金錢戰爭：美國如何在全球發動經濟戰，從委內瑞拉到伊朗
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/1/jeff_stein_us_sanctions_economic_warfare?
2024 年 8 月 1 日
傑夫·斯坦是《華盛頓郵報》白宮經濟記者，也是《伊薩卡之聲》的創始人。
鏈接“四位美國總統如何在全球發動經濟戰”
我們來看看《華盛頓郵報》的一項新調查，題為“金錢戰爭”，追溯了過去四位總統布什、奧巴馬、特朗普和拜登執政期間美國製裁的影響。根據該報告，美國政府以某種形式對全球三分之一的其他國家實施了製裁，盡管沒有明確證據表明這些製裁能夠有效影響目標國家的政治，而且事實上，這些製裁往往可能鞏固執政黨的權力。我們采訪了《華盛頓郵報》調查報告的作者之一傑夫·斯坦，了解調查結果，包括對委內瑞拉和伊朗製裁的影響。
記錄
這是一份匆忙的記錄。副本可能不是最終版本。
艾米·古德曼：這是民主現在！，democracynow.org，戰爭與和平報告。我是艾米·古德曼，與內爾梅恩·謝赫一起報道。
內爾梅恩·謝赫：今天的節目結束時，我們來看看《華盛頓郵報》一篇新的重要揭露文章，題為“金錢戰爭：四位美國總統如何在全球發動經濟戰”。《華盛頓郵報》的報道探討了美國如何越來越依賴經濟製裁，從而給全球造成了附帶損害。
《華盛頓郵報》的揭露文章開頭寫道：“今天，美國實施的製裁是其他任何國家或國際機構的三倍，針對三分之一的國家，對人員、財產或組織實施某種形式的經濟處罰。”
AMY GOODMAN：但製裁的附帶損害很少被討論。《華盛頓郵報》報道稱，在剛剛舉行了有爭議的選舉的委內瑞拉，製裁“導致經濟萎縮的幅度大約是美國大蕭條造成的經濟萎縮的三倍”。《華盛頓郵報》還報道稱，唐納德·特朗普被警告對委內瑞拉的製裁可能會導致數百萬人從委內瑞拉移民。
現在我們邀請了《華盛頓郵報》揭露文章的合著者、《華盛頓郵報》白宮經濟記者傑夫·斯坦加入我們。
傑夫，你為什麽不從那裏開始呢？在我們在一起的這五分鍾裏，談談讓委內瑞拉經濟尖叫的事情。我們將從製裁對委內瑞拉的影響開始，然後再討論其他國家。
傑夫·斯坦：是的。所以，從奧巴馬政府開始，美國開始對委內瑞拉實施製裁。但一開始製裁非常有限。他們實際上隻關注馬杜羅政權的少數成員，他們應對委內瑞拉對抗議者實施暴力報複負責。
但實際上，在特朗普的領導下，正如我們在本篇報道中獨家報道的那樣，盡管國土安全部官員和機密報告警告這些製裁可能會造成移民外流的影響，特朗普政府確實切斷了委內瑞拉的主要出口收入來源。委內瑞拉 96% 的出口收入來自石油銷售。而美國在三到四年的時間裏有效地阻止了這些銷售在國際市場上發生。這確實扼殺了作為委內瑞拉經濟命脈的合資企業。這意味著與美國生產商和委內瑞拉人達成的石油交易為他們提供了從其他國家購買進口產品所需的收入。
當這種情況發生時，你看到——這些數字令人震驚——正如你提到的，委內瑞拉的經濟萎縮了 71%，是美國大蕭條時期的三倍，比現代曆史上記錄的任何其他和平時期的經濟崩潰都要嚴重，比許多其他處於戰爭狀態的國家的經濟崩潰還要嚴重，包括俄羅斯入侵後的烏克蘭或 2003 年美國入侵後的伊拉克。所以這是一場災難性的事件。
經濟學家們反複討論，從我的報道中可以清楚地看出，委內瑞拉的經濟崩潰早於美國的製裁。你知道，在特朗普真正加大對委內瑞拉經濟的壓力之前，委內瑞拉的通貨膨脹率就超過了 800%。但毫無疑問，這些美國措施使委內瑞拉的經濟形勢惡化，代價是——盡管付出了這樣的代價，但並沒有推翻馬杜羅政府。顯然，馬杜羅今天仍然掌權。
