According to a report from Reuters, the incoming Biden administration will continue to use sanctions as a foreign policy weapon, a favorite tool of President Trump.
Sources told Reuters that when Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20th, he will immediately begin to reshape US foreign policy but will take time to deliberate over sanctions on top targets like China and Iran.
The report raises questions about Biden’s Iran policy. The former vice president has said he plans to work with the Islamic Republic to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, which would require the US to lift sanctions.
The Trump administration has been on a sanction frenzy against Iran with the hope of sabotaging Biden’s efforts to pursue diplomacy. The administration is taking a similar approach with China and recently slapped sanctions on members of Beijing’s legislature.
The report said Biden will sort through the Trump administration’s sanctions to decide what will be kept in place and what could be lifted. The sources said that while his strategy might be slightly different, Biden will make it clear that sanctions are still on the table.
“It won’t be a pullback or a push forward,” one source close to Biden’s transition team told Reuters. “It will be a readjustment in the use of the sanctions tool.”
Some changes Biden could make, according to the sources, are lifting sanctions on the International Criminal Court that the Trump administration slapped on over the court’s investigation of US war crimes in Afghanistan. Biden could also increase sanctions on Russia for its alleged role in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.
When it comes to China, the source close to the transition team said Biden will likely increase sanctions over alleged human rights abuses in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and possibly Tibet. An unnamed Biden advisor told Reuters that the threat of sanctions could be used to pressure China on trade issues.
Figures compiled by the Center for a New American Security think tank show President Trump’s preference for sanctions as a foreign policy tool. According to numbers, the Trump administration issued about 3,800 new sanctions “designations,” compared to 2,350 during Obama’s second term.
History shows, economic sanctions have a devastating impact on the civilian population of the target country while they do little to achieve Washington’s stated goals. One example is Cuba, which has been under a 60-year US embargo that has done nothing to depose the Communist government but continues to hurt ordinary Cubans.
Cuba is one country that Biden could give relief from sanctions. Bloomberg published a story on Tuesday that said Biden is planning to move the US closer to normalized relations with Cuba by reversing some of the sanctions and restrictions implemented by President Trump.
Starving people can be a lot crueler than blowing them up. It’s typically used to soften up a population before invasion.
I have some real doubts about starving population. Yes, the goal is to turn populace against their governments, and unravel the societal institutions.
But starving has not happened — exceptions in war conditions. Just the opposite — there is a growth in food production. Russia is a prime example. It became top world producer of wheat, and other grains. It also became top exporter. This has alleviated the pressure on countries that are in danger of sanctions. Shortage of wheat — that is, bread — in Egypt brought Morsi down.
But then, Egypt relied on Canadian and US wheat imports, that somehow did not deliver. Today, Egypt imports from Russia as it works in its own production devastated by decades of liberal economic policies.
Take example of North Korea that suffered severe floods in mid nineties, when a system of levies failed, and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Until today, the estimate of people that died of famine includes the entire population displaced by flood. This is not realistic for a number of reasons. One, people did die, but mostly due to sudden nature of failure of flood protection. But bring mostly agricultural country — it never lacked food. There were initial distribution challenges, but ultimately people survived the displacement, and over several years afterwards, rebuilt the agriculture in flood hit areas. Yet, we still hear reports that the entire displaced populace died of starvation. If so, how come they returned to reclaim their farms?
We need some real information from the countries we describe as starving. If American press is not welcome, it would not be hard to partner with reporters and agencies that have access to these countries without restrictions. But then, what would be the value of such effort? Once public opinion has been set due to decades of demonization , it is not likely to change on account of some non-mainstream reporting.
The power of indoctrination in the era of mass media is the matrix that makes individual powerless.
The only hope is that such hubris will get shipwrecked to the laughter of God.
For some reason I don’t expect to see “no new wars” following any criticism of Biden’s sanctions like with Trump’s. But they will be just as much acts of war as they were with Trump. Even if he cuts back on Trump’s, they will now be his.
“American Democracy was a form of self-murder, always. Or of murdering somebody else… The love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” d.h. lawrence
Thank you for this. I think Lawrence & Freud offer deep insights for Americans.
Blockades are an act of war, sanctions aren’t. Free market means free to trade, free not to trade. No one has the right to the presumption that you must necessarily choose to exchange with them
Now this is news to me!
American sanctions are ALWAYS extraterritorial. We punish everyone that trades with the target of our sanctions. The objective is transparent; besides isolating (blockading) the targeted country we are enforcing US domestic laws internationally.
I wholeheartedly agree with you — one should be FREE TO TRADE or NOT TRADE. This is why FREEDOM OF TRADE is wrong. The very freedom of trade that was enforced by gun diplomacy was always just a pompous sloganeering by which stronger forced weaker to engage in unfair and exploitative “trade”. So, free to trade — or not — is a choice.
We are getting finally some honesty.
And if honestly US and its band of European has-beens do not wish to trade with someone — that is their business.
But to punish those that WANT to trade with the target of sanctions is an act of war by different means.
Sanctions are NOT about trade. Sanctions are ALWAYS about depriving target country from using common institutions of international banking and finance.
These institutions — while based in the West — have been customarily used by the whole world. There was no need to reinvent the wheel.
But after prolonged and repeated use of such institutions as tools of sanctions, things will change. A BETTER wheel has to be invented
Perhaps it is for the best. If multiple global institutions of international trade exist — they will compete. The winners will be those that are most flexible in the use of variety of currencies, cheaper, less intrusive.
Thus, sanctions will have their positive side — global trade must decouple from West-only institutions and mechanisms,
As for trade itself — it has positive consequences. More self reliance, import substitutions, increase in production and innovation.
Laws of action and reaction have not been abolished.
Regarding sanctions, how does any country have the right to tell another country who it can/cannot do business with. That’s bordering on a virtual blockade.
https://www.rt.com/news/509899-us-opposes-nazi-vote/
US and Ukraine oppose anti-Nazi vote.
https://fpif.org/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-secret/
A brief history of Nazis in America.
sanctions fail—since these stupidities, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, etc have all improved their militaries and reduced poverty, despite temporary setbacks…US sanction reflect desperation, the incapacity to compete…the recent designation of Vietnam, Switzerland as “currency manipulators” suggest USa empire collapse is near
On the bright side, these are the last throes of a fast dying Empire–aka the Apex of Evil.
pure crimes against humanity.
I suppose respect for international law is off the table as always.
International law will be used only when it can be used as a shield for our Empire.
All of these unilateral sanctions by the wonderful democratic and free USA, including the secondary sanctions against any country who disobeys Big Brother, are completely illegal and based on fear of what the evil empire will do if they do not cower under the pressure.
Who cares what cheating Joe does.
You believe one guy more than the electoral college, poll workers, and multiple state and federal level courts do? A guy who’s been busted for running a fraudulent online university and over a dozen of whose lawyers and staff and associates have been arrested or indicted over the past four years?
Biden will be guided by AIPAC even though the Democrats convey support towards JStreet.
When it comes to foreign policy authors of articles such as above should directly go to AIPAC or Netanyahu himself.
CoVid restrictions are a sanction on the American people. Government sanctions are a prelude to war. You figure it out.