Offense–Defense Balance and Sanctions Backfire: A Theory of US Sanctions Doctrines (opens in new tab)

AbstractThe United States increasingly treats economic sanctions as a tool of first resort, yet existing scholarship has not fully explained why sanctions policy varies sharply across presidential administrations. This article argues that such variation stems from leaders’ causal beliefs about two sanctions-specific factors: the offense–defense balance of economic sanctions and the risk of sanctions backfire. I introduce the concept of a sanctions doctrine—a subcomponent of grand strategy tha...