NERMEEN SHAIKH：那麽，傑夫，你能說說——我的意思是，這是委內瑞拉的情況，但也包括其他地方——美國的經濟製裁有多有效？我的意思是，有一段時間，正如你在文章中指出的那樣，在南非實行種族隔離時，製裁有助於推翻和結束種族隔離；在塞爾維亞，米洛舍維奇政權的垮台也是通過製裁或部分製裁實現的。但現在呢？
JEFF ST
EIN：現在我認為這真的很難說。學術界試圖將製裁的影響與製裁是否奏效進行分離，這很難量化。我看到的一些研究表明，成功率在 15% 到 30% 之間，考慮到我們現在以某種形式對大約三分之一的國家和 60% 的窮國實施製裁，這意味著失敗率很高。
我們在這篇文章中研究了古巴、伊朗、津巴布韋、委內瑞拉、阿富汗、敘利亞。這些國家有數千萬甚至數億人以某種形式受到美國製裁的影響，而美國打算針對的政權並沒有易手，也沒有放棄對權力的控製。也許，你知道，美國會說這些製裁仍然比沒有任何措施要好，因為它們剝奪了這些政權可支配的資金，而這些資金可以用來進行美國所說的有害活動，美國不想看到的活動。但與此同時，就實際導致政權更迭而言，我們實際上並沒有看到太多這種情況。
許多批評人士會認為，事實上，製裁實際上鼓舞了當權者，賦予當權政權權力，因為它們遏製了公民社會。它們削弱了私營部門參與者的權力和影響力，而這些參與者往往與受製裁的當局，即當權政權形成競爭的權力基礎。因此，在一個又一個的案件中，我們看到對這些製裁製度的批評似乎非常合理。
AMY GOODMAN：那麽，伊朗呢？至少可以說，今天伊朗是新聞熱點。美國製裁的影響如何？美國實施製裁時，也會向其他國家施壓，當然，就像我們在古巴看到的那樣？
JEFF STEIN：是的。伊朗製裁於 2010 年首次實施，效果非常顯著，這是奧巴馬政府和國會通過的措施，實際上相當於美國製裁權的一次令人著迷的擴張。我們真正看到的是，第一次部署了二級製裁，這意味著我們不僅製裁我們不喜歡的一方，而且我們還會說，“如果你與伊朗政權進行貿易，我們就會針對你。”因此，這實際上代表了製裁權力的重大擴張，而且在製裁支持者看來，這確實是一種非常有效的方法，因為顯然，2015 年，奧巴馬政府與伊朗政權就一項核協議展開合作，製裁支持者稱讚這項協議是此次施壓運動的產物。
話雖如此，但特朗普領導下的美國退出了該協議。因此，任何說奧巴馬政府對伊朗的製裁是成功的人都必須麵對這樣一個事實：作為一個國家，我們很快就放棄了這項協議，讓伊朗人陷入困境，從那時起，我們看到伊朗人與俄羅斯、古巴、美國反對的其他大國合作，組建競爭金融網絡，這讓人們不禁要問，既然他們已經組建了所有這些競爭貿易網絡，這些網絡就像美國的影子貿易體係一樣運作——西方金融體係是美國通過製裁懲罰伊朗的前提。
NERMEEN SHAIKH：Jeff，請快速回答一下——我們有 30 秒時間——2021 年改革美國製裁體係的計劃進展如何？
JEFF STEIN：是的。我們在報道中獨家報道，財政部的一組工作人員起草了一份比他們最終發布的報告更為詳盡的報告。他們提出了數十項建議，包括旨在遏製美國製裁升級的措施，尤其是設立某種中央協調員。目前這有點官僚主義，但政府的許多部門都會提出製裁想法，這些想法會匯總到國務院和財政部的製裁中並繼續推進。實際上，沒有一個機構會評估這些製裁是否在更廣泛的整體製裁戰略背景下實施。財政部工作人員製定了一項計劃，說“讓我們實施它吧。”
但與國務院的分歧，有點像製裁的整體慣性，製裁似乎如此簡單、如此有效，對美國政府來說，這比發動戰爭容易得多，比什麽都不做容易得多，或者比什麽都不做更容易被政治接受。所以，這個計劃被擱置了。事實上，在拜登政府的領導下，我們看到了越來越多的製裁。拜登在兩年內實施了 6,000 項製裁，這是一個前所未有的數字。而這種情況持續下去，實際上反映了美國無法解決這個問題，也無法降低這個數字。
