Over the last century the world has seen two world wars, several dozen border conflicts, and civil unrest with the possible removal of a leader. These conflicts are usually outside the attention of the media, so all the lost lives, corrupt leadership and outright dishonesty are never revealed to the international public. Physical violence has always been the direct means to resolve most of these conflicts, but at a cost. Both sides usually lost hundreds and sometimes thousands of lives and ultimately no plan was ever put in place to ensure these problems never happened again. Following the completion of the Cold War, sanctions were reinstated to ensure that a government or country could be held accountable without having to use lethal measures. If there was a way to cut off the import and export of resources to the corrupt government, this would force it to comply with international laws without having to resort to military action. In the past, sanctions have been imposed on countries that have defied basic human needs, committed atrocious crimes against neighboring countries, or posed such a great threat to others (use of weapons of mass destruction) that the United Nations has intervened to protect those they might not protect themselves. Sanctions are put in place in the hope of causing difficulty for any country's government and to ensure that full compliance has been established before such sanctions are lifted. While these measures should not inconvenience most people, they usually do over time. History has shown us that in a short period of time sometimes these restrictions work, but do they really create an atmosphere in these countries to ensure that these situations or crimes never happen again? ...... half of the card ......? The moral and political question. By David Cartwright, October 1995: http://www.sanctionsandsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/humanitarian_sanctions_.pdf (accessed March 18, 2012).2. Q&A: Sanctions on Syria, 27 November 2011, BBC Mobile News Middle East: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15753975 (accessed 18 March 2012).3. Kimberly Ann Elliott, Institute for International Economics, “Evidence on the Costs and Benefits of Economic Sanctions,” Statement before the Subcommittee on Trade of the House Ways and Means Committee, October 23, 1997. The text of her statement is available at http /www.iie.com/sanctns.htm.4. 14 UN press release SG/SM/7360, echoing Lloyd Axworthy, 'Forward' in David Cortright and George A. Lopez, The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Strategies in the 1990s (A Project of the International Peace Academy; Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienne, 2000)