The Despot's Accomplice: How the West Is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy
by
Brian Klaas
Published 15 Mar 2017
But careful diplomacy can achieve that same signaling, using surgical precision rather than taking a meat cleaver to the target regime’s body politic with economic sanctions. â•… Learning from these biting unintended consequences, some “smart sanctions” have been developed—including economic instruments that exclude food and medical supplies from the blacklist.17 These can still produce unintended consequences because they are difficult to tailor effectively, but they may offer a better approach. In other instances, widespread sanctions are avoided altogether. “Targeted sanctions” are currently in vogue. They aim to punish the elite while sparing the population. For example, in Zimbabwe, Western governments targeted President Robert Mugabe and his entourage with travel bans and asset freezes.18 These have been stunningly inconsequential, and have possibly even entrenched the 92-year-old’s wrinkled grip on power; Mugabe has cleverly blamed Zimbabwe’s economic woes on the perceived neoimperialist bullying represented by the sanctions, successfully deflecting blame from where it should be: on his mismanagement of the € 157 THE DESPOT’S ACCOMPLICE economy.19 With a bit of political jiu-jitsu, the sanctions, sent to Mugabe as an economic attack, have been transformed into an unintended gift. â•… The lesson is that sanctions that truly bite may have a shot at changing the status quo, but only with tremendous collateral damage and the risk that public opinion in the targeted country will turn irreversibly against the Western governments making their economy—and sometimes their children—bleed.
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‘Sanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do?’, The American Economic Review, 89(2), 415–20. 17.╇Cortright, David and George Lopez (2002). Smart Sanctions: Targeting Economic Statecraft, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. € € € € € € € € € € € € € € € € 246 notes pp. [157–164] 18.╇As with Belarus, the EU suddenly lifted most of its sanctions on Zimbabwe in February 2016. 19.╇Grebe, Jan (2010). ‘And They Are Still Targeting: Assessing the EffecÂ� tiveÂ�ness of Targeted Sanctions against Zimbabwe’, Africa Spectrum, 45(1), 3–29. 20.╇Afrobarometer (n.d.)., ‘Data, Round 5, Merged Data’, http://www. afrobarometer.org/data, last accessed 3 April 2016.
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They left behind 800 bodies rotting in the streets.18 â•… Even after such grisly violence on both sides, Abidjan was still a battleground after the rebel offensive. It quickly became clear that street-to-street fighting was heading toward a bloody, prolonged stalemate. In the midst of fighting, the UN Security Council—including China and Russia—backed Ouattara as the legitimate victor and called for targeted sanctions against Gbagbo until he relinquished power. When that didn’t work, the UN pressed for further action. â•… French troops, under the banner of the United Nations, intervened to enforce the democratic will of the Ivoirian people. French helicopters attacked Gbagbo’s guard towers. Western bombs fell on crucial ammunition depots.
Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite
by
Carne Ross
Published 25 Apr 2007
But by the time we came to negotiate “smart sanctions” (we soon wearily accepted the name; everyone else was using it), I was a little more jaded. This was my seventh “rollover” of the Oil-for-Food programme. Most of the “experts” had changed, but the arguments had remained the same. Indeed, it felt as if I was stuck in an unfunny diplomatic version of “Groundhog Day” with the same episode being replayed over and over again. You say “civilian deprivation”; I say “Iraqi non-cooperation”. Fresh ideas were hard to come by, and even when they appeared, they were invariably rejected. This new initiative — smart sanctions — was fresher and better than most, but our clever new weapon failed to alter the nature of the war — we were back in the trenches, hurling the same old canards, and I was still stuck in that same horrid airless NAM caucus room.
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Music notwithstanding, we failed to overcome the objections of the Russians (the French came around sooner): there were more questions over the contents of the lists of prohibited items than there was time to resolve, and for months to come the US was mired in highly complex negotiations over the specifications of prohibited goods.8 Iraqi resistance remained intractable. Our smart sanctions would have to wait for the next rollover six months later, when they were at last agreed. G. was in charge of the negotiations this time: I had volunteered to serve a brief spell in our embassy in Kabul. There was no music, just G’s quiet professionalism to guide the negotiations. And they managed to agree. But by then Washington was well on its way to deciding an altogether different course, and smart sanctions was no longer seen as the necessary redeemer of a bad policy. Sanctions on Iraq were inhumane and I was intimately involved in both their maintenance and their design.
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However, long sessions at “State” (as we insiders call it) and endless cajoling telegrams to get “London” to pressure “Washington” eventually had their effect. And so, with the Americans somewhat reluctantly on board, we went to the Security Council and proposed our new measure, soon to be characterised by the press, though never by us, as “smart sanctions” (inviting the obvious retort, from Iraq’s Deputy Prime minister Tariq Aziz, that previous sanctions had been “stupid”). And thus it was that I found myself chairing a meeting of the Security Council “experts” to try to get them to agree to it. (Since it was our proposal, we had taken it upon ourselves to convene and chair the meetings.)
