Nostradoofus

Longstanding US policy is to economically ostracize nations we don’t like. Hence the decades-long embargoes of Iran, Cuba, North Korea.

There is no experimental evidence that this works. No nation has changed policy as a result. In fact, the lack of economic ties to these nations means they have nothing to lose economically in a confrontation with America.

Thus, logically, the opposite policy would work better: kill them with carefully chosen kindness.

For example, Iran lacks refining capacity, so they are an oil exporter, but a gasoline importer. An interesting Mideast stabilization policy might be to build refining capacity in Iraq, and encourage gasoline sales into Iran. Increasing Iran’s dependence on a hostile neighbor creates strong incentives on both sides to stabilize both countries.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.