艾米·古德曼：傑夫·斯坦，非常感謝您接受我們的采訪，《華盛頓郵報》記者。我們將鏈接到您的文章，“四位美國總統如何在全球範圍內發動經濟戰。”我是艾米·古德曼 (Amy Goodman)，和 Nermeen Shaikh 一起報道。
金錢戰爭：四位美國總統如何在全球範圍內發動經濟戰爭
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，美國實施的製裁是其他任何國家或國際機構的三倍，針對三分之一的國家實施某種形式的經濟處罰，對個人、財產或組織進行處罰。它們已成為永無休止的經濟戰爭中幾乎本能的武器，政府最高層也承認它們的過度使用。但美國總統發現這種工具越來越令人無法抗拒。
通過切斷製裁目標與西方金融體係的聯係，製裁可以摧毀國家工業、抹去個人財富並破壞麻煩政權的政治權力平衡——而這一切都不會讓任何美國士兵受到傷害。
但即使製裁不斷增加，人們對其影響的擔憂也與日俱增。
在華盛頓，製裁的激增催生了一個價值數十億美元的產業。外國政府和跨國公司花費巨資來影響該體係，而白鞋律師事務所和 K 街遊說公司則建立了蓬勃發展的製裁實踐——部分是通過引誘政府官員利用他們的專業知識來賺錢。
在其他地方，製裁將獨裁政權推向黑市交易，增強了犯罪網絡和走私團夥的力量。美國的對手正在加大合作力度，以規避經濟處罰。與軍事行動一樣，經濟戰也可能造成附帶損害：例如，對委內瑞拉的製裁導致經濟萎縮，其規模大約是美國大蕭條時期的三倍。
製裁——甚至僅僅是威脅製裁——可以成為一種有效的政策工具，一種懲罰不良行為或向對手施壓而不訴諸軍事力量的方式。製裁使美國政府能夠對戰爭罪犯采取道德和經濟上有意義的立場。它們幫助結束了南非的種族隔離政權，並最終推翻了塞爾維亞獨裁者斯洛博丹·米洛舍維奇。支持者說，即使製裁失敗，它們也比不采取任何行動或發動戰爭的替代方案要好。
盡管如此，朝鮮被製裁了半個多世紀，但平壤獲取核武器和洲際彈道導彈的努力卻沒有停止。美國對尼加拉瓜的製裁對阻止丹尼爾·奧爾特加總統的獨裁政權幾乎沒有起到什麽作用。俄羅斯因入侵烏克蘭而遭受兩年的製裁，這損害了莫斯科的長期經濟前景，並提高了軍事生產成本。但這些製裁也催生了一支“暗艦隊”，這些船隻在國際法規之外銷售石油，同時使克裏姆林宮與北京結成了更緊密的聯盟。
4 月朝鮮和韓國之間的軍事分界線。（Jintak Han/華盛頓郵報）
對製裁升級的擔憂已經達到美國政府的最高水平：一些高級政府官員直接告訴拜登總統，過度使用製裁可能會降低這一工具的價值。然而，盡管認識到製裁的規模可能過大，但美國官員傾向於認為每一項行動都是合理的，這使得很難阻止這種趨勢。據《華盛頓郵報》分析，美國今年再次以創紀錄的速度實施製裁，目前超過 60% 的低收入國家受到某種形式的經濟處罰。
“這是外交與戰爭之間的唯一手段，因此已成為美國武器庫中最重要的外交政策工具，”前商務部官員、現任華盛頓智庫戰略與國際研究中心國際商務主任比爾·賴因施 (Bill Reinsch) 表示。
“然而，”賴因施說，“政府中沒有人確定整個戰略是否有效。”
“開始用這把錘子敲打東西”
經濟戰已經存在了數千年：古雅典在公元前 5 世紀對其對手實施了貿易製裁，美國總統自共和國成立之初就限製了對外貿易。1807 年，托馬斯·傑斐遜關閉了美國港口以禁止出口船舶，並限製從英國進口。今天的製裁以冷戰和第一次世界大戰期間通過的法律為基礎。
金錢戰爭
美國政府對外國政府、公司和個人實施的製裁比以往任何時候都多。但這些強大的經濟戰工具可能會帶來意想不到的後果，傷害平民，損害美國的外交政策利益。《金錢戰爭》調查了美國金融製裁的擴散以及
過度使用的危險。
