United States government sanctions

Based on Wikipedia: United States government sanctions

The Quiet Weapon

The United States has a weapon it uses more than any other. Not missiles. Not drones. Sanctions.

Two-thirds of all sanctions imposed worldwide since the 1990s have come from Washington. The country targets a full third of all nations with some form of financial penalty. Low-income countries bear the brunt—sixty percent of them operate under American financial restrictions. This makes the United States the undisputed heavyweight champion of economic coercion, imposing three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body combined.

But what exactly are sanctions, and why has America become so addicted to them?

What Sanctions Actually Do

Think of sanctions as financial walls. When the United States sanctions a country, a company, or an individual, it essentially tells American banks, businesses, and citizens: you cannot do business with them. Given that the dollar remains the world's dominant currency and American banks sit at the center of global finance, this creates enormous pressure.

The restrictions come in many flavors. Some are comprehensive—blanket prohibitions that make almost all trade and financial transactions between Americans and an entire country nearly impossible. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Russia all face these sweeping restrictions. Others are surgical, targeting specific individuals or companies while leaving the rest of a country's economy untouched.

Then there are secondary sanctions, perhaps the most controversial tool in America's arsenal. These go after non-Americans who do business with sanctioned parties. A French bank that processes payments for an Iranian company, a Chinese manufacturer that sells to a Russian military contractor—even though neither transaction involves a single American dollar or person, the United States claims the authority to punish them. This extraterritorial reach infuriates allies and adversaries alike.

The Bureaucracy Behind the Blockades

Two agencies run the show. The Office of Foreign Assets Control, known by its acronym OFAC and housed within the Treasury Department, handles financial sanctions. The Bureau of Industry and Security at the Commerce Department manages export controls—determining which technologies and goods Americans can sell abroad.

OFAC maintains the infamous Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, or SDN List. Approximately twelve thousand names appear on it. Getting your name on this list is devastating. Your American assets freeze. No American bank will touch you. Any global bank with significant American operations—which is most major banks—will refuse your business too.

The list includes suspected terrorists, drug traffickers, arms dealers, and officials of authoritarian regimes. It also includes, controversially, politicians, businesspeople, and organizations that the United States government simply doesn't like.

A Brief History of Economic Warfare

America's first major experiment with sanctions was a disaster. The Embargo Act of 1807, championed by Thomas Jefferson, prohibited American ships from trading with foreign ports. The goal was to pressure Britain and France, then at war, into respecting American neutrality. Instead, it devastated American merchants while barely inconveniencing the European powers. The government abandoned the policy within two years.

This failure made Washington wary of economic warfare for over a century. Trade policy remained purely about economics—tariffs, quotas, the mundane business of commerce.

World War One changed everything. President Woodrow Wilson, that idealistic professor turned politician, saw sanctions as a peaceful alternative to war. He envisioned the League of Nations using coordinated economic pressure to enforce international order. "A nation that is boycotted is a nation that is in sight of surrender," Wilson declared.

But Wilson couldn't even convince his own country to join the League. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and the League imposed sanctions, America sat on the sidelines.

The Cold War and Beyond

The Cold War brought sanctions back with a vengeance, though in a unilateral American form. Washington imposed crushing restrictions on Cuba after Castro's revolution, on China after the communist takeover, on North Korea after the Korean War. These weren't coordinated international efforts—they were American actions, sometimes over allied objections.

The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 changed the pattern. Suddenly, the United States found itself the world's sole superpower, and it began working more through international institutions. During the 1990s, Washington imposed sanctions on what it called "rogue states"—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe—but did so in concert with the United Nations and other multilateral bodies. There was a sense that American power should be exercised through global consensus.

That consensus frayed in the 2000s and shattered in the 2010s. As China rose and Russia reasserted itself, the United States increasingly went it alone. Sanctions became less about enforcing international norms and more about advancing American geopolitical interests, whether or not allies agreed.

The Tools of the Trade

The sanctions toolkit is extensive. Arms embargoes prevent weapons sales. Export controls restrict what technologies can be sold—particularly "dual-use" items that have both civilian and military applications. A precision machine tool might manufacture car parts, but it could also produce missile components.

Financial restrictions hit hardest. The government can prohibit Americans from conducting any financial transactions with designated targets. It can pressure the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to deny loans. It can revoke diplomatic immunity, allowing terrorism victims' families to sue in American courts. It can strip tax credits from companies operating in sanctioned countries. It can ban duty-free imports. It can prohibit Defense Department contracts with companies controlled by targeted governments.

Visa restrictions add a personal dimension. Sanctioned individuals can find themselves barred from entering the United States entirely—unable to visit family, conduct business, or access their American assets.

The Countries in the Crosshairs

Comprehensive sanctions—the most severe—currently target a handful of countries. Cuba has been under various American sanctions since 1960, making it the longest-running sanctions regime in modern history. North Korea faces near-total isolation. Iran has endured waves of sanctions over its nuclear program. Russia, especially after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, faces escalating restrictions. Certain regions of Ukraine now controlled by Russian-backed forces are themselves sanctioned.

Beyond these comprehensive programs, dozens of countries face targeted sanctions against specific individuals, companies, or sectors. The Global Magnitsky Act—named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison after exposing corruption—gives the United States authority to sanction human rights abusers and corrupt officials worldwide. This has created an ever-expanding web of designations touching countries across every continent.

Military end-use restrictions add another layer. The government presumes denial for any defense-related exports to countries including Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Russia and Belarus face even tighter controls—the restrictions extend to items merely produced using American software or technology, or manufactured by equipment that originated in the United States.

Do They Actually Work?

