More Ethical than Not: Sanctions as Surgical Tools
Joy Gordon has made a major contribution to both the ethical analysis and the policy evaluation of economic sanctions. But her claims against sanctions should be understood as critique rather than condemnation and rejection of sanctions on ethical grounds. Through a series of arguments and examples, this response points out that Gordon may be too narrow in defining sanctions' success, and that, where sanctions have gone awry, it is because they were unimaginatively formulated and poorly implemented, not because sanctions are categorically unethical. Multilateral sanctions in the late 1990s are simply more finely tuned than a few years ago. As a technique of coercive diplomacy, sanctions are meant to change dramatically the costs and benefits that leaders of a nation calculate operate in their favor as they pursue policies that the majority of the international community have declared abhorrent. We can, with the help of Gordon's critical claims, accomplish this goal in a more ethical manner, and by so doing, increase the likely success of sanctions in the future.
Shining a Light on a Malfeasant Superpower
Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. By Joy Gordon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. 376 pp., $39.95 hardcover (ISBN 978-0-674-03571-3).

On August 6, 1990, amid the uncertainty and optimism of the end of the Cold War, the United Nations Security Council voted 13–0 (Yemen and Cuba abstained) to impose sanctions upon Iraq and demanded that Saddam Hussein withdraw his forces from Kuwait. Resolution 661 is very short, occupying less than a full page in the archive of Council action. But by imposing comprehensive sanctions, that resolution—and the subsidiary organ of the Council it created, the “661 Committee”—had an outsized impact. To be sure, the sanctions evolved over their lifetime. Following Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait in 1991, their objectives changed to demand that Saddam disarm and allow weapons inspectors. In 1995, Iraq was permitted some imports according to an “oil-for-food” formula, the procedures for which were refined on several occasions. An elaborate oversight apparatus emerged, including a force to suppress maritime smuggling, numerous inspection mechanisms and agencies, and an Office within the Secretariat. Despite these changes, prior to its repeal in 2003, the Iraq embargo was perhaps best known for its unintended humanitarian consequences—the view that sanctions may put “political gain” ahead of “civilian pain” (as per Weiss, Cortright, Lopez, and Minear 1997).

For more than a decade, Joy Gordon has been a critic of sanctions. Her main contribution has been to utilize normative theories, such as the just war tradition, to evaluate the ethics and morality of sanctions. Invisible War brings this body of work to a crescendo.1 Here, Gordon's singular focus is the United States’ role in crafting and administering the embargo, which she describes as the “cruelest sanctions in the history of international governance” (p. 1). Following the devastation of the 1991 war, she relates how the …
Silica in Soils1
Publisher Summary Silica in free and combined forms is a dominant component of the solid material of many soils, and dissolved silica is commonly a major solute of soil solutions. Breakdown of primary silicates, translocation of silica in solution, and deposition of secondary silica-containing substances are involved in the development of soils. Ions essential for the growth of plants are released to the soil solution as silicates weather, and these ions may be held against leaching at exchange sites on other silicates. Silica is absorbed in appreciable quantities by some plants and is returned to the surface of the soil as the plants decay. The nature and transformations of silica and silicates in soil are, thus, fundamental to an understanding of many aspects of soil and plant sciences.