Analysis from the Washington Post has revealed that 60% of low income countries are under US sanctions. More broadly, one-third of all countries face some form of them.
The US has now introduced three-times more sanctions than any other country or international organisation, the newspaper found.
US sanctions: affecting populations
Sanctions can target regimes like North Korea. But the US also uses them as a form of coercive control, targeting democratically elected leaders like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Either way, they can have a devastating impact on civilians.
The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights notes that broad sanctions on North Korea’s whole economy “inevitably take a humanitarian toll on the entire population by undermining their ability to survive”.
Meanwhile, US sanctions on Venezuela – part of an attempted coup against Maduro for American corporate interests – correspond with 40,000 excess deaths, according to the Centre for Economic and Policy Research. These impact Venezuelan citizens ability to access food and medicine.
Riddled with corruption
Sanctions are especially powerful for the US because globally goods such as oil are priced against the dollar. The Washington Post therefore states:
That financial supremacy creates a risk for U.S. adversaries and even some allies. To deal in dollars, financial institutions must often borrow, however temporarily, from U.S. counterparts and comply with the rules of the U.S. government. That makes the Treasury Department, which regulates the U.S. financial system, the gatekeeper to the world’s banking operations.
And sanctions are the gate.
The huge US sanction operation has established corruption. It created a multibillion dollar industry of foreign governments, multinational corporations, lobbying groups, and law firms attempting to get around the regime. They enrich former officials with knowledge of the process.
As well as US sanctions disproportionately hitting low income countries, there is a lack of evidence that they work. Bill Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official, said “nobody in government is sure this strategy is even working”.
Overall, US sanctions have only increased. Joe Biden has had the highest rate of sanctions of US presidents, adding around 6,000 sanctions in just two years of his presidency.
Featured image via Joe Biden – YouTube
