https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/1/jeff_stein_us_sanctions_economic_warfare?
2024 年 8 月 1 日
杰夫·斯坦是《华盛顿邮报》白宫经济记者，也是《伊萨卡之声》的创始人。
链接“四位美国总统如何在全球发动经济战”
我们来看看《华盛顿邮报》的一项新调查，题为“金钱战争”，追溯了过去四位总统布什、奥巴马、特朗普和拜登执政期间美国制裁的影响。根据该报告，美国政府以某种形式对全球三分之一的其他国家实施了制裁，尽管没有明确证据表明这些制裁能够有效影响目标国家的政治，而且事实上，这些制裁往往可能巩固执政党的权力。我们采访了《华盛顿邮报》调查报告的作者之一杰夫·斯坦，了解调查结果，包括对委内瑞拉和伊朗制裁的影响。
记录
这是一份匆忙的记录。副本可能不是最终版本。
艾米·古德曼：这是民主现在！，democracynow.org，战争与和平报告。我是艾米·古德曼，与内尔梅恩·谢赫一起报道。
内尔梅恩·谢赫：今天的节目结束时，我们来看看《华盛顿邮报》一篇新的重要揭露文章，题为“金钱战争：四位美国总统如何在全球发动经济战”。《华盛顿邮报》的报道探讨了美国如何越来越依赖经济制裁，从而给全球造成了附带损害。
《华盛顿邮报》的揭露文章开头写道：“今天，美国实施的制裁是其他任何国家或国际机构的三倍，针对三分之一的国家，对人员、财产或组织实施某种形式的经济处罚。”
AMY GOODMAN：但制裁的附带损害很少被讨论。《华盛顿邮报》报道称，在刚刚举行了有争议的选举的委内瑞拉，制裁“导致经济萎缩的幅度大约是美国大萧条造成的经济萎缩的三倍”。《华盛顿邮报》还报道称，唐纳德·特朗普被警告对委内瑞拉的制裁可能会导致数百万人从委内瑞拉移民。
现在我们邀请了《华盛顿邮报》揭露文章的合著者、《华盛顿邮报》白宫经济记者杰夫·斯坦加入我们。
杰夫，你为什么不从那里开始呢？在我们在一起的这五分钟里，谈谈让委内瑞拉经济尖叫的事情。我们将从制裁对委内瑞拉的影响开始，然后再讨论其他国家。
杰夫·斯坦：是的。所以，从奥巴马政府开始，美国开始对委内瑞拉实施制裁。但一开始制裁非常有限。他们实际上只关注马杜罗政权的少数成员，他们应对委内瑞拉对抗议者实施暴力报复负责。
但实际上，在特朗普的领导下，正如我们在本篇报道中独家报道的那样，尽管国土安全部官员和机密报告警告这些制裁可能会造成移民外流的影响，特朗普政府确实切断了委内瑞拉的主要出口收入来源。委内瑞拉 96% 的出口收入来自石油销售。而美国在三到四年的时间里有效地阻止了这些销售在国际市场上发生。这确实扼杀了作为委内瑞拉经济命脉的合资企业。这意味着与美国生产商和委内瑞拉人达成的石油交易为他们提供了从其他国家购买进口产品所需的收入。
当这种情况发生时，你看到——这些数字令人震惊——正如你提到的，委内瑞拉的经济萎缩了 71%，是美国大萧条时期的三倍，比现代历史上记录的任何其他和平时期的经济崩溃都要严重，比许多其他处于战争状态的国家的经济崩溃还要严重，包括俄罗斯入侵后的乌克兰或 2003 年美国入侵后的伊拉克。所以这是一场灾难性的事件。
经济学家们反复讨论，从我的报道中可以清楚地看出，委内瑞拉的经济崩溃早于美国的制裁。你知道，在特朗普真正加大对委内瑞拉经济的压力之前，委内瑞拉的通货膨胀率就超过了 800%。但毫无疑问，这些美国措施使委内瑞拉的经济形势恶化，代价是——尽管付出了这样的代价，但并没有推翻马杜罗政府。显然，马杜罗今天仍然掌权。
NERMEEN SHAIKH：那么，杰夫，你能说说——我的意思是，这是委内瑞拉的情况，但也包括其他地方——美国的经济制裁有多有效？我的意思是，有一段时间，正如你在文章中指出的那样，在南非实行种族隔离时，制裁有助于推翻和结束种族隔离；在塞尔维亚，米洛舍维奇政权的垮台也是通过制裁或部分制裁实现的。但现在呢？
JEFF ST
EIN：现在我认为这真的很难说。学术界试图将制裁的影响与制裁是否奏效进行分离，这很难量化。我看到的一些研究表明，成功率在 15% 到 30% 之间，考虑到我们现在以某种形式对大约三分之一的国家和 60% 的穷国实施制裁，这意味着失败率很高。
我们在这篇文章中研究了古巴、伊朗、津巴布韦、委内瑞拉、阿富汗、叙利亚。这些国家有数千万甚至数亿人以某种形式受到美国制裁的影响，而美国打算针对的政权并没有易手，也没有放弃对权力的控制。也许，你知道，美国会说这些制裁仍然比没有任何措施要好，因为它们剥夺了这些政权可支配的资金，而这些资金可以用来进行美国所说的有害活动，美国不想看到的活动。但与此同时，就实际导致政权更迭而言，我们实际上并没有看到太多这种情况。
许多批评人士会认为，事实上，制裁实际上鼓舞了当权者，赋予当权政权权力，因为它们遏制了公民社会。它们削弱了私营部门参与者的权力和影响力，而这些参与者往往与受制裁的当局，即当权政权形成竞争的权力基础。因此，在一个又一个的案件中，我们看到对这些制裁制度的批评似乎非常合理。
AMY GOODMAN：那么，伊朗呢？至少可以说，今天伊朗是新闻热点。美国制裁的影响如何？美国实施制裁时，也会向其他国家施压，当然，就像我们在古巴看到的那样？
JEFF STEIN：是的。伊朗制裁于 2010 年首次实施，效果非常显著，这是奥巴马政府和国会通过的措施，实际上相当于美国制裁权的一次令人着迷的扩张。我们真正看到的是，第一次部署了二级制裁，这意味着我们不仅制裁我们不喜欢的一方，而且我们还会说，“如果你与伊朗政权进行贸易，我们就会针对你。”因此，这实际上代表了制裁权力的重大扩张，而且在制裁支持者看来，这确实是一种非常有效的方法，因为显然，2015 年，奥巴马政府与伊朗政权就一项核协议展开合作，制裁支持者称赞这项协议是此次施压运动的产物。
话虽如此，但特朗普领导下的美国退出了该协议。因此，任何说奥巴马政府对伊朗的制裁是成功的人都必须面对这样一个事实：作为一个国家，我们很快就放弃了这项协议，让伊朗人陷入困境，从那时起，我们看到伊朗人与俄罗斯、古巴、美国反对的其他大国合作，组建竞争金融网络，这让人们不禁要问，既然他们已经组建了所有这些竞争贸易网络，这些网络就像美国的影子贸易体系一样运作——西方金融体系是美国通过制裁惩罚伊朗的前提。
NERMEEN SHAIKH：Jeff，请快速回答一下——我们有 30 秒时间——2021 年改革美国制裁体系的计划进展如何？
JEFF STEIN：是的。我们在报道中独家报道，财政部的一组工作人员起草了一份比他们最终发布的报告更为详尽的报告。他们提出了数十项建议，包括旨在遏制美国制裁升级的措施，尤其是设立某种中央协调员。目前这有点官僚主义，但政府的许多部门都会提出制裁想法，这些想法会汇总到国务院和财政部的制裁中并继续推进。实际上，没有一个机构会评估这些制裁是否在更广泛的整体制裁战略背景下实施。财政部工作人员制定了一项计划，说“让我们实施它吧。”
但与国务院的分歧，有点像制裁的整体惯性，制裁似乎如此简单、如此有效，对美国政府来说，这比发动战争容易得多，比什么都不做容易得多，或者比什么都不做更容易被政治接受。所以，这个计划被搁置了。事实上，在拜登政府的领导下，我们看到了越来越多的制裁。拜登在两年内实施了 6,000 项制裁，这是一个前所未有的数字。而这种情况持续下去，实际上反映了美国无法解决这个问题，也无法降低这个数字。
