Sanctions, a Surrogate for Warfare

Dramatic Increase in US Use of Sanctions

By: Peter M Johansen

The US has dramatically increased its use of unilateral and secondary sanctions as a foreign policy weapon over the past twenty years. And more to come with President Donald J. Trump back in the White House. Also, the EU is following suit. These sanctions violate the UN Charter and international human rights conventions, international law and humanitarian law – and is defended by showing to “our values”.

About one third of humanity lives in countries that are subject to sanctions and unilateral coercive measures, stated the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Idriss Jazzairy (2015-20) from Algeria when he presented his report on international sanctions to the UN General Assembly in 2015.

Since then, the use of sanctions, including secondary sanctions targeting third parties, and unilateral coercive measures (UCM) has increased in strength without involving the UN.

This is not accidental and, not surprisingly, follows the geopolitical pattern that is increasingly emerging and which has been simply described as “The West against the rest”. The same geopolitical pattern that has contributed to and accelerated the emergence of Brics+.

Numbers speak for themselves

Last year, economist Francisco Rodríguez presented figures for the think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). They show that around 29 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is produced in countries that are subject to sanctions. This is a significant increase from around four percent in the 1960s.

Rodríguez, a professor of international relations at the University of Denver in Colorado, is from Venezuela and has first-hand knowledge of how sanctions work. His new book “The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012-20” will be published in January 2025.

He belongs to the moderate opposition and is a frequent writer for Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

On June 25, the Washington Post published a comprehensive review of the US use of sanctions, “How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across The Globe”, that is, after the turn of the millennium.

The result is striking: the United States has imposed three times as many sanctions as any other country or international institution. They affect about a third of all countries in the world (the UN has 193 members) in one way or another, from financial measures, sanctions against companies, individuals and organizations.

It is not only the frequency that has increased, but also the scope. Sanctions were relatively few under Bill Clinton, increased significantly under President George W. Bush, remained at about the same level with a slight increase under President Barack Obama, increased again under President Donald Trump, and exploded in the first two years of President Joe Biden due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/

A Siege Resembling the Medieval Era”

Fikrejesus Amahazion writes in Eritrea Profile (October 23 and 30). “Although the imposition of sanctions and UCMs is often dressed up in lofty rhetoric about protecting human rights, promoting democracy, and peace to make them more palatable and give them a veneer of legitimacy, there is a significant and growing body of overwhelming evidence from academic literature, reports by international organizations, and numerous case studies that demonstrate the illegality of sanctions and UCMs and the enormously damaging impact they have on the countries they target,”

Fikrejesus Amahazion is a researcher on the development of Eritrea and the Horn of Africa.

“These measures have been implemented unilaterally and without explicit authorization or consensus from the international community. They are not in accordance with international law, international humanitarian law, the UN Charter, or the fundamental norms and principles governing peaceful and diplomatic relations between states,” he writes.

Amahazion concludes that this is “the modern equivalent of a medieval siege and represents a surrogate for warfare.”

Amahazion may have taken the image of the medieval siege from Cuban-American lawyer Alfred-Maurice de Zayas. He was “an independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and just international order” for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) from 2012 to 2018 and legal officer for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1981-2003).

The Republican who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Tulsi Gabbard in 2020 used the term “medieval siege” to describe the US sanctions regime against Venezuela.

In an interview with Telesur in February 2018 and later in his report published in August of the same year, he claimed that “there is no humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, but rather “economic warfare” and “economic sanctions” from the United States, Canada and the European Union were the main causes of the situation.

He did not deny Venezuela’s over-reliance on oil revenues, poor governance under President Nicolás Maduro or corruption, but recommended that the economic sanctions be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as possible crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, the treaty that is the legal basis for the ICC since July 17, 1998.

