to engage in the activities that we find threatening or offensive.

^[2] While much of the criticism of sanctions on Iraq came from the left, there was no shortage of criticism from Clinton-haters whose concern for Iraqi lives appears, to me at least, to be more opportunistic than genuine. To take an extreme example , here's an entry from a "Clinton Body Count" page:

the total death toll in Iraq from bombing and sanctions is put at between 1.2 and 1.7 million people. It is now of the five greatest genocides of the 20th century, with the number of casualties rivalling [sic] that of Pol Pot’s Cambodia.