艾米·古德曼：杰夫·斯坦，非常感谢您接受我们的采访，《华盛顿邮报》记者。我们将链接到您的文章，“四位美国总统如何在全球范围内发动经济战。”我是艾米·古德曼 (Amy Goodman)，和 Nermeen Shaikh 一起报道。
金钱战争：四位美国总统如何在全球范围内发动经济战争
http://web.archive.org/web/20240731230939/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/
2024 年 7 月 25 日 - 2024 年 8 月 4 日
Jeff Stein 和 Federica Cocco
2024 年 7 月 25 日上午 5:00
今天，美国实施的制裁是其他任何国家或国际机构的三倍，针对三分之一的国家实施某种形式的经济处罚，对个人、财产或组织进行处罚。它们已成为永无休止的经济战争中几乎本能的武器，政府最高层也承认它们的过度使用。但美国总统发现这种工具越来越令人无法抗拒。
通过切断制裁目标与西方金融体系的联系，制裁可以摧毁国家工业、抹去个人财富并破坏麻烦政权的政治权力平衡——而这一切都不会让任何美国士兵受到伤害。
但即使制裁不断增加，人们对其影响的担忧也与日俱增。
在华盛顿，制裁的激增催生了一个价值数十亿美元的产业。外国政府和跨国公司花费巨资来影响该体系，而白鞋律师事务所和 K 街游说公司则建立了蓬勃发展的制裁实践——部分是通过引诱政府官员利用他们的专业知识来赚钱。
在其他地方，制裁将独裁政权推向黑市交易，增强了犯罪网络和走私团伙的力量。美国的对手正在加大合作力度，以规避经济处罚。与军事行动一样，经济战也可能造成附带损害：例如，对委内瑞拉的制裁导致经济萎缩，其规模大约是美国大萧条时期的三倍。
制裁——甚至仅仅是威胁制裁——可以成为一种有效的政策工具，一种惩罚不良行为或向对手施压而不诉诸军事力量的方式。制裁使美国政府能够对战争罪犯采取道德和经济上有意义的立场。它们帮助结束了南非的种族隔离政权，并最终推翻了塞尔维亚独裁者斯洛博丹·米洛舍维奇。支持者说，即使制裁失败，它们也比不采取任何行动或发动战争的替代方案要好。
尽管如此，朝鲜被制裁了半个多世纪，但平壤获取核武器和洲际弹道导弹的努力却没有停止。美国对尼加拉瓜的制裁对阻止丹尼尔·奥尔特加总统的独裁政权几乎没有起到什么作用。俄罗斯因入侵乌克兰而遭受两年的制裁，这损害了莫斯科的长期经济前景，并提高了军事生产成本。但这些制裁也催生了一支“暗舰队”，这些船只在国际法规之外销售石油，同时使克里姆林宫与北京结成了更紧密的联盟。
4 月朝鲜和韩国之间的军事分界线。（Jintak Han/华盛顿邮报）
对制裁升级的担忧已经达到美国政府的最高水平：一些高级政府官员直接告诉拜登总统，过度使用制裁可能会降低这一工具的价值。然而，尽管认识到制裁的规模可能过大，但美国官员倾向于认为每一项行动都是合理的，这使得很难阻止这种趋势。据《华盛顿邮报》分析，美国今年再次以创纪录的速度实施制裁，目前超过 60% 的低收入国家受到某种形式的经济处罚。
“这是外交与战争之间的唯一手段，因此已成为美国武器库中最重要的外交政策工具，”前商务部官员、现任华盛顿智库战略与国际研究中心国际商务主任比尔·赖因施 (Bill Reinsch) 表示。
“然而，”赖因施说，“政府中没有人确定整个战略是否有效。”
“开始用这把锤子敲打东西”
经济战已经存在了数千年：古雅典在公元前 5 世纪对其对手实施了贸易制裁，美国总统自共和国成立之初就限制了对外贸易。1807 年，托马斯·杰斐逊关闭了美国港口以禁止出口船舶，并限制从英国进口。今天的制裁以冷战和第一次世界大战期间通过的法律为基础。
金钱战争
美国政府对外国政府、公司和个人实施的制裁比以往任何时候都多。但这些强大的经济战工具可能会带来意想不到的后果，伤害平民，损害美国的外交政策利益。《金钱战争》调查了美国金融制裁的扩散以及
过度使用的危险。
1990 年，萨达姆·侯赛因入侵科威特，催生出一种新形式的武器：对伊拉克的出口实施国际封锁。海湾战争后，全面制裁使伊拉克无法出口石油或进口物资来重建其遭到破坏的水电系统，霍乱和伤寒等疾病激增。
与此同时，随着苏联解体，美国在经济和军事上都成为世界上无与伦比的超级大国。世界各国政府和银行都依赖美元，美元仍然是地球上的主导货币。
今天，美元不仅购买了进入美国经济的渠道，而且还支撑着国际贸易，即使与美国银行或企业没有任何联系。石油等大宗商品在全球范围内以美元计价，以本国货币进行交易的国家依靠美元来完成国际交易。
这种金融霸权给美国的对手甚至一些盟友带来了风险。为了进行美元交易，金融机构通常必须从美国同行借款（无论借款时间多么短暂），并遵守美国政府的规定。这使得监管美国金融体系的财政部成为世界银行业务的守门人。
制裁就是大门。
财政部官员可以对任何他们认为对美国经济、外交政策或国家安全构成威胁的外国个人、公司或政府实施制裁。没有要求指控任何人犯下特定罪行，更不用说定罪了。但这一举措将与受制裁方进行交易定为犯罪。
受到美国制裁相当于无限期禁止进入全球大部分经济领域。
“这是外交与战争之间的唯一选择，因此已成为美国武器库中最重要的外交政策工具。然而，政府中没有人确定整个战略是否有效。”
比尔·赖因施，前商务部官员，现任战略与国际研究中心国际商务学教授
该系统的建立非常缓慢。最初的目标（除了共产主义古巴）是墨西哥和哥伦比亚等地的贩毒集团以及利比亚等流氓政权。就在 20 世纪 90 年代，财政部外国资产控制办公室 (OFAC) 还负责实施少数制裁计划。其工作人员挤在一间会议室里就很舒服。其主要职责之一是阻止美国销售古巴雪茄。
2001 年 9 月 11 日恐怖袭击事件发生后，一切都发生了变化。国会颁布立法，强制金融机构保存消费者交易记录并将其移交给执法部门。突然之间，美国官员掌握了有关全球银行客户的大量信息，而数字银行的兴起也为全球资金流动提供了新的见解。
随着财政部成为全球反恐战争的关键参与者，美国决策者开始认识到该国金融霸权的力量。专家们敦促采取比在伊拉克实施的直截了当的禁运更为复杂的方法。这些倡导者希望“智能制裁”能够更加精确，通过切断恶意行为者来施加最大压力。
概念验证很快就实现了。2003 年，朝鲜因退出核武器条约而震惊了世界。乔治·W·布什总统领导下的财政部官员不仅针对为平壤处理付款的澳门银行，还威胁与该银行进行交易的任何银行。
朝鲜官员怒不可遏——这些措施阻碍了平壤的财政。这一事件让财政部工作人员大吃一惊：美国似乎在不费一枪一弹、不花一分钱的情况下吓倒了半个地球外的敌人。
“这是一个关键时刻，”克里斯汀·帕特尔 (Kristen Patel) 说道，她曾在 2015 年至 2017 年担任美国财政部金融犯罪执法网络的高级职务，目前在雪城大学教授制裁政策和非法融资。“财政部得到了批准，开始用这把锤子敲打一切。”
“我们所做的每一件事都是制裁”
剧本很快发生了变化，包括更大的目标和更积极的执法。2010 年，美国总统巴拉克·奥巴马 (Barack Obama) 与国会合作批准了旨在迫使伊朗放弃核野心的制裁。司法部开始对违反财政部禁令的西方银行征收数十亿美元的罚款。
