Sanctions
have a long history of worsening conditions for those that they
purport to protect. While they are often billed as “targeted”
or “smart” to minimise civilian damage, the brunt of the burden
falls upon the most vulnerable
Trump's
economic sanctions, have deprived the Venezuelan economy of
“billions of dollars of foreign exchange needed to pay for
essential and life-saving imports,” and in a
paper by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs, the
sanctions have resulted in 40,000 deaths in 2017 and 2018 and more
than 300,000 Venezuelans put at health risk due to a lack of access
to medicine or treatment.
Obama
paved the way for Trump when he began a policy of financial sanctions
against Venezuelan officials, individuals and companies. In 2015,
the Obama administration declared a “national
emergency”
around
Venezuela and labeled it a threat to “national
security.”
Using the same rhetoric Trump extended the sanctions. froze billions
of dollars of Venezuelan government assets held in the U.S., from
gold reserves to trade credits to oil funds from CITGO. The U.S.
impeded Venezuela’s ability to restructure its debt and perform
routine financial activities; prohibited Americans from doing
business with Venezuela’s oil company, PDVSA; and pressured other
countries to add to Venezuela’s economic isolation.
These
sanctions are ostensibly aimed at government officials and assets,
but the burden falls not on the government “but on the civilian
population,” according to Weisbrot and Sachs. The sanctions have
pushed inflation into hyperinflation and will cause Venezuela’s GDP
to drop by 37.4 percent in 2019. Of course, the U.S. sanctions are
not the original cause of Venezuela’s crisis. The collapse of oil
prices in
2014,
in a “rentier” state that relies almost exclusively on the
nationalized oil industry for revenue, was merely the trigger. The
collapse was worsened, by decades of clientelism, and corruptionon
the part of various Venezuelan governments, from before Chávez to
Maduro. None of this, however, should be used to whitewash U.S.
intervention in
Venezuela or the violence of
the domestic opposition. Nor should it invalidate the success of
Chávez reducing poverty, inequality, illiteracy, child mortality
rates and malnutrition.
There
has also been an escalation of Iranian sanctions, first in the
lifting of waivers that had previously allowed major buyers of
Iranian oil to continue importing the product, then in the new round
of sanctions on May 8 that targeted the
export of the industrial metals that make up 10% of Iran’s export
economy. These actions joined existing Trump administration sanctions
against Iranian “individuals, entities, aircraft and vessels.”
History
shows the consequences of these sanctions will not predominantly fall
on the Iranian government, but on the Iranian people, who have
suffered under U.S. sanctions since the 1979 Iranian
Revolution. Although there has not yet been a comprehensive study of
the toll of the Trump administration sanctions on
Iran, Iranians report that their everyday lives have become
more difficult, in the form of drug shortages, increased air
pollution, job loss and long food lines. This most
recent round of sanctions will only tighten the noose.
Regardless
of their devastating results, the use of sanctions against “unruly”
countries is a frequent U.S. foreign policy tactic, often posed as
the only alternative to an invasion. Trump’s talk of a potential
“military
option,” and the admission that the Venezuela sanctions are
meant to “increase
pain and suffering,” should rid us of any notion that the
U.S. is imposing sanctions to “restore democracy” or “respect
human rights” .
Futher
reading
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