Ending forever wars must include economic warfare, responsiblestatecraft.org

Assal Rad, PhD in Middle Eastern History from the University of California

Sanctions like those imposed on Cuba fail to achieve their stated policy objectives and create misery for millions of innocent people.

Ending endless war has become an ever-present catchphrase, employed by Republicans and Democrats alike, to appeal to the majority of Americans who wish to see an end to ineffective U.S. wars and adventurism across the world, and better use of their hard-earned tax dollars. But, while we may think of war to mean military incursions, bombs and fighting, there is an aspect to U.S. warfare that is too-often absent from the discussion: economic warfare.

We have witnessed the consequences of this omission in recent days in the case of Cuba. Battered by U.S. sanctions and the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Cuba is facing its worst food shortages in 25 years. Like people anywhere in the world, many Cubans took to the streets to express their frustrations both with their economic plight and to protest their government, which has failed to address their grievances. […]

Although U.S. government officials routinely talk about human rights and a “rules-based international order,” our sanctions policy and unilateral actions in the face of global condemnation undermine those very tenets. In fact, U.N. experts have argued that U.S. sanctions themselves violate “human rights and the norms of international behavior.” Not only do these policies contradict any claim to moral authority, but they also fail to achieve their stated policy objectives, create immeasurable misery for millions of innocent people, and cause instability in the targeted countries. Läs artikel