The US – Between Wars and Sanctions

By Juana Carrasco Martín on February 13, 2024 in Havana

Ever since South Africa accused Israel of genocide before the UN International Court of Justice, the Washingtonian godfather has been getting ready to take action, not to stop the genocide that the Zionist apartheid regime executes against the Palestinian people with the weapons and funding it provides, but to punish Pretoria for its audacity, even though the UN high court was cautious and barely ruled that it was “plausible” that Israeli forces were committing genocide.

Two Democratic Representatives, John James (Michigan) and Jared Moskowitz (Florida) introduced the U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act. And Mr. James argued like this, “South Africa has been building ties with countries and actors that undermine U.S. national security and threaten our way of life through its military and political cooperation with China and Russia and its support for the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas”… “We must examine our alliances and separate ourselves from those who remain willing to work with our adversaries,” he added.

Now, President  Biden will have to weigh in on the matter, that is, on this legislation that would be a clear retaliation, after which concrete sanctions can be expected, those that the US Government uses  against anyone who goes against it and which it usually accuses of violation of human rights, terrorism or even drug trafficking or money laundering. Any charge seems valid if it comes from the empire and a part of the complicit world will surely follow the tune.

The reality is that the United States subsists 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 is to maintain its hegemony economic sanctions are an equally lethal weapon.

The latter is what it is all about. The United States uses all the power it solidified after World War II to impose itself economically, in the military field and in the control of the international organizations created almost all in its shadow to impose its policies in international relations.

For this reason, sanctions have become the tactical pivot of the strategy of omnipotent domination of the United States. And although there are not few who have been or are in its unilateral and unjust punishments, the 21st century has seen a boom in the use of this perverse and sinister procedure.

Not just now, but for dozens of years, Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea suffer blockade and aggressions that are renewed and hardened with the use of the key tool to achieve the greatest possible economic damage, and includes campaigns of lies to try and discredit them internationally.

The pinnacle of this ignominy is their list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism, which also includes Iran and Syria, with coveted oil wealth, and which are subjected to pressures and wars of aggressions because they also pose important threats to national security, foreign policy and the US economy, a refrain repeated over and over again, which Joseph Goebbels already told us how it worked, in his time as Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Weak and strong “adversaries” are not lacking in the register of the sanctioned, among which are Venezuela, Russia, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sudan…

A study published last September by Crisis Group revealed that US sanctions now affect more people, in more places than ever before. At least 12,000 individuals, groups and companies are on the U.S. Treasury Department’s so-called Specially Designated Nationals List, which for euphemistic name-calling paints itself; there are 38 country-themed sanctions administered by the Treasury Department.

Moreover, statistics from Drexel University’s Global Sanctions Database confirm that 42 percent of all sanctions in the world since 1950 – we are talking about the Cold War period – have been imposed by the US.

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: withdrawing funding to the Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) is the climax of infamy and evil.

Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English