With this volume, Geoff Simons provides an authoritative account of the use and the misuse of economic sanctions world-wide, highlighting the ways in which sanctions have been employed, ultimately, as weapons of mass destruction, directed primarily against civilian populations. Simons details the impact of economic sanctions on a global basis, highlighting their use as a foreign policy tool by powerful nations such as the United States, and revealing the extent to which the US has succeeded in promoting the use of sanctions -- in direct violation of the UN charter -- through its dominance of the UN Security Council. Using original source material and background documents, Simons provides a brief history of the use of sanctions as an allegedly "neutral" weapon in international conflict, and challenges official accounts of the impact of economic sanctions by reconsidering the horrific, almost genocidal impact sanctions can be shown to have on civilian communities in, for example, the conflict with Iraq. |