The US: Between Wars and Sanctions

As South Africa accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice, the Washington godfather is prepared to take action, not to stop the genocide executed by the Zionist apartheid regime against the Palestinian people with the weapons and funding it provides but to punish Pretoria for its audacity, even though the U.N. high court was cautious, merely ruling that it was “plausible” that Israeli forces were committing genocide.

Two Democrats, Reps. John James of Michigan and Jared Moskowitz of Florida, introduced the U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act, with James offering this rationale: “South Africa has been building ties to countries and actors that undermine America’s national security and threaten our way of life through its military and political cooperation with China and Russia and its support of U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas … we must examine our alliances and disentangle from those who remain willing to work with our adversaries.”

Now, President Joe Biden will have to take a stand on this legislation that would clearly be retaliation, after which concrete sanctions can be expected — those sanctions used by the U.S. against any opposition, usually in the form of accusations of human rights violations, of terrorism or even drug trafficking and money laundering. Any charge will seem valid and part of the complicit world will march along to the tune.

The reality is that the United States exists because of the wars in which it is involved, whether it initiates, organizes or sustains them, and because of the pivotal element of its foreign policy to maintain hegemony: economic sanctions.

The concern here is sanctions. The United States has employed the power it consolidated after World War II to impose itself economically and militarily, and through control of the international organizations it created in its shadow, to enforce its policies in international relations.

That is why sanctions became the pivotal tactic in the U.S. strategy of omnipotent domination. And although many have experienced or are currently experiencing this form of unilateral and unjust punishment, the 21st century has seen a boom in the perverse and sinister course of action.

Currently and for dozens of years, Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have suffered blockades and aggression, both renewed and hardened. This tactic has been used to inflict the greatest possible economic damage; campaigns of lies have also discredited them internationally.

The pinnacle of this ignominy is that the list of countries allegedly sponsoring terrorism that hold coveted oil wealth — including Iran and Syria — are subjected to pressure and aggression because they also pose significant threats to the U.S. national security, foreign policy and economy, a refrain repeated over and over again. Joseph Goebbels explained how that worked when he served as minister for public enlightenment and propaganda in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

Those who are sanctioned comprise weak and strong adversaries including Venezuela, Russia, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Somalia and Sudan.

A study published last September by the International Crisis Group stated that U.S. sanctions now affect more people in more places than ever before. At least 12,000 individuals, groups and companies are on the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, as it is euphemistically called; there are 38 country-specific sanctions administered by the Treasury Department.

Moreover, statistics from Drexel University’s Global Sanctions Database confirm that since 1950, 42% of all sanctions in the world — we are talking about the Cold War era — have been imposed by the United States.

In fact, sanctions are the weapon for a war of a different kind, but in many cases, they produce damage just as intense and inhumane. The most recent example: the withdrawal of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees — the epitome of infamy and evil.