This article analyzes the sanction threats and impositions by the EU, the UN, and the US in the period between 1989 and 2015, demonstrating that the popular perception of economic coercion is largely mistaken. We show against the backdrop of high-profile failures that the sanction threats and impositions of the United States and the two International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) were often striving to achieve the dominant goal of protecting key liberal values such as the protection of free elections and human rights, but that the design of the coercive measures was frequently flawed.