这些制裁不仅适用于伊朗，也适用于与伊朗进行贸易的公司，削弱了德黑兰与国际市场的联系。伊朗领导人屈服了，决定寻求一项承诺结束金融孤立的核协议。
这种实力的展示带来了新的需求。到奥巴马第二任期，制裁名单不断增加，其中包括刚果民主共和国的军事官员。
安哥拉、也门军方的供应商、与穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲有关的利比亚官员，以及在叙利亚对平民抗议者进行残酷镇压后，总统巴沙尔·阿萨德。
哀悼者在 2012 年大马士革政府军突袭中遇难的四人的葬礼上抬着披着叙利亚革命旗帜的遗体。（匿名/美联社）
国会也参与其中，向国务院和白宫发出大量制裁请求，在某些情况下，这些请求似乎旨在切断本国产业的外国竞争。
2011 年，在华盛顿市中心哈灵顿酒店的一次节日派对上，时任 OFAC 主任的亚当·斯祖宾演唱了一首名为“我们所做的每件小事都是制裁”的歌曲，曲调是警察乐队的“她所做的每件小事都是魔法”，斯祖宾在一封电子邮件中证实了这一点。
一些专家认为，这种激增正在失控。
“智能制裁本应是一盘自助餐，你可以根据该国的罪行和弱点选择特定的制裁，”圣母大学制裁学者乔治·洛佩兹 (George Lopez) 表示，他被广泛认为在 20 多年前帮助推广了这一想法。“相反，政策制定者走进自助餐时说，‘我要把所有东西都堆在我的盘子里。’”
2014 年，俄罗斯非法入侵并吞并乌克兰的克里米亚，给财政部带来了巨大挑战。朝鲜和伊朗等国家被视为严重的国家安全威胁，但没有人认为它们是全球金融不可或缺的一部分。现在，财政部被迫面对全球十大经济体之一。错误的举动可能会让全球市场陷入混乱。
2014 年 3 月，一名儿童走在亲俄士兵中间，他们包围了克里米亚的一个乌克兰军事基地。（Vadim Ghirda/美联社）
曾经默默无闻的财政部助理将建议直接提交给内阁官员，内阁官员同时听取了震惊的财富 500 强首席执行官和华尔街银行负责人的意见。制裁突然成为华盛顿、北京和莫斯科之间重新出现的“大国”竞争的一个关键特征。
“你会收到来自政府各个角落的请求和评论：‘你为什么不对这些人实施制裁？那些人呢？’”曾在奥巴马政府期间担任 OFAC 高级顾问和国家安全委员会多边事务主任的亚当·M·史密斯说。
“无论你是民主党人还是共和党人，思考过程总是：你为什么不继续这样做？”史密斯说。
随着制裁的升级，挑战也随之而来
但政府官员开始注意到财政部复杂的新制度存在问题。针对俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京的盟友和国有银行的制裁对克里米亚的控制没有明显影响。欧洲领导人对银行被处以罚款感到愤怒。华尔街的权力掮客开始抱怨遵守令人眼花缭乱的新指令的成本。
受制裁实体的数量似乎增长得太快，OFAC 无法跟上。细微差别导致混乱；要求澄清的请求大量涌入，针对该机构的诉讼数量增加了两倍。人员流动加剧，因为风险不断上升，财政部工作人员纷纷跳槽到私营部门，这可能使他们的收入翻两番。
此外，一个更现实的挑战也出现了：制裁的力量在于阻止外国参与者获得美元。但如果制裁使得依赖美元变得危险，各国可能会找到其他贸易方式——从而完全避开美国的制裁。
2016 年 3 月，奥巴马财政部长杰克·卢公开警告“制裁过度”，并指出“过度使用制裁最终可能会降低我们有效使用制裁的能力”。
然而，即将上任的特朗普政府再次发现了这一金融武器的新用途，因为它实施了比以往更多的制裁。作为总统，唐纳德·特朗普以前所未有的方式使用制裁进行报复——例如，在国际刑事法院对驻阿富汗美军的行为展开战争罪调查后，特朗普下令对国际刑事法院官员实施制裁。
特朗普政府还对委内瑞拉实施了严厉的制裁，旨在抹黑尼古拉斯·马杜罗的独裁统治并鼓励反对派运动。这些制裁未能赶走马杜罗——现在人们常常指责这是现代史上最严重的和平时期经济崩溃之一的加剧。
“该系统的滥用令人发指，但这不是财政部或 OFAC 的错：他们是优秀的专业人士，承担了所有这些政治工作。他们希望摆脱这种无情、永无止境、必须制裁所有人及其姐妹、有时甚至是字面意义上的制度，”曾担任参议院外交关系委员会高级职员并在乔治·W·布什政府期间担任国务院古巴政策负责人的 Caleb McCarry 说。
“它被过度使用，已经失控了。”
改革计划被搁置
到拜登就职时，他的过渡团队已经达成共识，认为必须做出一些改变。
2021 年夏天，五名财政部工作人员起草了一份内部草案，提议重组制裁制度。据两名参与人士称，这份草案大约有 40 页，将是几十年来对制裁政策最重大的改革。
但与前三届政府一样，拜登的团队发现很难放弃权力。
加拉加斯的一块广告牌将美国对委内瑞拉制裁造成的伤害归咎于反对派，而独裁的尼古拉斯·马杜罗正准备在 7 月的选举中连任第三任总统。 （Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images）
知情人士表示，财政部工作人员眼睁睁地看着他们的老板删除了他们计划的关键部分，包括一项设立中央协调员的条款。知情人士不愿透露姓名，以反映机密讨论。到当年 10 月财政部公开发布其“2021 年制裁审查”时，40 页的草案已缩减至 8 页，其中包含了之前文件中最无力的建议。（两位知情人士将修改范围归咎于与国务院的内部分歧，并表示财政部领导层也反对修改。国务院发言人拒绝置评。）
四个月后，俄罗斯军队进军乌克兰，拜登在两年内发起了前所未有的 6,000 多项制裁。而且制裁对象不仅限于俄罗斯：拜登政府制裁的对象包括约旦河西岸的以色列定居者、阿富汗前政府官员、墨西哥涉嫌贩卖芬太尼的人员以及一家北马其顿间谍软件公司。与此同时，拜登曾表示将放松的制裁，例如特朗普对古巴实施的制裁，在国会山的压力下基本得以维持，尽管政府高层官员认为，制裁适得其反，是一种失败。
2022 年，哈瓦那一名小贩在卖面包，当时该国经历了一场由多种因素引发的经济危机，包括特朗普时代的制裁，该制裁在拜登总统任期内继续存在。（Sarah L. Voisin/华盛顿邮报）
拜登政府已采取措施减轻意外后果。去年，财政部宣布已聘请经济学家为一个分析制裁经济影响的新部门配备人员。人道主义组织称赞拜登政府为确保关键医疗用品和食品能够进入受制裁国家所做的努力。而且，批评人士最担心的事情并没有成为现实：至少目前，美元仍然是世界第一大储备货币。
“制裁是一种重要的工具，可以帮助促进我们的国家安全，但只能作为更广泛的外交政策战略的一部分来使用，”美国财政部副部长沃利·阿德耶莫在一份声明中表示。“2021 年财政部制裁审查提供了一个有用的路线图，帮助我们改进这一重要工具的使用。”
但其他问题似乎正在恶化。现任和前任美国官员称，OFAC 的工作量巨大，该机构收到了来自私营部门的数万份请求。据两位知情人士透露，一些白宫官员已将国家安全问题外包给非营利组织，他们集思广益，设想了在哪些情况下必须大幅加大制裁力度以对抗美国的对手，这两位知情人士不愿透露姓名，以描述内部谈判的情况。
2022 年底，白宫高级顾问再次就改革美国制裁举行了讨论。在包括拜登在内的闭门会谈中，助手们谈到了制定经济治国方略指导方针的必要性，包括将制裁的使用限制在“和平与安全所依赖的核心国际原则受到威胁”的时刻，其中一位官员说。
