Foreign Policy and Globalization How do countries protect themselves from the risks of globalization? During the Cold War, political tensions between the United States and Cuba prompted the United States to enact an embargo on Cuba, forbidding all trade with the island nation. More recently, the United Nations Security Council, which consists of 15 nations, has imposed sanctions on countries such as Iran and North Korea to discourage their efforts to develop nuclear weapons. These are examples of economic foreign policy decisions. Even though globalization and trade have strengthened the bonds between many countries, nations around the world must also consider how other countries’ economic policies can affect them and how their own economic policies can influence other countries. Dependence on other nations comes with risks, such as worldwide recessions and foreign competition that hurts domestic businesses and workers. However, nations can use several strategies to protect themselves from such risks. Regional trade agreements like NAFTA, for example, typically contain conditions that all countries agree to meet. If countries want to benefit from free trade, they must agree to act in one another’s interests.Economic sanctions, like those against North Korea, are another common strategy for influencing other nations. Sanctions are legal restrictions on trade with a particular country, usually to discourage countries from hostile or aggressive behavior that threatens other countries. In recent decades, individual countries and groups of countries have used sanctions frequently. One of the benefits of sanctions is that they are not permanent. If a country meets certain demands, the sanctions will be lifted. In 2015, when Iran agreed to halt its nuclear weapons program, some sanctions that the United States and other nations had imposed on it were lifted. OPEC Nations can also try to protect themselves from other nations by banding together. In 1960, a group of nations that supplied much of the world’s crude oil formed a coalition called the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC nations, most of which are located in the Middle East, North Africa, and South America, agreed to work together to control worldwide prices for oil. Through cooperation, these countries agreed to limit the amount of oil they produced. This helped limit the world’s supply of oil, keeping oil prices at a profitable level. The ability to control oil prices led to great economic growth in some OPEC countries. Saudi Arabia, for example, accumulated enormous wealth. Its human development index (HDI) is similar to that of the world’s most developed nations even though its economy is highly dependent on the primary sector.OPEC’s ability to control oil markets also gave its member countries power in world politics. During the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, some OPEC countries refused to sell crude oil to the countries that supported Israel. These sanctions created severe shortages of oil and gasoline in the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, and the United States. At the same time, OPEC cut production of oil, which drove up oil prices around the world. Saudi Arabia HDI Graph B ——— Human Development index Year Saudi Arabia HDI Graph Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter among OPEC nations, has seen steady gains in its Human Development Index in recent decades.