Nicholas Mulder's The Economic Weapon [...]

The professor argued that under the League the victors of the war had stripped their defeated opponents of their sovereignty. Sanctions were the dark side of liberalism, a superficially neutral tool that in fact hid old-fashioned power politics [...] Unlike modern sanctions, the economic weapon did not function to protect democracy or liberal values. Its first and foremost function was the defense of the territorial order created in 1919. Article 16 sanctions were triggered by attacks against sovereign member states of the League, not by domestic human rights abuses or the dismantling of liberal institutions. In this regard, the sanctionist system between the wars differed profoundly from the principles of liberal internationalism as we recognize them today [...] Postwar economic pressure had another effect that persisted in the interwar period: it began to dissolve the timeworn distinction between the state of war and that of peace. Observing European geopolitics in 1920, the Franco-British humanitarian Edmund Morel worried about the deep uncertainty caused by the policies that had created a condition he called “peacewar.” “The essential purpose of ‘War,’” he wrote, “is the destruction of human life and economic resources, and that purpose is being carried out to-day with diligent activity by certain Governments which, nevertheless, protest that they are not ‘at war.’” Morel criticized what he saw as “the scientific destruction, by the weapon of blockade, of Russian men and women and children.