但这些想法在更紧迫的要求面前被搁置了。
“华盛顿的心态，几乎是一种奇怪的反射，已经变成了：如果世界上任何地方发生了不好的事情，美国就会制裁一些人。这没有道理，”曾担任奥巴马政府副国家安全顾问的本·罗兹说。
“我们对制裁的附带损害的看法与对战争的附带损害的看法不同，”罗兹说。“但我们应该。”
关于这个故事
由 Stephanie Hays 设计和开发。Chantal Jahchan 插图。Haley Hamblin 照片编辑。Betty Chavarria 设计编辑。视觉编辑：Karly Domb Sadof。图形编辑：Kate Rabinowitz。
编辑：Mike Madden 和 Lori Montgomery。文字编辑：Feroze Dhanoa 和 Brian Malasics。
项目编辑：Ana Carano。Jordan Melendrez、Sar
方法论
为了研究美国制裁的增加，《华盛顿邮报》获取并分析了 Enigma Technologies 从美国财政部外国资产控制办公室抓取的 30 年历史数据，Enigma Technologies 是一家专门从事制裁筛选和商业智能的数据和实体解析公司。记者使用 Castellum.ai 提供的数据将美国的制裁与其他当局发布的制裁进行了比较，Castellum.ai 是一个涵盖全球制裁、出口管制和其他金融犯罪风险的合规平台。
《华盛顿邮报》使用了全球制裁数据库，这是一个由康斯坦茨应用技术大学、奥地利经济研究所和德雷塞尔大学经济学院协调的学术项目，以确定哪些国家在 1950 年至 2022 年期间受到了美国的制裁。世界银行的收入分类框架帮助记者评估低收入国家是否比其他国家受到更多的制裁；该银行的区域分类有助于说明哪些地区已成为目标。
The Money War: How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe
http://web.archive.org/web/20240731230939/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/
25 Jul 2024 - 4 Aug 2024
By Jeff Stein and Federica Cocco
July 25, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.
Today, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations. They have become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare, and their overuse is recognized at the highest levels of government. But American presidents find the tool increasingly irresistible.
By cutting their targets off from the Western financial system, sanctions can crush national industries, erase personal fortunes and upset the balance of political power in troublesome regimes — all without putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.
But even as sanctions have proliferated, concern about their impact has grown.
In Washington, the swell of sanctions has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry. Foreign governments and multinational corporations spend exorbitant sums to influence the system, while white-shoe law firms and K Street lobbying shops have built booming sanctions practices — in part by luring government officials to cash in on their expertise.
Elsewhere, sanctions have pushed autocratic regimes into black market trade, empowering criminal networks and gangs of smugglers. U.S. adversaries are ramping up their efforts to work together to circumvent the financial penalties. And like military action, economic warfare can leave collateral damage: Sanctions on Venezuela, for instance, contributed to an economic contraction roughly three times as large as that caused by the Great Depression in the United States.
Sanctions — or even just the threat of them — can be an effective policy tool, a way to punish bad behavior or pressure an adversary without resorting to military force. Sanctions have allowed U.S. governments to take moral, economically meaningful stands against perpetrators of war crimes. They helped bring an end to South Africa’s apartheid regime and contributed to the eventual overthrow of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Even when they fail, proponents say, they can be preferable to the alternative, which might be doing nothing — or going to war.