Surrogate for warfare”

Amahazion points out that the sanctions are often presented and described as “comprehensive, sectoral, targeted and smart”, but the effects are that “they always cause enormous social, economic, health and humanitarian consequences and damage that leads to irregular migration flows, displace people and ultimately undermine peace – and they always hit those most vulnerable in society disproportionately hard, including children, women, the elderly, the sick and the poor.”

In the last two or three years alone, nearly ten percent of Cuba’s population has left the island as a result of the US blockade that still weighs heavily on the inflation-driven and costly post-pandemic economy that has crippled the country’s largest source of income, tourism.

In their report for the think tank CEPR, “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela” from April 25, 2019, economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs concluded that US sanctions against Venezuela had led to a 31 percent increase in deaths in 2017-18. This meant an excess mortality of 40,000 Venezuelans.

This was before the great mass exodus.

https://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-2019-04.pdf

The US, with the EU in tow, is deliberately using sanctions as a political on/off switch that acts as direct interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela and other countries.

The same applies to Amahazion’s home country, Eritrea, which is hit by a series of unilateral sanctions and unilateral coercive measures (UCM) from the US and the EU. Eritrea has also been ravaged by the UN since the former Italian colony was incorporated into Ethiopia and then in connection with the border war with Ethiopia (1998-2000), when the UN did not follow up on the ruling of the International Boundary Commission (EEBC).

The US was central in undermining the binding and final ruling that was mostly in Eritrea’s favour, as the border village of Badme was awarded to Eritrea by the EEBC. Susan Rice, who was then the Deputy Secretary of State for African Affairs (1997-2001), the UN Ambassador (2009-13) and a National Security Advisor (2013-17) under President Obama, chose to set the ruling aside in cooperation with Algeria’s already weakened President Abdelaziz Boutiflika, who was then head of the African Union.

The US relied on Ethiopia as its bridgehead in the Horn of Africa, and has maintained its sanctions against Eritrea to this day, while Ethiopia came to blows with the US when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took over from the nearly thirty-year TPLF-dominated rule in Addis Ababa.

Violation of the UN Charter

The unilateral sanctions and unilateral coercive measures (UCM) have no international legitimacy. On the contrary: they violate international law and international conventions and multilateral agreements, including fundamental human rights and national sovereignty.

Amahazion believes that they constitute clear attacks on fundamental principles of the UN Charter such as independence, equal sovereignty, non-interference and multilateralism.

As the UN Security Council is not involved, the UCM is in violation of Article 41 of the Charter in Chapter 7: “Actions with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression”.

The cahpter reads: “The Security Council may decide on measures not involving the use of armed force to be used to give effect to its decisions. It may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include the complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.”

The authority for sanctions rests entirely with the Security Council. Violation of Article 41 thus also entails a violation of Article 103 of Chapter 16: “Miscellaneous Provisions.”

It reads: “In cases of conflict between the obligations of Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.”

The UN Charter takes precedence over all other international law.

Last year Alfred de Zayas pointed to another article, Article 39 of Chapter 7. It states: “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

“The destabilizing effect of the UCM on the international order may constitute a threat to international peace and security under Article 39 of the Charter,” Zayas believes.

UN Conventions

The sanctions regimes and the UCM also violate several UN conventions. These include the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

ICESCR is a multilateral treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1966, which the USA has signed but not ratified. It is part of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and ICCPR. The convention is monitored by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Economic,_Social_and_Cultural_Rights

U.S. sanctions primarily aim to hinder sanctioned nations from accessing essential services, including food, medicine, and education. According to Amahazion, this constitutes a violation of Articles 11 and 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). These unilateral coercive measures infringe upon the rights of sanctioned states to determine their political status and formulate their economic policies and social development strategies, which are fundamental to the right to self-determination as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Furthermore, these sanctions often coincide with media campaigns that propagate war propaganda and express hateful or racist sentiments, serving to justify the sanctions themselves. Such campaigns exemplify the hegemonic hypocrisy and double standards underlying the notion of “our values.”

