The existing literature on economic sanctions has rarely addressed the key question of comparing the effectiveness of positive and negative sanctions.  It is the contention of this study that positive sanctions can potentially be more effective, even in cases where contentious "high politics" issues are being negotiated, relations between the states concerned are tense and militarized, and the state being targeted with sanctions has substantial military power.  This assertion will be tested in a set of case studies drawn from German-Polish and German-Russian/Soviet relations from the nineteenth century to the present.  It will be shown that positive sanctions can be used effectively, both as "specific" sanctions to influence a target state on one particular issue, and as "general" sanctions, which aim to change the state's behavior as a whole in a more slow and subtle process.