American Sanctions: A Double-Edged Sword

mace weapon of wood with metal spikes and wires on an isolated white background.

Sanctions are a lever frequently employed, certainly because it allows the rulers who use and abuse them to avoid costly armed conflicts. Sanctions represent a kind of “low-cost” warfare.

Not quite, in reality, because these retaliatory measures against a state – far from harming its officials – primarily punish the most vulnerable under the yoke of repressive systems. While it is effortless for a country like the USA to impose them through its dozens of federal agencies, each with its specialty, no one is held accountable within these administrations if these same sanctions harm the innocent civilian populations of nations under embargo, American foreign policy, or even US companies and banks obliged to adhere to them.

Furthermore, it is extraordinarily complicated to lift sanctions in a country like the United States – responsible for about half of them since the 1950s – due to bureaucracy, even if they no longer serve national interests. Let’s focus on the case of the USA, whose number of sanctions imposed by the Treasury has skyrocketed from around 1,000 in the year 2000 to nearly 10,000 today. While the Trump administration added an average of 3 names per day to a list of individuals banned from banking, Biden did so with gusto during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The use of this weapon has thus become systematic over the past twenty years to prevent access to nuclear weapons, punish dictators, dismantle terrorist networks, despite the burdens imposed even on American citizens who, in reality, have no effective means to challenge these measures often unilaterally adopted by their leaders. Decreed and implemented with disconcerting ease, these sanctions are a kind of bludgeon that destroys everything in its path when they should be activated with finesse to avoid harming the innocent, numerous American companies and citizens, and incidentally, allies.

In short, most of the current US sanctions undermine the rhetoric that the United States of America are fervent defenders of human rights and the best promoters of peace in the world. Therefore, they must be much better targeted, calibrated, and not put in place almost automatically. Finally, these sanctions must be able to be canceled with the same ease. Otherwise, they lose their effectiveness, or even turn against American interests. Some voices are heard within the US leadership circles, such as that of a former member of Biden’s National Security Council, Peter Harrell, who proposes that sanctions imposed on a country or individual automatically expire unless expressly renewed by Congress.

An obvious point: sanctions aimed at regime change in the targeted nation do not work! In this regard, the failure of those imposed in 1962 by Kennedy against Cuba is evident, lifted in 2014 by Obama before being reinstated by Trump. Even worse when these sanctions serve the current dictator, as in the case of Maduro, who blames the Americans for the economic decline of his country. And he is not entirely wrong, as the embargo on Venezuelan oil – which accounts for 90% of the country’s exports – has had disastrous consequences on an increasingly impoverished population, allowing their head of state to consolidate his power while getting closer to Russia and China. However, sanctions can be constructive if they are accompanied by a concrete and realistic goal to achieve, as was the case in 1986 when those imposed on South Africa promised to be lifted upon the abolition of apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela.

To be effective, to avoid harming innocents at all costs, to preserve their own vital interests, sanctions by a country like the United States – which are undoubtedly a devastating weapon – must, therefore, be implemented with discernment.