Sanction is not an effective tool for resolving international conflicts.

To begin with, lets define effective: successful in producing a desired or intended result.As we see in previous rounds, sanctions have been successful in MANY cases. The areas that are necessary for effective (i.e.. Successful) are: consensus and enforcement. My opponent steps wide of the mark with the UN. The UN Security Council, the big five, plus ten rotating members, have the ability to generate the required consensus needed to generate effective sanctions. If the 15 member council agrees, then there is very little chance that the general assembly will then fail to enact the resolution. Currently, the five members of the UN Security Council make up four of the largest economic blocks in the world, the USA, China, Russia, and the EU (Britain and France - giving the EU undue influence perhaps?) That really only leaves India and Japan outside effective economic domination, and even that is on the low end. The exclusion of countries from these markets in general does have a devastating effect. The exclusion of targeted products, like preventing the sale of a countries automobiles in the markets controlled by the Security Council would alone effectively doom most auto companies. That is, provided, that consensus in enactment is followed by real enforcement of the sanctions. An example of just how powerful that can be, is again, Iran. Barred ONLY from the EU and the USA, excluded from the monopolistic financial system, Iran's economy went into virtual free fall, with hyper-inflation twice raising its head and forcing the state into severely restrictive monetary policy. And Iran has come to the negotiating table seriously as a result. If sanction are effective, then Iran would be one example of them working, and containment being another against the USSR. This is especially so when placed against the only other effective tool against the Nations: open warfare. Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught us that this is expensive, bloody, messy, and the Clausewitizan dynamics at play lead to unpredictable results as best. The wholesale removal of an enemy against the applying pressure to force a concession? The better path here is easy. Con also list Nigeria of a failed policy of sanction, and he is correct. It did fail. It failed because there is was little or no actual consensus about punishing the Nigerian Government as it handles what can only be called a delicate situation. The rise of Boko Haram in the every same region that the previous insurgency in the 1960's sprung from is the reality of the difficulty of taming the corrupt country under some semblance of honest government. Sanctions were not perceived as an effective tool to use against Nigeria, and so they became the rattled sabre and nothing more. The trail and ability to defend was the reality that the sanctions lacked both consensus and enforcement. Nigeria was able to continue apace. That stands in remarkable difference to the Apartheid era sanctions that went into place on South Africa and eventually helped South Africa achieve a transition to representative government - yet another success story. Simply put, sanctions work and they often work very well if we have the patience and persistence to let them have their effects and couple them with a wise policy of conciliatory concession that allows Nations an honorable way to rejoining the market based economy to the benefit of both leader and people. We must also bear in mind the alternative. In cons example of Nigeria, the alternative to sanctions was once again a UN lead invasion. Given the reality of foreign occupation in Africa (colonialism ended for a reason), there is little reason to thing it would have been any different that interventions in Somalia, Rhodesia, Angola, The Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Algeria, etc. These are expensive, devastating, bloody, and the collapse of governance has often exacerbated the very problems that armed intervention was meant to solve. Sanction, simply put, are not always quick, but they work and they work a hell of a lot better than the alternative.