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
by
Thomas E. Ricks
Published 30 Jul 2007
"What O'Neill doesn't notice is that those who wanted to go to war lost, and those who supported 'smart sanctions' won," he said. In the spring of 2001, he added, Rice, the new president's national security adviser, made it "extremely clear" to colleagues that they weren't going to do anything in Iraq. Wolfowitz and his few allies—mainly Libby and a few others in the office of the new vice president, traditionally not a powerful political base from which to operate—were stymied by Powell, who talked not about regime change but about improving containment by imposing smart sanctions. This was essentially an attempt to breathe new life into containment by paring the list of items being watched, focusing more energy on controls related to weapons of mass destruction, and loosening oversight of food imports and other civilian goods.
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq
by
Steve Coll
Published 27 Feb 2024
Rather than denounce the Clinton administration’s efforts, he praised them: “As a result, Iraq is no longer a danger to the region in the way it was ten years ago,” Powell said. “But there are problems,” he continued. “Saddam is still there. And he is using his oil wealth not to benefit his people but to develop weapons of mass destruction.” Powell then pitched his main recommendation to Bush: “smart sanctions,” meaning a reformed policy to more precisely restrict trade relevant to WMD but one that would not hurt “children and people generally.” He added, “We do not regard a military option as the best approach, [but] we reserve the right to act, even unilaterally.” “This seems like a sensible approach,” Blair said.
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Still, Rumsfeld went on, “there ought to be a way” for the U.S. to avoid simultaneous conflict with Iraq and Iran “when the two of them do not like each other.” Rumsfeld’s instinct that Saddam might have reached a “stage in life” when dialogue could be useful was sound. The Iraqi president had not softened about America, but he was clearly interested in talking, and the outlines of a deal—restoration of weapons monitoring, some version of smart sanctions, the resumption of business ties—was not impossible to imagine. “It is possible that Saddam’s options will increase with time, while ours could decrease,” Rumsfeld wrote.[20] But the White House was not geared up to make hard decisions about Iraq policy that summer. Four days later, Rumsfeld allowed his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to present “A Liberation Strategy” to the White House.
Dirty Secrets How Tax Havens Destroy the Economy
by
Richard Murphy
Published 14 Sep 2017
The era of banking secrecy is over.’6 This was a bold claim, suggesting that tax havens stood outside the mainstream of the financial system and did not cooperate with other nation-states in the areas of regulation and the management of financial risk; it made clear that, in the view of the governments issuing the statement, secrecy was at the heart of the problem, and it suggested that targeted sanctions could address the issues arising. Each idea was interesting, but the proposed solution that emerged from that summit was fundamentally wrong. In fact, it can almost be claimed as one of the successes of tax haven secrecy that the way in which tax havens work has been so misunderstood that when the world turned its attention to the abuses they permitted it had no idea how to specify the problems they created – or, therefore, how to address them.
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
by
Siddharth Kara
Published 30 Jan 2023
At higher levels, there were big companies involved, chief among them a commodity-trading firm based in Kinshasa called Congo Futur, which was run by a Lebanese ally of Arran named Kassim Tajideen. Tajideen happened to be a prominent financial supporter of Hezbollah. The U.S. Treasury Department put Congo Futur under targeted sanctions in 2010, alleging that the firm was part of a network of businesses in the DRC that was laundering millions of dollars for Hezbollah using accounts in the BGFIBank, the same bank used by Joseph Kabila to facilitate crooked transactions with Chinese mining companies.5 According to U.S. ambassador Mike Hammer, the U.S. government is well aware of Lebanese money-laundering networks in the DRC and links to terrorist groups like Hezbollah: “I would say that the U.S. government is concerned about [terrorist] links to specific Lebanese here.
Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety
by
Gideon Rachman
Published 1 Feb 2011
At the United Nations, the Chinese, along with the Russians, are always suspicious of Western efforts to put pressure on countries that are violating their citizens’ human rights, whether in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, or Sri Lanka. The Chinese do not want to set a precedent or to crimp their freedom to pursue their national interests by striking deals with other authoritarian governments. China’s opposition to international action is not absolute and unvarying. The authorities in Beijing did agree to mild, targeted sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. And China has become an increasingly important participant in UN peacekeeping missions, unlike the United States, which is still unwilling to see its troops placed under the command of a foreign general. But in most other areas, the Chinese remain very wary of new international treaties and obligations.
China into Africa: trade, aid, and influence
by
Robert I. Rotberg
Published 15 Nov 2008
According to a UN report, approximately 700,000 people lost their dwellings or the sources of their livelihood.30 Further repression followed, and the government took additional steps to gain access to assets that it could use for patronage purposes, including more farm seizures and the nationalization of controlling shares in internationally held companies. Beginning in 2000, and to a greater degree after the 2002 elections, Western countries imposed a series of punitive measures. These included the dras-tic reduction of nonhumanitarian foreign aid, suspending Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth, putting in place an arms embargo, and imposing “smart sanctions,” notably freezing regime elites’ bank accounts and banning their travel to the EU and the United States. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund also ceased assistance. Faced with increased international isolation and an economic crisis reaching epic proportions, President Mugabe in 2005 announced a new “Look East” policy.