Here's the uncomfortable truth: sanctions usually fail.

A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that sanctions achieve their stated goals in fewer than twenty percent of cases. They rarely topple governments. They almost never force countries to fundamentally change their behavior. When they do have an effect, it's often the opposite of what was intended.

Political scientist Dursan Peksen examined American sanctions from 1981 to 2000. He found they didn't improve human rights—they worsened them. Countries under sanctions showed decreased "respect for physical integrity rights, including freedom from disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture, and political imprisonment." Rather than weakening authoritarian leaders, sanctions often entrench them by giving them an external enemy to blame and disrupting the private sector that might otherwise challenge their power.

The logic breaks down most obviously when the goal is regime change. As former CIA Deputy Director David Cohen put it: "The cost of relinquishing power will always exceed the benefit of sanctions relief." No dictator will sanction himself out of a job.

The Russia Case Study

Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered the most aggressive sanctions campaign in modern history. The West froze hundreds of billions in Russian central bank reserves. It banned exports of advanced technology. It tried to cap the price Russia could charge for oil.

The initial expectation was that Russia's economy would collapse.

It didn't.

Asian countries, primarily China and India, eagerly absorbed Russian oil and gas at discounted prices. As Russian imports from the West declined, domestic production filled some gaps. Russia's trade balance actually improved sharply. By mid-2022, the ruble had become one of the world's best-performing currencies. Academic Jeremy Garlick observed that in the short term, sanctions had "backfired economically by benefitting Russia's economy and backfired geopolitically by bringing Russia and China closer together."

The Biden administration has since tried to tighten restrictions, targeting crude oil sold above the sixty-dollar-per-barrel price cap and threatening Chinese financial institutions involved in the trade. Whether this will prove more effective remains uncertain.

The Human Cost

The people who suffer most from sanctions are rarely the intended targets.

In 1997, the American Association for World Health examined the Cuba embargo and found it contributed to malnutrition, poor water access, and lack of medicine and medical supplies. The report concluded that "a humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level" of commitment to public health—an awkward finding for a policy meant to discredit that government.

Similar patterns repeat worldwide. Sanctions disrupt medicine supplies, food imports, and basic economic activity. The elite usually find workarounds—smuggling networks, offshore accounts, alternative trading partners. Ordinary people cannot.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on the United States to suspend its sanctions to help alleviate the pandemic's impact on sanctioned populations. Several members of Congress—including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar—made similar requests. The restrictions largely remained in place.

The Alliance Problem

Secondary sanctions create constant friction with allies. When the United States threatens to sanction European companies for doing legal business with Iran or Russia, it's essentially saying: our foreign policy preferences override your sovereignty.

According to Rawi Abdelal, who studies political economy at Harvard Business School, this has become particularly acute since Donald Trump's presidency. European allies increasingly view American sanctions "as an expression of Washington's preferences and whims, and as a tool for US economic warfare"—warfare that sometimes targets them.

The European Union has repeatedly protested. It has passed blocking statutes prohibiting European companies from complying with certain American sanctions. But these laws are largely symbolic. Given the choice between the European and American markets, most global businesses choose America. The threat of losing access to dollar-denominated finance outweighs European objections.

Why Does America Keep Doing This?

If sanctions rarely work and often backfire, why has their use exploded? Since 1990, the United States has established economic sanctions on more than twenty countries. The numbers keep growing.

British diplomat Jeremy Greenstock offered perhaps the most honest explanation: "There is nothing else between words and military action if you want to bring pressure upon a government."

Sanctions occupy a comfortable middle ground. They feel like action. They impose costs on adversaries. They satisfy domestic political demands to "do something" about foreign bad actors. They avoid the blood and treasure of military intervention. They can be calibrated, escalated, or withdrawn. They give politicians talking points.

Whether they achieve their stated objectives is almost beside the point. Rawi Abdelal described them as "useful when diplomacy is not sufficient but force is too costly." This acknowledges their role as political theater as much as policy tool.

The Conservative Critique

Critics come from unexpected directions. Daniel T. Griswold of the libertarian Cato Institute attacks sanctions from a conservative Christian perspective. He argues they "limit the possibilities of a sanctioned country's people to exercise political liberties and practice market freedom."

This critique inverts the usual framing. Sanctions are typically sold as pressure against authoritarian governments. But Griswold points out they simultaneously restrict the economic freedom of ordinary people—preventing them from trading, traveling, and engaging with the outside world. They punish populations for the sins of their rulers.

Griswold also notes the commercial cost. American companies lose business opportunities when their government bars them from trading with sanctioned countries. Competitors in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere happily fill the gap.

The Future of Economic Warfare

The sanctions machine shows no signs of slowing. If anything, it's accelerating. New designations add thousands of names to restricted lists each year. Technology enables more sophisticated enforcement. The weaponization of dollar hegemony has become a defining feature of American foreign policy.

But the tool is wearing out. Countries are actively seeking alternatives to dollar-based trade. China and Russia now settle significant trade in their own currencies. Central banks are diversifying reserves away from dollar assets. The more aggressively Washington wields sanctions, the stronger the incentive to escape their reach.

Political scientist Lisa Martin warned against characterizing sanctions in terms of "winning" and "losing." Their effects are diffuse, indirect, often perverse. They reshape economies and politics in unpredictable ways. Success, when it comes, may take decades to materialize—or may never arrive at all.

For now, the United States remains addicted to its quiet weapon. It's easier than diplomacy, cheaper than war, and more satisfying than doing nothing. That it rarely works as intended seems almost incidental. In the world of foreign policy, the appearance of action often matters as much as action itself.