"According to a database maintained by Columbia University, a total of six countries—Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela—were under comprehensive U.S. sanctions, meaning that most commercial and financial transactions with entities and individuals in those countries are prohibited under U.S. law. An additional 17 countries—including Afghanistan, Belarus, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Yemen—are subject to targeted sanctions, which indicates that financial and commercial relations with specific companies, individuals, and, often, the government are forbidden under U.S. law.
According to a Princeton University database, another seven countries, including China, Eritrea, Haiti, and Sri Lanka, were under specific export controls. This already lengthy list does not even include targeted sanctions placed on individuals and businesses in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, or Paraguay, or sanctions placed on territories such as Hong Kong, the Balkans, or Ukraine’s Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk regions.
By 2021, according to U.S. Treasury Department's report, the United States had sanctions on more than 9,000 individuals, companies, and sectors of targeted country economies. In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden’s first year in office, his administration added 765 new sanctions designations globally, including 173 related to human rights. All told, the countries subject to some form of U.S. sanctions collectively account for a little more than one-fifth of global GDP. China represents 80 percent of that group.
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U.S. policymakers need to be clear and honest about what these intended goals are. Any honest review process must also be willing to examine whether and how sanctions may have strengthened the political and economic weight of the governments and their economic allies in sanctioned countries and illicit actors in both the short and long term.
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Much of this will require a sober willingness by policymakers in both parties to consider a basic fact: Sometimes sanctions don’t work. And in many cases, they are actively undermining U.S. interests."
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America’s Love of Sanctions Will Be Its Downfall