Still, North Korea has been sanctioned for more than a half-century without halting Pyongyang’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. U.S. sanctions on Nicaragua have done little to deter the authoritarian regime of President Daniel Ortega. Two years of sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine have degraded Moscow’s long-term economic prospects and raised the costs of military production. But these sanctions have also spawned a “dark fleet” of ships selling oil outside international regulations, while bringing the Kremlin into closer alliance with Beijing.
The military demarcation line between North Korea and South Korea in April. (Jintak Han/The Washington Post)
Alarm about sanctions’ rise has reached the highest levels of the U.S. government: Some senior administration officials have told President Biden directly that overuse of sanctions risks making the tool less valuable. And yet, despite recognition that the volume of sanctions may be excessive, U.S. officials tend to see each individual action as justified, making it hard to stop the trend. The United States is imposing sanctions at a record-setting pace again this year, with more than 60 percent of all low-income countries now under some form of financial penalty, according to a Washington Post analysis.
“It is the only thing between diplomacy and war and as such has become the most important foreign policy tool in the U.S. arsenal,” said Bill Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official and now the Scholl chair in international business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
“And yet,” Reinsch said, “nobody in government is sure this whole strategy is even working.”
‘START POUNDING THINGS WITH THIS HAMMER’
Economic warfare has been around for millennia: Ancient Athens imposed trade sanctions on its adversaries in the 5th century B.C., and U.S. presidents have restricted foreign trade since the dawn of the republic. In 1807, Thomas Jefferson closed U.S. ports to export shipping and restricted imports from Britain. Today’s sanctions have their foundation in laws passed during the Cold War and World War I.
The Money War
The U.S. government is putting more sanctions on foreign governments, companies and people than ever. But these powerful tools of economic warfare can have unintended consequences, hurting civilian populations and undermining U.S. foreign policy interests. The Money War investigates the proliferation of U.S. financial sanctions and the dangers of overuse.
Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 gave rise to a new form of the weapon: an international blockade of exports to Iraq. After the Gulf War, comprehensive sanctions made it impossible for Iraq to export oil or import supplies to rebuild its decimated water and electrical systems, and illnesses such as cholera and typhoid surged.
At the same time, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was emerging as the world’s unrivaled superpower, both financially and militarily. Governments and banks around the world were dependent on the U.S. dollar, which remains the dominant currency on Earth.
Today, the dollar buys access to the American economy but also undergirds international trade even when there is no connection to an American bank or business. Commodities like oil are priced globally against the greenback, and countries trading in their own currencies rely on dollars to complete international transactions.
That financial supremacy creates a risk for U.S. adversaries and even some allies. To deal in dollars, financial institutions must often borrow, however temporarily, from U.S. counterparts and comply with the rules of the U.S. government. That makes the Treasury Department, which regulates the U.S. financial system, the gatekeeper to the world’s banking operations.
And sanctions are the gate.
Treasury officials can impose sanctions on any foreign person, firm or government they deem to be a threat to the U.S. economy, foreign policy or national security. There’s no requirement to accuse, much less convict, anyone of a specific crime. But the move makes it a crime to transact with the sanctioned party.
Coming under U.S. sanctions amounts to an indefinite ban from much of the global economy.
“It is the only thing between diplomacy and war and as such has become the most important foreign policy tool in the U.S. arsenal. And yet, nobody in government is sure this whole strategy is even working.”
Bill Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official and now the Scholl chair in international business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
The system built slowly. Initial targets (in addition to communist Cuba) were drug cartels in places like Mexico and Colombia and rogue regimes like Libya. As recently as the 1990s, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was responsible for implementing just a handful of sanctions programs. Its staff fit comfortably in a single conference room. One of its major responsibilities was blocking American sales of Cuban cigars.
All that changed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Congress enacted legislation to compel financial institutions to maintain records of consumer transactions and hand them over to law enforcement. Suddenly, U.S. officials had volumes of information on the world’s banking customers, just as the rise of digital banking gave new insights into the worldwide flow of money.
As the Treasury Department became a key player in the global war on terrorism, U.S. policymakers began to understand the power of the nation’s financial hegemony. Experts urged a more sophisticated approach than the blunt embargo used in Iraq. “Smart sanctions,” these advocates hoped, would be more precise, applying maximum pressure by cutting off only malicious actors.
Proof of concept soon materialized. In 2003, North Korea alarmed the world by withdrawing from a nuclear weapons treaty. Treasury officials under President George W. Bush not only targeted the Macao bank that processed payments for Pyongyang, but also threatened any banks that traded with that one.
North Korean officials howled — and the measures stymied Pyongyang’s finances. The episode was a revelation for Treasury staffers: America appeared to have cowed a foe halfway around the world without firing a single bullet or spending a single penny.
“It was a pivotal moment,” said Kristen Patel, who served in senior roles at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network from 2015 to 2017 and now teaches sanctions policy and illicit finance at Syracuse University. “Treasury got the go-ahead to start pounding things with this hammer.”
‘EVERY LITTLE THING WE DO IS SANCTIONS’
The playbook soon shifted to include bigger targets and more aggressive enforcement. In 2010, President Barack Obama worked with Congress to approve sanctions designed to force Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. The Justice Department began levying billions of dollars in fines on Western banks that defied Treasury prohibitions.
These sanctions applied not just to Iran, but also to firms trading with Iran, undercutting Tehran’s links to international markets. Iranian leaders buckled, deciding to seek a nuclear deal that promised an end to financial isolation.
This display of power led to fresh demand. By Obama’s second term, sanctions had been imposed on a growing list that included military officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo, suppliers of the Yemeni military, Libyan officials connected to Moammar Gaddafi and — after a brutal crackdown on civilian protesters in Syria — President Bashar al-Assad.
Mourners carry bodies draped in the Syrian revolutionary flag during the funeral for four people killed in a raid by government forces in Damascus in 2012. (Anonymous/AP)
Congress got in on the act, flooding the State Department and the White House with requests for sanctions that, in some cases, appeared intended to cut off foreign competition to home-state industries.
In 2011, at a holiday party in the Hotel Harrington in downtown Washington, Adam Szubin, then director of OFAC, sang a song titled “Every Little Thing We Do Is Sanctions” to the tune of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by the Police, Szubin confirmed in an email.
Some experts saw the surge as spiraling out of control.
“Smart sanctions were meant to be a buffet of choices where you fit the particular imposed sanction to the offense and vulnerability of the country,” said George Lopez, a sanctions scholar at the University of Notre Dame who is widely credited with helping to popularize the idea more than 20 years ago. “Instead, policymakers walked into the buffet and said, ‘I’m going to pile everything onto my plate.’”
In 2014, Russia’s illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea from Ukraine presented Treasury with a huge challenge. Countries like North Korea and Iran were viewed as serious national security threats, but nobody believed they were integral to global finance. Now Treasury was forced to confront one of the 10 biggest economies in the world. A wrong move could send global markets reeling.
