The Burmese government’s grotesque crackdown on pro-democracy protests will have one certain effect. The United States and the European Union will place more sanctions on Burma. Its economy will suffer, its isolation will deepen. And what will this achieve? Sanctions are the Energizer Bunny of foreign policy. Despite a dismal record, they just keep on ticking. With countries such as Burma, sanctions have become a substitute for an actual policy.

One of the lessons of Iraq surely is that decades of sanctions destroy civil society and empower the worst elements of the country, those who thrive in a gangland atmosphere. If the intention here is to help bring about a better system for a country, devastating its society is a strange path to the new order. Burma is a particularly complicated place for such an experiment because it is riven with ethnic divisions and conflict. The Burmese government has been fighting 17 ethnic rebel groups for more than 50 years. Many of the rebels control territory and run their own drug and resource cartels. Bringing liberal democracy to Burma would be a challenge anyhow, and it is being made more difficult by the evisceration of its society.

By design, sanctions shrink a country’s economy. But “the state gains greater control of a smaller pie.” says Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who has authored a wide-ranging study on the topic, “and [the state] shifts resources in the country toward groups that support it and away from those that oppose it.” In other words, the government gets stronger. We can see this at work from Cuba to Iran. “Even in Iraq,” says Pape, “there were far fewer coup attempts in the era of sanctions than in the previous decades.”

In Burma, one effect of Western sanctions was to shut down the country’s textile exports during the late 1990s, forcing hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs. There is evidence that many of the women ended up in the sex trade, enough evidence that in 2003 State Department spokesman Richard Boucher acknowledged it but expressed the hope that over time sanctions would change Burma. In addition, as legitimate businesses dry up, black markets spring up, and the thugs and gangs who can handle these new rules flourish. Burmese gems are now traded actively in this manner. Then there are drugs, whose production and supply multiply. In all of this, the military, which controls border crossings, ports and checkpoints, prospers.

In the early 1990s, after refusing to accept the results of an election won by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese regime began — very haltingly — to open up the economy. But those Western sanctions helped end this flirtation. Thant Myint-U, a former senior U.N. official and the author of “The River of Lost Footsteps,” a wonderful and affectionate portrait of Burma, argues that had that process of trade, travel and investment been encouraged, “Burma today would look more like Vietnam. It would have many more connections with the world, much more economic and social activity, and the regime would be far more constrained and reluctant to use force or engage in crackdowns.”

The other effect of sanctions has been that American firms have mostly been replaced by Chinese companies. (This is precisely what’s happened on a larger scale in Sudan, where American firms discovered and built the country’s oilfields, then had to abandon them because of the worsening human-rights situation, and now find that the fields have been picked up by Chinese state oil companies.) And while it is perfectly fair to blame Beijing for supporting a dictatorial regime, the Indians, Thais, Malaysians and others have also been happy to step into the vacuum in Burma. Is this a net gain for America, for Burma and for human rights?

Thant, who has a celebrated pedigree in Burma — he is the only grandson of U Thant, the third secretary general of the United Nations — hopes for sustained diplomatic pressure, involving the United States, China and India, to get the regime to begin a process of real reform. “If the three countries can reach some consensus, that’s the only outside pressure that is likely to matter,” he says. “America can still play a crucial role. What the Burmese really want — if they had a choice — is not to be another province of China. They aspire to be a proud, independent country. There are many people there, even in the regime, who want to have good relations with America and the West. But my fear is that the West, momentarily aroused, will reflexively impose new sanctions and then move on. The result will be that the West’s role in Burma will decline even more, China’s will rise, and Burma will be further away from a liberal democratic future.”

The writer is editor of Newsweek International and co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is comments@fareedzakaria.com