Modernising Money: Why Our Monetary System Is Broken and How It Can Be Fixed
by
Andrew Jackson (economist)
and
Ben Dyson (economist)
Published 15 Nov 2012
Media reports often simplistically imply that the printing of money was the cause of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse. However, in reality the economic collapse came first, and the mass printing of money came as a consequence of this. Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and other members of the leading party ZANU-PF, have been eager to blame the continuous years of drought and the targeted sanctions of Western countries as the main reasons for the economic decay. Yet these claims are easily refuted - sanctions on top government officials only came into effect in 2002. Empirical research questions the claim that drought is to blame: “The historically close relationship between rainfall and GDP growth ended in 2000 – the first years after the land reforms.”
Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy
by
Adam Tooze
Published 15 Nov 2021
Since what was at stake was control of data and personal communications, Huawei’s presence in Western telecom networks raised concerns about privacy, and strategic control of information. Already in 2012 the Obama administration had launched an investigation into Huawei and another Chinese telecom firm, ZTE. That resulted in both being banned from U.S. public procurement. ZTE was subject to targeted sanctions. In 2018 the Trump administration reached a settlement with ZTE but dramatically stepped up its pressure on Huawei. Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO and the founder’s daughter, was arrested in Canada at the behest of the American authorities. The White House issued an executive order banning Huawei from all U.S. networks, but put the execution of that order on hold.
The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire
by
Jeff Berwick
and
Charlie Robinson
Published 14 Apr 2020
Evidence for this can be found in the war plan for the invasion of Afghanistan that was crafted before the events of 9/11 even took place. They follow a pattern of demonizing another nation, then using their alleged actions as the pretext for initiating economic sanctions first, in order to soften up the target financially from the inside, followed by direct military action always framed as just and limited to military targets. Sanctions as a Tool for Regime Change Sanctions are used as a tool to cut off funding and punish countries that are not falling in line with the diabolical agenda of what author Peter Dale Scott named the “Deep State”. As an example, they may fear that Iran is selling a portion of their oil for yuan or rubles, a direct violation of the Petrodollar scam, so they slap sanctions on Iran through their compromised politicians in Washington in order to prop up their crooked banking and oil company buddies.
The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House
by
Ben Rhodes
Published 4 Jun 2018
That summer, a sense of crisis was escalating in Syria. It began with young people gathering in the streets, scrawling graffiti on the walls: THE PEOPLE WANT THE REGIME TO FALL. The forty-five-year-old dictator, Bashar al-Assad, responded with mass arrests and torture. We deployed the now familiar tools: public condemnation and targeted sanctions. But this was not Egypt—Syria was an adversary that could tune out the United States and count on the support of Iran and Russia, which were determined to prop Assad up. Over the summer, in response to attacks from the Syrian military, the protests turned violent, and members of the government and military started to defect.
The Economic Weapon
by
Nicholas Mulder
Published 15 Mar 2021
In March 1935 he reinstituted general conscription in the Reich, expanding the Reichswehr from 100,000 to 300,000 men. The French government was in the final stages of concluding a mutual assistance treaty with the Soviet Union and proposed to capitalize on this impending alliance by stopping Germany’s rearmament with targeted sanctions. Paris wanted to steer clear of a food blockade that would enable Nazi propagandists to claim the League was trying to “starve out the German people.” But when it came to the raw materials essential for armaments production, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union were in a powerful position.
Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat
by
John P. Carlin
and
Garrett M. Graff
Published 15 Oct 2018
The response back from those more technically minded around the table sounded like gobbledygook, as they listed various IP addresses, tools, and what sounded like a choose-your-own-adventure cyber story—this tool could work like this, that tool could work like this or that. The policy people instantly lost the conversation’s thread. They were used to concrete options they understood—bomb this target, sanction this company, charge that person. Cyber offered none of that certainty and, for a policy person who didn’t know their bits from their bytes, none of the options translated into English. Some government leaders wondered if we could simply block North Korea’s attack on Sony; Lisa Monaco and Rick Ledgett, the deputy director of the NSA, both knew that was impossible.
The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World
by
Anu Bradford
Published 14 Sep 2020
The Case of Myanmar, in Global Governance through Trade: EU Policies and Approaches 185 (Jan Wouters et al. eds., 2015). 101.Clara Portela, European Union Sanctions and Foreign Policy: When and Why Do They Work?, 160 (Routledge 2010). 102.Clara Portela, Enforcing Respect for Labour Standards with Targeted Sanctions, 7 (2018). 103.Laura Beke & Nicolas Hachez, supra note 100, at 207. 104.Commission Report on GSP 2016-2017, 19 January 2018, COM (2018) 36 final. 105.Opinion Procedure 2/15, Request for an Opinion pursuant to Article 218(11) TFEU—Conclusion of the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Singapore—Allocation of competences between the European Union and the Member States, 2017 E.C.R.