A child walks among pro-Russian soldiers near a Ukrainian military base that they surrounded in Crimea in March 2014. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)
Treasury aides who had once labored in obscurity took recommendations directly to Cabinet officials, who were simultaneously hearing from alarmed Fortune 500 CEOs and the heads of Wall Street banks. Sanctions were suddenly a key feature in the reemerging “great power” competition among Washington, Beijing and Moscow.
“You’d get requests and comments from seemingly every corner of the government: ‘Why have you not imposed sanctions on these people? And what about those people?’” said Adam M. Smith, who served as senior adviser to OFAC and director for multilateral affairs on the National Security Council during the Obama administration.
“Regardless if you were a Democrat or a Republican, the thought process was always: Why would you not continue to do this?” Smith said.
CHALLENGES EMERGE AS SANCTIONS RISE
But government officials began to notice problems with Treasury’s complicated new regime. Sanctions on Russia targeting allies of President Vladimir Putin and state banks had no apparent effect on control of Crimea. European leaders grew angry over fines levied on their banks. Wall Street power brokers started to grumble about the costs of complying with the dizzying new instructions.
The number of sanctioned entities appeared to be growing too fast for OFAC to keep up. Nuance bred confusion; requests for clarification poured in, and the number of lawsuits against the agency tripled. Turnover intensified, as the rising stakes allowed Treasury staffers to bolt for private-sector paydays that could quadruple their earnings.
A more existential challenge emerged, as well: The power of sanctions lay in denying foreign actors access to the dollar. But if sanctions make it risky to depend on dollars, nations may find other ways to trade — allowing them to dodge U.S. penalties entirely.
In March 2016, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned publicly of “sanctions overreach” and the risk that their “overuse could ultimately reduce our capability to use sanctions effectively.”
And yet the incoming Trump administration again found new uses for the financial weapon as it applied more sanctions than ever. As president, Donald Trump used sanctions for retribution in ways never conceived — ordering them, for instance, on officials with the International Criminal Court after it opened a war crimes investigation into the behavior of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The Trump administration also hit Venezuela with crippling sanctions, aiming to discredit the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro and encourage an opposition movement. The penalties failed to oust Maduro — and are now often blamed for exacerbating one of the worst peacetime economic collapses in modern history.
“The abuse of this system is ridiculous, but it’s not Treasury or OFAC’s fault: They are good professionals who have all this political work being shoved on them. They want relief from this relentless, never-ending, you-must-sanction-everybody-and-their-sister, sometimes literally, system,” said Caleb McCarry, who served as a senior staffer to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was the State Department’s lead on Cuba policy during the George W. Bush administration. “It is way, way overused, and it’s become out of control.”
REFORM PLANS SHELVED
By the time of Biden’s inauguration, a consensus had emerged among his transition team that something had to change.
In the summer of 2021, five Treasury staffers worked up an internal draft proposing to restructure the sanctions system. It ran roughly 40 pages, according to two people involved, and would have represented the most substantial revamp of sanctions policy in decades.
But like the three previous administrations, Biden’s team found the power difficult to give up.
A billboard in Caracas blames the opposition for the harm caused by U.S. sanctions against Venezuela as the autocratic Nicolás Maduro prepares to secure a third term as president in July elections. (Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)
Treasury staffers watched their bosses take out key parts of their plan, including a provision that would have created a central coordinator, said the people familiar with the document, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect confidential discussions. By the time Treasury publicly released its “2021 Sanctions Review” in October that year, the 40-page draft had dwindled to eight pages and contained the earlier document’s most toothless recommendations, the people said. (Two people familiar with the matter blamed internal disagreements with the State Department for the extent of the changes and said Treasury leadership also opposed the revisions. A State Department spokesman declined to comment.)
Four months later, Russian troops marched into Ukraine, and Biden unleashed an unprecedented volley of more than 6,000 sanctions in two years. And not only on Russia: The Biden administration has penalized targets including Israeli settlers in the West Bank, former government officials in Afghanistan, alleged fentanyl dealers in Mexico and a North Macedonian spyware company. Meanwhile, sanctions that Biden had said he would ease, such as those imposed by Trump on Cuba, were largely maintained under pressure from Capitol Hill, despite the view among top administration officials that the embargo is counterproductive and a failure.
A vendor sells bread in Havana in 2022 as the country endured an economic crisis brought on by many factors, including Trump-era sanctions that continued under President Biden. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The Biden administration has taken steps to mitigate unintended consequences. Last year, Treasury announced it had hired economists to staff a new division analyzing the economic impact of sanctions. Humanitarian groups have praised Biden administration efforts to ensure that critical medical supplies and food can enter countries under sanctions. And some of critics’ worst fears have not materialized: The dollar remains the world’s top reserve currency, at least for now.
“Sanctions are an important tool that can help promote our national security, but they should only be used as part of a broader foreign policy strategy,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement. “The 2021 Treasury Sanctions Review has provided a useful road map to help us refine the use of this important tool.”
But other problems appear to be getting worse. Current and former U.S. officials describe OFAC’s workload as overwhelming, the agency inundated with tens of thousands of requests from the private sector. Some White House officials have outsourced national security questions to nonprofits, as they brainstormed scenarios in which sanctions would have to be massively ramped up to confront U.S. adversaries, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal talks.
In late 2022, senior White House advisers again held discussions about reforming U.S. sanctions. In closed-door talks that included Biden, aides talked about the need to set guidelines for economic statecraft, including limiting the use of sanctions to moments when “core international principles that underpin peace and security are under threat,” one of the officials said.
But those ideas were shelved in the face of more pressing demands.
“The mentality, almost a weird reflex, in Washington has just become: If something bad happens, anywhere in the world, the U.S. is going to sanction some people. And that doesn’t make sense,” said Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration.
“We don’t think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war,” Rhodes said. “But we should.”
About this story
Design and development by Stephanie Hays. Illustrations by Chantal Jahchan. Photo editing by Haley Hamblin. Design editing by Betty Chavarria. Visual editing by Karly Domb Sadof. Graphics editing by Kate Rabinowitz.
Editing by Mike Madden and Lori Montgomery. Copy editing by Feroze Dhanoa and Brian Malasics.
Project editing by Ana Carano. Additional production and support from Jordan Melendrez, Sarah Murray, Megan Bridgeman, Kathleen Floyd, Jenna Lief and Alisa Vazquez.
Methodology
To examine the rise of U.S. sanctions, The Post obtained and analyzed 30 years of historical data scraped from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control by Enigma Technologies, a data and entity resolution company that specializes in sanctions screening and business intelligence. Reporters compared U.S. sanctions with those issued by other authorities using data provided by Castellum.ai, a compliance platform covering global sanctions, export controls and other financial crime risks.
The Post used the Global Sanctions Database, an academic project coordinated by the Hochschule Konstanz University of Applied Sciences, the Austrian Institute of Economic Research and the Drexel University School of Economics, to determine which countries were subject to U.S. sanctions from 1950 to 2022. The World Bank income classification framework helped reporters assess whether low-income countries had been targeted more than others; the bank’s regional classification helped illustrate which regions had been targeted.
