The West's torturous over-reliance on sanctions

• 

Syria has been through hell and back. The nation’s scars are still fresh after a 12-year war. After 7.8 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes rocked Syria’s northern areas and parts of Turkey, it almost feels like, by some divine act, this area of the world is cursed.

As the death toll from the natural disaster continues to rise and tragic images of catastrophe are spread online to show the severity of the situation, Western nations have decided that now is the time to pin the blame for Syria’s lack of aid on its President, rather than on the sanctions that have tortured the nation for years.

Tortured, of course, in its literal sense. Sanctions are, after all, the “moral” nation’s method of collective punishment. Wielded by the hands of western powers against any people who refuse to take a knee and submit to their wishes.

Brutal sanctions have left the people of Syria with limited aid being supplied only by its allies, many of whom are victims of western sanctions themselves. Iran was the first to send help to the dizzied nation, with China and Russia following soon after, along with other Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon, Algeria... etc.

NATO member Turkey was spotlighted by the West and sent immediate aid. This does not mean that they don’t deserve any help, on the contrary, what is mentioned about Syria in terms of needing immediate disaster relief also applies to Turkey. However, double standards prevail clearly when it comes to the two countries. Turkey received an almost immediate response to the disaster, whereas Syrians were stuck having to beg for sanctions to be lifted while digging for survivors with their bare hands, waiting for their share of aid to start trickling in.

As far as the West is concerned when it comes to Syrian aid, they’d rather ensure that the autonomous zone, ran by anti-government factions, Kurdish groups, White Helmets, and Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist group with ties to multiple terrorist cells like Ansar Al-Islam, get aid over the government-controlled areas. At the time of writing this, HTS has been impeding aid from getting into affected areas. 

When it comes to those who impose these economic punishments, it has mainly been the American’s use of sanctions that have crippled dozens of nations. Being the country that has imposed two-thirds of the world's sanctions since the 1990s, the United States wields its sanctioning power as a sort of Excalibur to strike down whomever they deem necessary. The use of sanctions has come a long way from its theoretical purpose of preventing war. 

Cuba is one of the go-to nations when one wants to look at the effects of America’s economic sanctioning campaigns. After a group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro humiliated the American empire by overthrowing their puppet, Fulgencio Batista, they implemented socialist policies that, among other things, gave the island nation one of the best healthcare systems in the world, a national literacy rate that’s nearly 100%, and rights to workers unknown to them under the previous regime. Unsurprisingly, after embarrassing the American empire, a brutal embargo was imposed, affecting the nation for over 60 years.  

American lawmakers didn’t hide their contempt toward Cuba. Lester D. Mallory, an American diplomat, laid out his points to then-Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Roy R. Rubottom Jr., as to why the US should sanction Cuba. He said if implemented, “it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.”

The US also tied in other nations with the Cuban embargo. The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is estimated to have charged Cuban allies and investors $130 billion in damages. Between April 2019 and March 2020, OFAC’s penalties amounted to over $2.9 billion. 

For 30 years now, the UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly against the US-imposed embargo on Cuba. Unsurprisingly, the US opposed lifting the embargo, with US political councilor John Kelly ironically saying that the US is committed to the Cuban people's pursuit of dignity and freedom, adding that they’ll continue the fight for Cuban “democracy and human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

Cuba has stayed strong in the face of the embargo's contribution to malnourishment, poor water quality, and restrictions on medicines. The American Association for World Health stated in a 1997 report that “a humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventative health care to all its citizens.”

It says something about how successful American foreign policy is when the CIA came out in a case study and said that sanctions placed on Cuba “have not met any of their objectives.”

Another nation that has had to face the brunt of US economic warfare is Iran. The nation held the title of the most sanctioned country in the world until the Russian operation in Ukraine last year. Iran suffers from more sanctions than Cuba, Venezuela, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Libya combined.

One of the most isolated economies in the world and an ever-growing sanctions list that increases whenever its people decide to take a breath, Iran has had its nation’s industries crippled leading to malnutrition and medical complications. The US treasury’s blacklist for Iran, a terribly long list, has put in place a ban on, among other things, Iran’s oil industry and on any financial transaction with Iran. Additionally, any person or company that does business with Iran may be subject to a $1-million fine and 20 years in prison regardless of American citizenship.

Although sanctions are not meant to affect access to food and medicine, Iran has seen a major hit in medical supplies due to the American’s trigger-happy use of these deterrents. Some of the worst affected Iranians are those with rare diseases or conditions that require specialized treatment. Given a huge part of Iran’s budget has been virtually eliminated due to US sanctions, the containment of COVID-19 was severely hindered. Mike Pompeo justified the medical blockade by saying that if countries want to offer humanitarian aid to Iran, they should first seek the release of foreigners from Iranian prisons, adding that “their detention defies basic human decency.”

One way Iran has been getting around economic sanctions is by doing business with those not too concerned about the American’s economic torture like China. In some cases, Iran has had to resort to using cryptocurrencies for international transactions, like the trade deals with Venezuela, to bypass sanctions imposed on them.

And of course, it would be remiss not to mention Russia’s sanctioning this past year. The Russian ruble was worth less than Robux, the currency for the popular video game Roblox. Conservatives and liberals celebrated the news because their “enemy” was hurting when in reality, innocent people with no ties to the Russian government were feeling the blows.

Canada, in wanting to follow the footsteps of greater imperialist powers, dropped the ball with giddy support of Ukraine by blocking the means of those living in Canada to withdraw their money if stored in a Russian bank or Russian-affiliated business.

Sanctions are placed on a country in order to make it obey international law. But when it comes to the truth about what sanctions are, ex-foreign minister of Iran, Javad Zarif, said it best when he likened these blockade policies to “economic terrorism.”

Pure terrorism. It’s been known that these measures imposed by the US empire have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. In Venezuela, it’s estimated that more than 40,000 civilians were killed due to harsh economic sanctions imposed by the US. In other cases like Afghanistan, more people are prone to die from sanctions than they are from warfare. 

The West’s reliance on sanctions is a genocidal act. UK/US sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s are estimated to have killed 1.5 million civilians, and on average, 150 children every day. More recently, between 2014 and 2020, US sanctions imposed on Venezuela were estimated to have killed over 100,000 people. 

It’s constantly promised when new sanctions are implemented that they’re only meant to target the government and not innocent civilians. However, it doesn’t take an expert in foreign policy to realize that it’s a false promise. Like a no-death war, sanctioning one entity with no residual effects on others is a flat-out lie. 

The sanctioning of nations by Western powers should be considered an act of terrorism and torture. The people of whatever nation they decide to call an “enemy” don’t deserve to die in order to feed the act of the West’s unwanted world policing.

Due to immense global pressure, the US has exempted earthquake aid from the sanctions placed on Syria a week after the damage has taken its toll on the nation. UNHCR estimates that over 5 million Syrians have been displaced following the earthquake. But the US has been unclear as to whether this exemption will allow private money-transferring institutions to put aside their fear of overstepping by working with Syria.