Governments today deploy trade sanctions, blockades, and financial restrictions as their political weapons of choice to curb aggression and to enforce international morality. But is economic warfare an effective foreign policy instrument? In this lively and highly informative investigative history, R. Thomas Naylor demonstrates repeatedly that punitive measures almost always fail to achieve their stated goals and often cause unintentional harm, especially to the innocent populations of the embargoed countries. In reality, economic warfare breeds corruption, creates thriving black market economies, criminalizes legitimate businesses, and helps turn limited conflicts into global ones. Naylor illustrates the futility of forcing political change througheconomic pressure by describing in intricate detail the poor record of lateral and multilateral sanctions aimed at the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Panama, and other "pariah" governments. In virtually every...