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Smart Sanctions
One of the most popular suggestions to combat the humanitarian issues that arise from sanctions is the concept of “smart sanctions”, and a lot of research has been done on this concept also known as targeted sanctions. The term "smart sanctions" refers to measures like asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes that aim to target responsible parties like political leaders and elites with the goal of avoiding causing widespread collateral damage to innocent civilians and neighboring nations.

Though there has been enthusiasm about the concept, early research suggested that comprehensive sanctions, despite their humanitarian costs, have been more successful in achieving political goals and that smart sanctions, as implemented in the case of Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2000 for example, did not seem particularly successful. Later research found that this was not unique to the case of Yugoslavia, as an analysis of the effectiveness of targeted sanctions, noting that as of 2016, the Targeted Sanctions Consortium (TSC) found that targeted sanctions only result in policy goals being met 22% of the time.

Smart Sanctions have also not been totally successful in avoiding civilian harm or unintended consequences. For example, arms embargoes can impact the self-defense efforts of those under attack, aviation bans can affect a nation's transportation sector and the jobs of civilians associated with them, and financial sanctions targeting individuals raise due process issues. One example of smart sanctions in practice can be seen in the case of Russia following the U.S. imposed sanctions, after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The US wanted to exert pressure on Russia’s financial sector, and put sanctions on owners of four Russian banks, resulting in Visa and MasterCard suspending all transactions of those banks, effectively canceling the credit cards of ordinary Russian consumers.