Trump’s Heavy Use of Sanctions Isn’t a Bad Thing
But more than two millenniums after their earliest recorded use, sanctions’ effectiveness still depends on their purpose.
Pericles liked sanctions, too.
Photographer: Yorgos Karahalis/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The oldest known instance of a country deploying economic sanctions against another dates from 432 B.C., when Athens imposed severe restrictions on Megara. The Megarian Decrees denied the city-state use of the Athenian empire’s harbors, cutting off its trade. But tiny Megara was an ally of Athens’ great rival Sparta, and disagreements over the sanctions were among the reasons that precipitated the Second Peloponnesian War between Greece’s two dominant powers.
Some historians believe Pericles, the ruler of Athens, was looking for a way to provoke the Spartans into war, and the decrees served his purpose; others argue the decrees were meant to avoid war by imposing a non-military solution on the Megarians — and failed.