Recently I was reading a book covering the history of the Ottoman empire. In it I came across a period where Sultan Salim the Grim ( he once got playfully asked by his vizier to inform him in advance about his execution date so that he could put his affairs in order - and he replied that he had been thinking of getting him executed ( he executed 3 viziers during his short reign) and that as soon as he found a suitable replacement he would let him know!) put sanctions on the the rival Safavid empire. This led to the Safavid empire really struggling, but at the same time it led to the Ottoman empire to suffer as well. What happened was that the Safavid's provided the raw goods, which were traded in the Ottoman Empire, and then the final product - silk sold in Italy - so the aftershocks of this embargo was felt all the to Italy. This leads to the question whether, looking at it in a purely economics point of view, whether economics sanctions are actually useful, because though they achieve the primary aim of making the opposition suffer, it kind of defeats the bigger objective of remaining stronger than the enemy, because you just both get weaker together.
However if a trade embargo is called on a country collectively, as in everyone is overwhelmingly ostracising it - such as Iran currently, that means that the losses are in a sense spread around to become negligible, and due to the fact that theres a lot of countries involved, chances are that they also have the raw goods which the embargoed country has to offer.
I'll end this entry from a quote from this Egyptian I met, he wanted me to bribe him...so I told him its against my religion...so he said its not really (he was Muslim too), rather he painted it as such an essential part of the economy so much so that it
was in essence the "economy" as a whole. Needless to say I didn't give him anything.
My new trading book that takes you through money-making step-by-step:
