SANCTIONS: THE HOLLOW WEAPON

ECONOMIC sanctions of the type imposed last week against Rhodesia are a relatively new weapon in the ancient art of international coercion. Not until 1935, when the League of Nations declared an international boycott against Mussolini, was the concept of full-scale economic warfare put to test. Then and since, economic sanctions have proved political duds.

The League of Nations' action against Mussolini was ignored from the beginning by half a dozen non-fascist nations--including the U.S. After eight fruitless months, the whole project was abandoned, leaving the Italian regime the stronger, and destroying the last shred of effectiveness of the League itself.

Even on a lesser scale, economic sanctions have usually backfired. Moscow's attempt to elbow Marshal Tito into line in 1948 only forced the Yugoslavian Communist leader to turn to the West for trade--and drove him further from the Stalinist camp. The Organization of African Unity's solemn pledge to boycott all South African goods has been a joke: Zambia gets at least half its consumer products from Johannesburg, and the government-owned airline of leftist Mali serves South African oranges to its passengers.

U.S. attempts to starve out its enemies have hardly been more successful. Washington tried to topple Dictator Rafael Trujillo by refusing to buy Dominican sugar and cutting off his supply of oil and auto parts. But it was an assassin's bullet, not dollar pressure, that brought him down. Cuba's Fidel Castro, with massive support from Russia, has managed to survive six years of U.S. embargo. U.S. pressure to cut off all trade with Red China was another notable flop: Canada alone in the past six years has sold Peking a whopping $926 million worth of wheat.

One solid reason for the failure of embargoes is that the world will never lack for blockade runners. There is another reason, more subtle but just as valid. Never has economic coercion from abroad been translated into political rebellion at home. On the contrary, it usually fires the patriotism of a beleaguered citizenry. In the case of Cuba, the U.S. embargo supplied Castro with the perfect excuse to explain to the Cuban people the failures of his revolution. The U.N. boycott of Franco Spain, which lasted from 1945 until 1950, led Spaniards to tighten their belts and close ranks behind him. Like the members of a quarreling family, they simply would not tolerate outside meddling in their own affairs. There is every indication that Rhodesia's embattled whites feel the same way. J

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