Sanctions are a weapon of war
The United States uses sanctions against
countries that resist the U.S.’ agenda. U.S.
sanctions are designed to kill by destroying an
economy through denial of access to finance, causing
hyperinflation and shortages and blocking basic
necessities such as food and medicine. For example,
sanctions are expected to cause
the death of tens of thousands of Iranians by
creating a severe
shortage of critical medicines and medical
equipment everywhere
in Iran.
Muhammad Sahimi
writes that in a “letter published by The
Lancet, the prestigious medical journal,
three doctors working in Tehran’s MAHAK Pediatric
Cancer Treatment and Research Center warned
that, ‘Re-establishment of sanctions, scarcity
of drugs due to the reluctance of pharmaceutical
companies to deal with Iran, and a tremendous
increase in oncology drug prices [due to the
plummeting value of the Iranian rial by 50–70%],
will inevitably lead to a decrease in survival of
children with cancer.’”
Diabetes, multiple sclerosis,
HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and asthma
affect over ten million Iranians who will find
essential medicines impossible to get or available
only at high prices. The U.S. claims that food and
medicines are excluded from sanctions but in
practice, they are not because pharmaceutical
companies fear sanctions being applied to them over
some technical violation and Iran cannot pay for
essentials when banks can’t do business with
it. European nations failed
to persuade the Trump administration to ensure
that essential medicine and food were available to
Iranians.
In Venezuela, due
to the sanctions, 180,000 medical operations
have been canceled and 823,000 chronically ill
patients are awaiting medicines. The Center for
Economic and Policy Research found sanctions
have deprived Venezuela of “billions of dollars
of foreign exchange needed to pay for essential and
life-saving imports,” contributing to 40,000 total
deaths in 2017 and 2018. More than 300,000
Venezuelans are at risk due to a lack of access to
medicine or treatment. Economists warn U.S.
sanctions could cause famine in Venezuela.
Sanctions
also cause shortages of parts and equipment
needed for electricity generation, water systems,
and transportation as well as preventing
participation in the global financial market.
Sanctions, which are
illegal under the UN, OAS and US law, have
caused
mass protests in Venezuela against the U.S.
Sanctions against Iran and Venezuela could be a
prelude to military attack, i.e. the US weakening a
nation economically before attacking it. This is
what happened in Iraq. Under pressure from the
United States, on Aug.
2, 1990, the UN Security Council
passed sanctions that required countries to
stop trading or carrying out financial transactions with
Iraq. President George H.W. Bush said the UN
sanctions would not
be lifted “as long as Saddam Hussein is in
power.” The U.S. continued to pressure the
increasingly skeptical Security Council members into
compliance even though hundreds of thousands of
children were dying. In 1996, then-U.S. Ambassador
to the UN Madeleine Albright was asked about the
death of as many as 500,000 children due to lack of
medicine and malnutrition exacerbated by
the sanctions, and she brutally replied, “[The] price
is worth it.” Sanctions were also used against
Libya and Syria before the U.S. attacked them.
This is consistent with the U.S. ‘way of war’
described by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in “An
Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,”
which describes frontier counterinsurgency premised
on annihilation including the destruction of food,
housing, and resources as well as ruthless
militarism. The U.S. has waged a long-term economic
war against Cuba (sanctions in place since 1960),
North Korea (first sanctions in the 1950s, tightened
in the 1980s), Zimbabwe (2003) and Iran (1979)
Sanctions hurt civilians, especially the most
vulnerable—babies, children, the elderly and
chronically ill—not governments. Their intent is to
shrink the economy and cause chronic shortages and
hyperinflation while ensuring a lack of access to
finance to pay for essentials. The U.S. then blames
the targeted government claiming that corruption or
socialism is the problem in an effort to turn the
people against their government. This often
backfires as people instead rally around the
government, quiet their calls for democracy and work
to
develop a resistance economy.
The movement to end sanctions
In recent years, a movement has been building to
end the use of illegal economic coercive measures.
The movement includes governments coming together in
forums like the
Non-Aligned Movement, made up of countries that
represent 55 percent of the global population, as
well as UN member-states calling for international
law and the UN Charter to be upheld and
social movements organizing to educate about the
impact of sanctions and demand an end to their use.
This June, the Non-Aligned
Movement called for the end of sanctions against
Venezuela.
Popular Resistance is working with groups around
the world on
the Global Appeal for Peace, an initiative to
create a worldwide network of people and
organizations that will work together to oppose the
lawless actions of the United States, and any
country that acts similarly. A high priority is
opposing the imposition of unilateral coercive
economic measures that violate the charter of the
United Nations. The UN and its International Court
of Justice have been ineffective in holding the U.S.
accountable for its actions. No one country or one
movement has the power alone to hold the United
States accountable, but together we can make a
difference.