Money War: How the U.S. Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe, from Venezuela to Iran
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/1/jeff_stein_us_sanctions_economic_warfare?
Aug 01, 2024
Jeff Stein White House economics reporter for The Washington Post and founder of The Ithaca Voice.
Image Credit: Left: Washington Post
We look at a new Washington Post investigation titled “Money War” that traces the effects of U.S. sanctions under the last four presidents: Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. According to the report, the U.S government has instituted, in some form or another, sanctions against a third of all other countries around the world, despite no clear evidence that they are effective in influencing target nations’ politics, and in fact may often entrench the power of ruling parties. We speak to Jeff Stein, one of the authors of the Post investigation, about its findings, including on the effects of sanctions in Venezuela and Iran.
Transcript
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show looking at a major new Washington Post exposé titled “Money War: How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe.” The Post reporting examines how the U.S. has increasingly relied on economic sanctions that have left collateral damage across the globe.
The Post exposé begins, saying, quote, “Today, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations.”
AMY GOODMAN: But the collateral damage of the sanctions is seldom discussed. The Washington Post reports, in Venezuela, which just held a contested election, sanctions have “contributed to an economic contraction roughly three times as large as that caused by the Great Depression in the United States.” The Post also reports Donald Trump was warned sanctions on Venezuela could result in millions of people migrating from Venezuela.
We’re joined now by Jeff Stein, co-author of the Washington Post exposé and White House economics reporter for the Post.
Why don’t you take it from there, Jeff? In this five minutes that we have together, talk about making the Venezuelan economy scream. We’ll go from the effect of sanctions on Venezuela and then go to other countries.
JEFF STEIN: Yeah. So, starting under the Obama administration, the U.S. began imposing sanctions on Venezuela. But at first they were very limited. They were really just focused on a few members of the Maduro regime that were responsible for carrying out violent reprisals against protesters in Venezuela.
But, really, under Trump, and as we exclusively reported in this story, despite the warnings of DHS officials and classified reports about the potential outmigration effects of these sanctions, the Trump administration really choked off the main source of export revenue. Ninety-six percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sales. And what the U.S. effectively did over the course of three to four years was to block those sales from occurring in international markets. And that really strangled the joint ventures that were sort of the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy. This means sort of the oil deals that were worked out with U.S. producers with the Venezuelans that were providing them with the revenue that they needed to buy sort of imports from other countries.
And when that happened, you saw — the numbers are just staggering — 71% economic contraction in Venezuela, as you mentioned, three times as great as the U.S. Great Depression and greater than any other peacetime economic collapse recorded in modern history, greater than many other economic collapses of countries at war, including Ukraine after the Russian invasion or Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. So this is a cataclysmic event.
And economists go back and forth, and it seems clear to me from my reporting that the economic collapse in Venezuela predates U.S. sanctions. You know, Venezuela had inflation of over 800% before Trump really tightened the screws on the Venezuelan economy. But there is also no doubt that these U.S. measures made the economic situation in Venezuela worse, and at the cost of — and despite that cost, did not push out Maduro’s government. And obviously, Maduro still remains in power today.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, can you say, Jeff — I mean, this is Venezuela’s case, but also elsewhere — how effective have U.S. economic sanctions been? I mean, there was a time, which you point out in the piece, with apartheid South Africa, sanctions helped bring down, end apartheid; also in Serbia, the demise of Miloševi?’s regime, also through sanctions or partially through sanctions. But what about now?
JEFF STEIN: Now I think it’s really hard to say. Academic attempts to sort of isolate the effects of sanctions and whether they have worked or not are very hard to quantify. Some studies I’ve seen suggest that the success rate is between 15 and 30%, which, given that we have sanctions now in some form on roughly a third of all nations and 60% of all poor countries, suggests a high failure rate.
We look in the piece at Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria. These are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people who are being affected in some form by U.S. sanctions, where the regimes that the U.S. are intending to target have not changed hands, have not surrendered their hold on power. And maybe, you know, the U.S. will say that these sanctions are still better than not having any measures, because they deprive these regimes of funds at their disposal that they can use for, you know, what the U.S. would say are pernicious activities, activities that the U.S. does not want to see. But at the same time, in terms of actually leading to changes of regime, we don’t really see that very much.
And many critics will argue that, in fact, sanctions actually embolden and empower the people in charge, these regimes in charge, because they curb civil society. They reduce the power and the clout of private sector actors that often form a rival power base to the sanctioned authority, these regimes in charge. And so, in case after case, we see very legitimate, it seems, criticisms of these sanctions regimes.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about Iran — to say the least, very much in the news today — the effect of the U.S. sanctions, and also how when the U.S. imposes sanctions, they also pressure other countries to do the same, of course, as we see in Cuba?
JEFF STEIN: Yeah. The Iran sanctions, really first imposed, in really dramatic effect, in 2010 through measures passed by the Obama administration and Congress, really amounted to a fascinating expansion of U.S. sanction authority. What we really saw, in a very significant way, the first deployment of secondary sanctions, which were to say we’re not just sanctioning the party that we don’t like here, but we’re also going to say, “If you engage in trade with the Iranian regime, we will target you.” And so, that, effectively, represented a major expansion of sanctioning power and really seemed to the advocates of sanctions to be a very effective approach, because, obviously, in 2015, the Obama administration worked with the Iranian regime on a nuclear deal that sanctions advocates hailed as the product of this pressure campaign.
That said, the U.S., under Trump, pulled out of that deal. And so, any people who say that the Iranian sanctions under Obama were successful have to contend with the fact that we abandoned, as a country, that deal quite quickly and left the Iranians in the lurch, and have since then seen the Iranians work with Russia, work with the Cubans, work with other powers that the U.S. is opposed to, on forming rival financial networks that leave open the question of whether there’s even a possibility of further Iran sanctions being effective now that they’ve formed all these rival sort of trading networks that operate sort of as a shadow trade system to what the U.S. — the sort of Western financial system that is the predicate for punishing Iran via sanctions.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Jeff, very quickly — we have 30 seconds — what happened to the 2021 plan to overhaul the U.S. sanction system?
JEFF STEIN: Yeah. We exclusively report in our story that a group of Treasury staffers had a draft of a report far more extensive than what they ultimately released. They had dozens of recommendations, including measures really meant to check the rise of U.S. sanctions, particularly a sort of central coordinator. Right now it’s a little bureaucratic, but there are sort of many parts of the government that sort of throw out sanctions ideas that get rolled together in State Department and Treasury Department sanctions and push forward. And there’s really no one body that sort of is evaluating whether these sanctions are operating in the context of an overall broader sanction strategy. And Treasury staffers drew up a plan to say, like, “Let’s put that in place.”
