A study finds that the sanction regime often prolongs conflicts, collectively punishes whole populations and hinders third-party humanitarian efforts
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US sanctions are supposed to punish wrongdoers and rogue states, and force warring parties to reach peace settlement. In reality, they often end up being collective punishment against entire populations, postpone peace talks and deter outside neutral parties from providing urgent humanitarian aid.
A 2021 internal review by the US Treasury department found that the use of sanctions jumped by nearly 1,000 per cent between 2000 and 2021. In his second year in office, President Joe Biden sanctioned 2,500 new groups and individuals, almost double those of the Trump administration at the peak in 2018 – at 1,474 – and four times as many as the Obama administration at its zenith in 2016 – at 695. Almost one in four countries are sanctioned by the US in one form or another, affecting almost a third of the global economy. “Wary of the costs of heavy military engagements, [Washington] still tended to view sanctions as a muscular but low-cost and low-risk means of crisis management,” the report wrote.
But their imposition has become so knee jerk they sometimes become almost comical. Washington has sanctioned the forensics institute of China’s public security bureau. But the institute is one of the country’s key authorities responsible for the customs control of chemicals. That means it has sanctioned the key Chinese agency whose cooperation it had depended on to halt the export of chemical precursors for the production of Fentanyl at the heart of the drug crisis in the United States.
The same report points out that sanctions are easy to impose but difficult to lift within the US government bureaucracy and because of domestic partisanship.
US sanctions against the Marxist-Leninist FARC during its decades-long guerilla campaign in Colombia proved ineffective, as “it funded itself almost exclusively through black-market activities”. When the civil war ended, its fighters were demobilised and sought to integrate into the formal economy, but some sanctions were left in place. “As a former fighter put it, ‘We weren’t affected [by sanctions] in the war, but we were affected in peace’,” the study said.
Efforts by some former fighters to help clear the country of mines were undermined.
Under extreme sanctions which choke off the entire economies of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, exemptions on food and medicine are granted, at least on paper. However, “banks are reluctant to facilitate transactions involving peace organisations or their partners or contractors in heavily sanctioned countries – even when licences are in place, as has been reported in Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan and elsewhere …”
Enemies have no incentives to comply when they fear sanctions will stay one way or another.
“Iran’s reluctance to re-enter the 2015 nuclear deal after the US reneged on its promises of sanctions relief three years later is an example of this dynamic,” the study reported. “Iranian negotiators feared that the benefits of any deal involving sanctions relief would be short-lived given the risk that a future president might exit the agreement once again.”
Rather than promoting peace, human rights and democracy, US sanctions often achieve the opposite. That’s why many countries are trying to work around them, including banding together such as through Brics to de-dollarise.
