by Richard Balzano
Economic coercion has become a routine instrument of U.S. foreign policy, using sanctions to pressure smaller states to yield to American hegemony. Often hailed as a peaceful alternative to conventional warfare, sanctions are inherently violent by design, undercutting any claims of humanitarian intent.
Sanctions are designed to inflict deprivation inside target states. Sanction-induced deprivation (SID) is intended to create unrest and trigger anti-government mobilization, to in turn bring about desired political change. Reasonable observers may identify popular mobilization as evidence of civil society, but with no sense of irony or self-reflection, Washington capitalizes on protests to label target governments as illegitimate authoritarian regimes. If mobilization brings about political change, Washington achieves its objective without further intervention. This is rarely the case, as the origins of SID are not lost on target populations that recognize the origins of their deprivation and value their sovereignty. Researchers have observed sanctions’ ineffectiveness in achieving their stated objectives, while critics have questioned the integrity of stated objectives and likely ulterior motives. Time and time again, protest and mobilization provide opportunities for coups, color revolutions, and other subversive tactics from Washington’s clandestine regime change playbook.
All is not lost if no mobilization transpires. Washington and the compliant mainstream Western media blame SID on corruption, economic mismanagement, and the allegedly inevitable failures of socialism. Countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba are consistently labeled “failed states,” but the material effects of U.S. economic aggression are never mentioned. This omission, paired with the hollow rhetoric of democracy promotion and humanitarian concern, sustains the ideological justification for continued pressure.
Sanctions trace their roots to premodern siege tactics, when cities were surrounded and deprived to force submission. Article 16 of the League of Nations’ Covenant legitimized the practice, and the UN Charter expanded it through Articles 2(4), 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, and the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution. After the Second World War, sanctions shifted from military tools to instruments of economic and diplomatic pressure, aimed at shaping behavior across geopolitical terrain. Sanctions target nations, institutions, and individuals, and take on many forms, including trade restrictions, monetary constraints, visa revocation, travel bans, cultural restrictions, embargoes, and military assistance suspensions. Modern sanctions operate on coercion, raising the costs of economic activity and threatening the population to push the leadership into compliance, with the ultimate goal of political change or, failing that, creating leverage for U.S. influence.
The behaviors targeted by sanctions are broad, from forestalling war and promoting democracy to combating repression or terrorism, advancing human rights, or securing captured territory or persons. The stated noble motivations for sanctions are highly suspect, often serving as a moral alibi that masks the pursuit of U.S. national interests and rarely aligning with actual outcomes. Few legal barriers constrained their application; Article 2(4) of the UN Charter imposes no limit on coercive measures short of war. Over time, sanctions became routine tools for enforcing the preferences of dominant powers, often applied inconsistently or manipulatively.
The application of sanctions follows a clear asymmetry: larger Western economies target smaller states that lack the capacity to reciprocate. Historical analysis shows that sanctioning powers’ economies often dwarfed the targets’ by ratios of ten to one, and in cases aimed at destabilization, the disparity often exceeded 400 to 1. This imbalance reinforces Western hegemony and amplifies the coercive power of sanctions.
Legal protections emerged in response to coercive economic practices. The UN’s long-ignored 1970 Declaration on the Principles of International Law states: “No State may use or encourage the use of economic[,] political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights and to secure from it advantages of any kind.” The OAS Charter similarly prohibits intervention, declaring that no state may employ coercive measures to force the sovereign will of another. Collective punishment, central to SID, is explicitly prohibited under international law, including Articles 50 of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Regulations, Article 26(III) of the 1949 Geneva Convention, and Articles 4(2)(b) and 75(2)(d) of the 1977 Additional Protocols, as well as Article 20(f)(ii) of the International Law Commission’s 1996 Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind. Despite these protections, dominant powers continue to employ sanctions with little accountability.
Before 1990, the UN modestly applied sanctions, but Washington drove their expansion in the latter twentieth century, acting unilaterally, through coalitions, or through the UN. Between 1960 and 1990, most sanctions originated in the United States, and from 1970 to 1998, Washington participated in over two-thirds of trade sanctions imposed. The 1990s became known as “the sanctions decade,” cementing sanctions as a preferred tool of U.S. geopolitical influence.
This transpired amidst post-Cold War unipolarity, Clinton-era liberalism, and the rise of New Democrats, which contributed to sanctions’ bipartisan normalization. American conservatives generally embrace aggressive foreign policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations, while liberals, generally critical of Republican interventions, easily sign off on Democrat-led hostilities. When Democrats lead, libs double down on the uplifting dictator-toppling democracy promotion rhetoric that underwrites U.S. foreign policy, leaving critical thinking by the wayside. Liberals embraced Clinton’s sanctions as a humane alternative to military violence (along with Clinton’s violence), and dismissed their human costs. The Party that brought you human rights provisions in foreign assistance legislation was now willing to sign off on starvation in the name of democracy.
Sanctioned nations persevere, but it gets little exposure in the Western press. Cuba, likely the next nation on the Trump regime’s hit list, has endured a U.S. embargo for generations and is frequently labeled a failed state by the colossus in the north, yet neither the State Department nor Western media are willing to make the connection between Cuba’s economic woes and the decades-long embargo. Despite the siege, Cuba outperforms the hemisphere in several humanitarian areas. Housing and food are human rights with homelessness near zero. Cuban literacy is nearly 100 percent while the U.S. is in freefall. Healthcare is a revered human right, and infant mortality and life expectancy compete with Western nations. Cuban medical diplomacy sends doctors throughout the Global South not to profit but to provide humanitarian relief. Not surprisingly, the Trump regime re-designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, and Marco Rubio has targeted Cuban medical missions abroad. As the U.S. puts the squeeze on Cuban oil imports, the consequences are increasingly dire, the conditions of which will be incoherently written off under the auspices of an authoritarian failed state.
Sanctions are economic warfare. They lack the shock and awe of conventional warfare, but they are far from a humane alternative—they are violent, designed to produce starvation and death. They run on coercion, suffering, and deprivation, and they hit civilians hardest, yet they have been normalized as a routine instrument of geopolitical pressure. Sanctions are collective punishment at their core—they are war crimes, and in a just world they would be treated as such. The good news is that the rise of BRICS, the emergence of China’s economic preeminence and a multipolar order will cripple Washington’s ability to exert economic leverage over smaller states. The bad news is that it won’t come soon enough.
–=≈=–
Richard M. Balzano is an historian and political analyst peddling truths at several institutions of higher learning, quietly devoted to the art of sedition and comfortably resigned to the peripheral left.