But disagreements with the State Department, sort of the overall inertia of sanctions, where they seem so easy, so effective, they seem to the U.S. government much easier than going to war, much easier than doing nothing or much more politically palatable than doing nothing. And so, that plan was shelved. And, really, under the Biden administration, we’ve just seen more and more sanctions. Biden has imposed 6,000 sanctions in two years, an unprecedented sum. And the fact that has continued really reflects the inability of the U.S. to get this problem or to get this number down.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Stein, we thank you so much for being with us, reporter for The Washington Post. We’ll link to your piece, “How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show looking at a major new Washington Post exposé titled “Money War: How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe.” The Post reporting examines how the U.S. has increasingly relied on economic sanctions that have left collateral damage across the globe.
The Post exposé begins, saying, quote, “Today, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations.”
AMY GOODMAN: But the collateral damage of the sanctions is seldom discussed. The Washington Post reports, in Venezuela, which just held a contested election, sanctions have “contributed to an economic contraction roughly three times as large as that caused by the Great Depression in the United States.” The Post also reports Donald Trump was warned sanctions on Venezuela could result in millions of people migrating from Venezuela.
We’re joined now by Jeff Stein, co-author of the Washington Post exposé and White House economics reporter for the Post.
Why don’t you take it from there, Jeff? In this five minutes that we have together, talk about making the Venezuelan economy scream. We’ll go from the effect of sanctions on Venezuela and then go to other countries.
JEFF STEIN: Yeah. So, starting under the Obama administration, the U.S. began imposing sanctions on Venezuela. But at first they were very limited. They were really just focused on a few members of the Maduro regime that were responsible for carrying out violent reprisals against protesters in Venezuela.
But, really, under Trump, and as we exclusively reported in this story, despite the warnings of DHS officials and classified reports about the potential outmigration effects of these sanctions, the Trump administration really choked off the main source of export revenue. Ninety-six percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sales. And what the U.S. effectively did over the course of three to four years was to block those sales from occurring in international markets. And that really strangled the joint ventures that were sort of the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy. This means sort of the oil deals that were worked out with U.S. producers with the Venezuelans that were providing them with the revenue that they needed to buy sort of imports from other countries.
And when that happened, you saw — the numbers are just staggering — 71% economic contraction in Venezuela, as you mentioned, three times as great as the U.S. Great Depression and greater than any other peacetime economic collapse recorded in modern history, greater than many other economic collapses of countries at war, including Ukraine after the Russian invasion or Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. So this is a cataclysmic event.
And economists go back and forth, and it seems clear to me from my reporting that the economic collapse in Venezuela predates U.S. sanctions. You know, Venezuela had inflation of over 800% before Trump really tightened the screws on the Venezuelan economy. But there is also no doubt that these U.S. measures made the economic situation in Venezuela worse, and at the cost of — and despite that cost, did not push out Maduro’s government. And obviously, Maduro still remains in power today.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, can you say, Jeff — I mean, this is Venezuela’s case, but also elsewhere — how effective have U.S. economic sanctions been? I mean, there was a time, which you point out in the piece, with apartheid South Africa, sanctions helped bring down, end apartheid; also in Serbia, the demise of Miloševi?’s regime, also through sanctions or partially through sanctions. But what about now?
JEFF STEIN: Now I think it’s really hard to say. Academic attempts to sort of isolate the effects of sanctions and whether they have worked or not are very hard to quantify. Some studies I’ve seen suggest that the success rate is between 15 and 30%, which, given that we have sanctions now in some form on roughly a third of all nations and 60% of all poor countries, suggests a high failure rate.
We look in the piece at Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria. These are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people who are being affected in some form by U.S. sanctions, where the regimes that the U.S. are intending to target have not changed hands, have not surrendered their hold on power. And maybe, you know, the U.S. will say that these sanctions are still better than not having any measures, because they deprive these regimes of funds at their disposal that they can use for, you know, what the U.S. would say are pernicious activities, activities that the U.S. does not want to see. But at the same time, in terms of actually leading to changes of regime, we don’t really see that very much.
And many critics will argue that, in fact, sanctions actually embolden and empower the people in charge, these regimes in charge, because they curb civil society. They reduce the power and the clout of private sector actors that often form a rival power base to the sanctioned authority, these regimes in charge. And so, in case after case, we see very legitimate, it seems, criticisms of these sanctions regimes.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about Iran — to say the least, very much in the news today — the effect of the U.S. sanctions, and also how when the U.S. imposes sanctions, they also pressure other countries to do the same, of course, as we see in Cuba?
JEFF STEIN: Yeah. The Iran sanctions, really first imposed, in really dramatic effect, in 2010 through measures passed by the Obama administration and Congress, really amounted to a fascinating expansion of U.S. sanction authority. What we really saw, in a very significant way, the first deployment of secondary sanctions, which were to say we’re not just sanctioning the party that we don’t like here, but we’re also going to say, “If you engage in trade with the Iranian regime, we will target you.” And so, that, effectively, represented a major expansion of sanctioning power and really seemed to the advocates of sanctions to be a very effective approach, because, obviously, in 2015, the Obama administration worked with the Iranian regime on a nuclear deal that sanctions advocates hailed as the product of this pressure campaign.
That said, the U.S., under Trump, pulled out of that deal. And so, any people who say that the Iranian sanctions under Obama were successful have to contend with the fact that we abandoned, as a country, that deal quite quickly and left the Iranians in the lurch, and have since then seen the Iranians work with Russia, work with the Cubans, work with other powers that the U.S. is opposed to, on forming rival financial networks that leave open the question of whether there’s even a possibility of further Iran sanctions being effective now that they’ve formed all these rival sort of trading networks that operate sort of as a shadow trade system to what the U.S. — the sort of Western financial system that is the predicate for punishing Iran via sanctions.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Jeff, very quickly — we have 30 seconds — what happened to the 2021 plan to overhaul the U.S. sanction system?
JEFF STEIN: Yeah. We exclusively report in our story that a group of Treasury staffers had a draft of a report far more extensive than what they ultimately released. They had dozens of recommendations, including measures really meant to check the rise of U.S. sanctions, particularly a sort of central coordinator. Right now it’s a little bureaucratic, but there are sort of many parts of the government that sort of throw out sanctions ideas that get rolled together in State Department and Treasury Department sanctions and push forward. And there’s really no one body that sort of is evaluating whether these sanctions are operating in the context of an overall broader sanction strategy. And Treasury staffers drew up a plan to say, like, “Let’s put that in place.”
But disagreements with the State Department, sort of the overall inertia of sanctions, where they seem so easy, so effective, they seem to the U.S. government much easier than going to war, much easier than doing nothing or much more politically palatable than doing nothing. And so, that plan was shelved. And, really, under the Biden administration, we’ve just seen more and more sanctions. Biden has imposed 6,000 sanctions in two years, an unprecedented sum. And the fact that has continued really reflects the inability of the U.S. to get this problem or to get this number down.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Stein, we thank you so much for being with us, reporter for The Washington Post. We’ll link to your piece, “How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