Join this campaign here.
With 39 countries targeted with sanctions, and
other countries impacted because they cannot trade
with those countries, nations are challenging the
U.S.’ dollar domination. Countries are seeking to
conduct trade without the dollar and are no longer
treating the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve
currency while also avoiding Wall Street. The
de-dollarization of the global economy is a
boomerang effect that is hastening due to the abuse
of sanctions and will seriously weaken the U.S.
economy.
Foreign Minister
Zarif, who describes sanctions as “economic
terrorism,” warned that “the excessive use of
economic power by the United States, and the
excessive use of the dollar as a weapon in U.S.
economic terrorism against other countries, will
backfire.” As the blowback continues to grow,
the negative impact on the U.S. economy may force
the U.S. to stop using sanctions. The end of dollar
domination will add to the demise of the failing
U.S. empire.
Time to end the use of illegal economic
sanctions
The combination of countries acting against U.S.
sanctions, and people’s movements pressuring the
U.S. government has the potential to end the abuse
of sanctions. The
EU has moved to blunt the impact of the
sanctions against Iran by creating an
alternative to the U.S.-controlled SWIFT system
for trade. This is
spurring the end of the dollar as the reserve
currency. Some officials in the EU have called for
retaliatory sanctions against the U.S.
Trump left a small opening for potential
diplomacy with Iran that could lead to the end of
sanctions against that country. Trump bragged about
the U.S. being the number one oil and gas producer,
taking credit for an Obama climate crime, and
therefore no longer needing to spend hundreds of
millions a year to have troops in the Middle East.
He concluded with a message to the “people and
leaders of Iran” that the U.S. was “ready to have
peace with all those who seek it.” He said the U.S.
wanted Iran to have a “great and prosperous future
with other countries of the world.”
That future is only possible if the U.S. moves to
end the sanctions against Iran. Iranians have
learned the U.S. cannot be trusted. Iran lived up to
the requirements of the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, but Trump did not when
he withdrew from it and re-instated
draconian sanctions lifted by Obama. Trump added
even move sanctions. This also angered
European allies who had negotiated the agreement
and
were put in the position of being subservient to
the U.S. or going against it. To regain Iran’s
trust, the U.S. needs to make a good-faith gesture
of ending punitive economic measures.
North Korea, which has been sanctioned by the
U.S. longer than any other country, had a similar
experience after they reached an agreement with the
United States in 1994 under the Clinton
administration. The George W. Bush administration
wanted to put in place a national missile defense
system but the agreement with North Korea blocked
that.
John Bolton and Dick Cheney falsely accused North
Korea of violating the agreement, increased
sanctions against it and claimed it was part of the
Axis of Evil, along with Iran, and Iraq. North
Korea, like Iran, learned they cannot trust the
United States.
Sanctions are causing thousands of deaths in
North Korea. Now,
China and Russia are allied with North Korea and
are urging relief from the U.S. sanctions. Russia
and
China have also ignored U.S. sanctions against
Venezuela and continue to do business with it.
On December 17, the Senate passed a Sanctions
Bill that put in place sanctions against
corporations working with Russia to develop gas
pipelines to Europe. The action is
naked U.S. imperialism seeking to prevent Russia
from being the main natural gas exporter to the EU
market and to replace it with more expensive
U.S.-produced gas, a move to save the
financially-underwater U.S. fracking
industry. Russia, Germany, and others have
defiantly told Washington
its weaponizing of economic sanctions will not halt
the gas pipeline construction.
The indiscriminate,
illegal and immoral use of sanctions is an act
of war. Unless they are authorized by the United
Nations, unilateral coercive measures are illegal. A
critical objective of the peace and justice movement
in the United States, working with allies around the
world, must be to end this terrorist economic
warfare. The U.S. economy currently depends on
financial hegemony and war. The slow, steady
collapse of the dollarized economy means the 2020s
will be the decade U.S. domination comes to an end.
The U.S. must learn to be a cooperative member of
the global community or risk this isolation and
retaliation.
Kevin Zeese is an
American political activist who has been a
leader in the drug policy reform and peace
movements and in efforts to ensure a voter
verified paper audit trail. Margaret
Flowers, M.D., is a Maryland pediatrician
seeking the Green Party nomination for the
US Senate. She is co-director of
PopularResistance.org and a board adviser to
Physicians for a National Health Program and
is on the Leadership Council of the Maryland
Health Care Is a Human Right campaign.
This article was originally published by "PopularResistance"
-
Do you agree or disagree? Post
your comment here
==See Also==
