US President Donald Trump has based his foreign policy on a series of harsh economic blockades, each designed to frighten, coerce, and even starve the target country into submitting to American demands. While the practice is less violent than a military attack, and the blockade is through financial means rather than the navy, the consequences are often dire for civilian populations. As such, the United Nations Security Council should scrutinize the United States’ economic barriers under international law and the UN Charter.
When Trump campaigned for office in 2016, he rejected the frequent US resort to War in the Middle East. During the years 1990-2016, the US launched two major wars with Iraq (1990 and 2003), as well as wars in Afghanistan (2001), Libya (2011), and Syria (2012). It also participated in many smaller military interventions (Mali, Somalia, and Yemen). While the Syrian War is often described as a civil war, it was, in fact,f regime change led by the US and Saudi Arabia under a US presidential directive called Timber Sycamore.
None of these US-led wars achieved their political objectives, and the major conflicts have been followed by chronic violence and instability. The attempt to force Syria’s Bashar al-Assad from power led to a proxy war — eventually involving the US, Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates — that displaced over 10 million Syrians and caused around a half-million violent deaths.
While Trump has eschewed a new war, he has continued US regime-change efforts by other means. Trump is often called an isolationist but is as interventionist as his predecessors. At least so far, his strategy has been to rely more heavily on US economic power than military might coerce adversaries, creating cruelty and destabilization.
The Trump administration is currently engaged in three attempts at comprehensive economic blockades against North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran, several lesser embargoes against countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua, and an intensifying effort to cut off China’s access to technology. The blockade against North Korea is sanctioned, at least in part, by the UN Security Council.
The blockade against Iran is in direct opposition to the Security Council. And the embargo against Venezuela is so far without Security Council engagement for or against. The US attempts to isolate the three countries from almost all international trade, causing shortages of food, medicines, energy, and spare parts for necessary infrastructure, including the water supply and power grid.
The North Korean blockade operates mainly through UN-mandated sanctions. It includes a comprehensive list of exports to North Korea, imports from North Korea, and North Korean entities’ financial relations. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that 10 million North Koreans are at hunger risk, partly due to sanctions. “(T). The unintended negative impact sanctions can have on agricultural production, through both direct and indirect impacts, cannot be ignored,” the FAO warns. “The most obvious are restrictions on the importation of certain items necessary for agricultural production, particularly fuel, machinery, and spare parts for equipment.”The draconian US sanctions on Venezuela have come in two phases. The first, beginning in August 2017, was mainly directed at the state oil company PDVSA, the country’s main foreign exchange earner; the second round of sanctions, imposed in January 2019, was more comprehensive, targeting the Venezuelan government. A recent detailed analysis of the first round of sanctions shows their devastating impact. The US sanctions gravely exacerbated previous economic mismanagement, contributing to a catastrophic fall in oil production, hyperinflation, economic collapse (output is down by half since 2016), hunger, and rising mortality.
US sanctions against Iran have been in place more or less continuously since 1979. The most recent and draconian measures, introduced in August 2018 and intensified in the first half of this year, aim to cut Iran from foreign trade.
The US sanctions directly contravened UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement. The effects have been devastating. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that Iran’s economy will shrink by 10 percent between 2017 and 2019, with inflation reaching 30 percent this year. Medicines are in short supply.
One might expect that other countries would easily circumvent US sanctions. But the US has threatened to punish foreign companies that violate the sanctions and has used the dollar’s global clout as a bludgeon, threatening to sanction foreign banks that finance trade with Iran. Despite the European Union’s express desire to engage economically with Iran, European companies have fallen into line. Over the longer term, more ways will likely be found to circumvent the sanctions, using yuan, ruble, or euro financing, yet the erosion of US sanctions will only be gradual.
Despite the intense economic pain inflicted on North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran, none has succumbed to US demands. In this sense, sanctions have proved no more successful than military intervention. North Korea has maintained and most likely is expanding its nuclear arsenal. The Iranian regime rejects US demands concerning its missile program and foreign policies. And Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro remains in power.
The US blockades have been carried out by presidential decree, with almost no public debate and no Congress’s systematic oversight. This has been a one-person show, even more so than in the case of president-led wars, which trigger more public scrutiny vastly. Trump realizes he can impose crippling sanctions abroad without direct costs to the US general or budget and virtually no political accountability.
Military blockades are acts of War and, therefore, subject to international law, including UN Security Council oversight. America’s economic blockades are similar in function and outcome to military blockades, with devastating consequences for civilian populations and risk-provoking war. It is time for the Security Council to take up the US sanctions regimes and weigh them against international law and peacekeeping requirements.