The Stigmatization of Evil

Labeling individuals and entities with stigmatizing terms can quickly gain international traction. For instance, British Prime Minister Tony Blair famously compared Saddam Hussein to “our time’s” Adolf Hitler during a speech in Parliament, seeking approval for military action alongside the United States. Similarly, Eritrea has often been referred to as “Africa’s North Korea,” a characterization frequently used by Professor Kjetil Tronvoll from Oslo New University College.

One can follow the traces to Susan Rice and her network of Ethiopian and foreign TPLF connections. They helped shape the propaganda during the war in the Tigray province between the deposed TPLF administration and its armed forces and the central government in Addis Ababa with military assistance from Eritrea (November 3, 2020 – November 3, 2022).

President Bush called Iran, Iraq, and North Korea “Axis of Evil” in his annual State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, a speech written by David Frum. Syria, Libya, and China were “Beyond the Axis of Evil.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used the term “Outposts of tyranny” in 2005 and specifically highlighted North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe as totalitarian states and dictatorships. The USA labeled these states as “rogue states”: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Cuba, and Venezuela.

All of these states are still subject to U.S. sanctions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil

The Case of Eritrea

UCM is in conflict with the African Union’s Constitutive Act from 2000, where Article 4 deals with non-interference in internal affairs of states. In 2022, the AU Parliamentary Assembly condemned unilateral punitive measures against Eritrea and other African states. This was repeated last year with demands that sanctions against Eritrea be lifted.

What are the consequences of the sanctions and the UCM for Eritrea? “They have posed formidable obstacles to obtaining authorizations and licenses for acquiring and delivering certain essential goods. Due to the multifaceted complex difficulties of the sanctions regime, including fear of secondary sanctions against companies doing business with sanctioned countries, Eritrea has had to navigate through major obstacles.

This has led to prolonged delays and significantly higher costs in connection with accessing capital goods, spare parts, and technologies essential for maintaining and increasing production industries or developing infrastructure. The country’s access to certain technological and knowledge-based systems has often been hindered or made much more challenging, thereby creating barriers to scientific and technological progress, exacerbating existing inequalities, and undermining the realization of the right to development,” writes Fikrejesus Amahazion in Eritrea Profile.

The sanctions also involve ongoing efforts to prevent legitimate money transfers from Eritreans abroad to relatives in Eritrea. Many people, especially young people, have left Eritrea for various reasons. Migrants and refugees who want to escape prolonged “national service” (military and community service) or who see no future prospects in Eritrea send money home. These transfers constitute a lifeline for many families.

Amahazion concludes that “Numerous studies from international organizations and leading researchers have consistently shown that remittances often serve as a critical stabilizer, helping households build resilience, can promote sustainable development, and should be welcomed, encouraged, and facilitated,”. The same applies to many families in North Africa and Central America.

Amahazion believes that “As for investments, foreign investments in the significant mining sector have been actively discouraged, and access to international markets has been restricted with the intent to choke off a valuable revenue stream for the country,”.

This is where China and the significance of the BRICS+ cooperation can play a markedly greater role in resisting U.S. and EU sanction regimes by building a new financial tool that can bypass the U.S.-based and dollar based Swift system for international transactions.

“The West Against the Rest”

Eritrea is yet another example of the distance between “The West against the rest” in geopolitical issues. Resolution 77/214 Human rights and unilateral coercive measures (UCM) adopted on December 15, 2022 by the UN General Assembly affirms that UCM is a major obstacle for realizing the right to development and implementing The Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in September 2015 as a continuation of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals from September 2000.

The bottom line is that when the sanctions regime cripples the sanctioned states’ ability to maintain social benefits, threaten food security, and hinder or impose restrictions on access to medicines and medical equipment, it violates the cornerstone of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights from December 10, 1948, the Declaration on the Right to Development (DRD) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1986, and the Declaration on Principles of International Law ratified in 1970. The latter states that “no state has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the internal or external affairs of another state.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bill_of_Human_Rights

Translated by Johan Petter Andresen

PeterM

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