Darrell Castle talks about American sanctions placed on other countries, as well as some of the effects of those sanctions. Transcription / Notes STRANGLING PEOPLE Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today is Friday, August 16, 2019, and on today’s Report I will be talking about American economic sanctions placed on other countries, as well as some of the effects of those sanctions. Economic sanctions are acts of economic warfare previously reserved for conduct between warring powers where war has actually been declared. They are a way, short of military conflict, for one nation to impose its will on another. For example, the British sanctioned, embargoed, and blockaded Germany after declaring war in 1939 and Germany responded in kind by imposing a U-boat blockade of Great Britain. Those nations were officially at war and therefore claimed that war as the legal authority to conduct economic warfare against each other. What then gives the United States the legal, international, or moral authority to conduct economic warfare against other nations? I suggest that it is a simple Malthusian concept of might makes right. There were a few economic sanctions imposed by Washington prior to the first Gulf War, but that War beginning in 1991, is one of my first memories of Washington’s attempts to impose its will on others by economic warfare. The economic warfare that I continually make reference to is and must be backed by actual military power in order for it to be effective. For example, you may recall that the first Gulf War did not remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Instead, a No Fly Zone, as well as economic sanctions, were imposed in Iraq that lasted until the second Gulf War, or about 10 years later. Most of the sanctions against Iraq were conducted by the Clinton Administration, eight of the ten years anyway. The Secretary of State for President Clinton was Madeline Albright, and when she was told that the Iraqi sanctions had caused the deaths of about 500,000 Iraqis, many of them children, she replied, “we think it was worth it”. It’s hard to see the value looking back on it from 25 years of history, what was gained by it all and how was it worth it? Now we find ourselves sanctioning many nations in the world, along with many individuals from those nations. The reasoning behind sanctions seems to run something akin to the reasoning behind the strategic bombing campaigns of World War ll. We don’t like your leadership and, therefore, we will keep the pressure on until you overthrow your old leaders and accept leaders more to our liking. Strategic bombing was successful in destroying the infrastructure and war making capabilities of targeted nations, but it was not successful in breaking the morale of the people so that they demanded peace from their leaders on terms favorable to their enemy. The truth is that the bombing strengthened their resolve and made them more determined to fight on. It gave the enemy leaders the opportunity to point to the destruction and say this is peace to your enemies. Now we seem to be engaged in doing both. We impose economic sanctions where bombing is not yet appropriate, or where the target nation is nuclear capable, and physical bombing where it is not. Russia was sanctioned economically because it invaded Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. My purpose here is not to defend Russian actions, but to argue that economic sanctions often make peace impossible to achieve. The Russian economy has been effectively bottled up by restrictions on its ability to sell petroleum on the world market, a product on which its cash flow depends. Russia went from being a cash flush country before the sanctions to essentially financially cashless after the sanctions. In addition, many individual Russians were sanctioned including many Russian oligarchs. To my knowledge, however, Vladimir Putin, who reportedly has about 40 billion dollars stashed offshore, has not been sanctioned.