GPS: [ Hillary says sanctions did not work ]

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I’m Fareed Zakaria. [....]

On her trip through Asia, Hillary Clinton acknowledged that our policy of economic sanctions against Burma — Myanmar — has not worked.

The reason I think this is significant is that I’m hoping it is the beginning of a rethinking. There’s a standard U.S. policy toward any regime that we don’t like. There’s not much we can do about it, and we can’t change the regime’s policies. But we decide we can’t just sit there, so we slap sanctions on the country. [....]

So, how much more evidence, in the form of misery for the people and power for the dictators, do we need before we conclude that economic sanctions are a feel-good policy that have had only bad effects on the ground?