1990 年，薩達姆·侯賽因入侵科威特，催生出一種新形式的武器：對伊拉克的出口實施國際封鎖。海灣戰爭後，全麵製裁使伊拉克無法出口石油或進口物資來重建其遭到破壞的水電係統，霍亂和傷寒等疾病激增。
與此同時，隨著蘇聯解體，美國在經濟和軍事上都成為世界上無與倫比的超級大國。世界各國政府和銀行都依賴美元，美元仍然是地球上的主導貨幣。
今天，美元不僅購買了進入美國經濟的渠道，而且還支撐著國際貿易，即使與美國銀行或企業沒有任何聯係。石油等大宗商品在全球範圍內以美元計價，以本國貨幣進行交易的國家依靠美元來完成國際交易。
這種金融霸權給美國的對手甚至一些盟友帶來了風險。為了進行美元交易，金融機構通常必須從美國同行借款（無論借款時間多麽短暫），並遵守美國政府的規定。這使得監管美國金融體係的財政部成為世界銀行業務的守門人。
製裁就是大門。
財政部官員可以對任何他們認為對美國經濟、外交政策或國家安全構成威脅的外國個人、公司或政府實施製裁。沒有要求指控任何人犯下特定罪行，更不用說定罪了。但這一舉措將與受製裁方進行交易定為犯罪。
受到美國製裁相當於無限期禁止進入全球大部分經濟領域。
“這是外交與戰爭之間的唯一選擇，因此已成為美國武器庫中最重要的外交政策工具。然而，政府中沒有人確定整個戰略是否有效。”
比爾·賴因施，前商務部官員，現任戰略與國際研究中心國際商務學教授
該係統的建立非常緩慢。最初的目標（除了共產主義古巴）是墨西哥和哥倫比亞等地的販毒集團以及利比亞等流氓政權。就在 20 世紀 90 年代，財政部外國資產控製辦公室 (OFAC) 還負責實施少數製裁計劃。其工作人員擠在一間會議室裏就很舒服。其主要職責之一是阻止美國銷售古巴雪茄。
2001 年 9 月 11 日恐怖襲擊事件發生後，一切都發生了變化。國會頒布立法，強製金融機構保存消費者交易記錄並將其移交給執法部門。突然之間，美國官員掌握了有關全球銀行客戶的大量信息，而數字銀行的興起也為全球資金流動提供了新的見解。
隨著財政部成為全球反恐戰爭的關鍵參與者，美國決策者開始認識到該國金融霸權的力量。專家們敦促采取比在伊拉克實施的直截了當的禁運更為複雜的方法。這些倡導者希望“智能製裁”能夠更加精確，通過切斷惡意行為者來施加最大壓力。
概念驗證很快就實現了。2003 年，朝鮮因退出核武器條約而震驚了世界。喬治·W·布什總統領導下的財政部官員不僅針對為平壤處理付款的澳門銀行，還威脅與該銀行進行交易的任何銀行。
朝鮮官員怒不可遏——這些措施阻礙了平壤的財政。這一事件讓財政部工作人員大吃一驚：美國似乎在不費一槍一彈、不花一分錢的情況下嚇倒了半個地球外的敵人。
“這是一個關鍵時刻，”克裏斯汀·帕特爾 (Kristen Patel) 說道，她曾在 2015 年至 2017 年擔任美國財政部金融犯罪執法網絡的高級職務，目前在雪城大學教授製裁政策和非法融資。“財政部得到了批準，開始用這把錘子敲打一切。”
“我們所做的每一件事都是製裁”
劇本很快發生了變化，包括更大的目標和更積極的執法。2010 年，美國總統巴拉克·奧巴馬 (Barack Obama) 與國會合作批準了旨在迫使伊朗放棄核野心的製裁。司法部開始對違反財政部禁令的西方銀行征收數十億美元的罰款。
這些製裁不僅適用於伊朗，也適用於與伊朗進行貿易的公司，削弱了德黑蘭與國際市場的聯係。伊朗領導人屈服了，決定尋求一項承諾結束金融孤立的核協議。
這種實力的展示帶來了新的需求。到奧巴馬第二任期，製裁名單不斷增加，其中包括剛果民主共和國的軍事官員。
安哥拉、也門軍方的供應商、與穆阿邁爾·卡紮菲有關的利比亞官員，以及在敘利亞對平民抗議者進行殘酷鎮壓後，總統巴沙爾·阿薩德。
哀悼者在 2012 年大馬士革政府軍突襲中遇難的四人的葬禮上抬著披著敘利亞革命旗幟的遺體。（匿名/美聯社）
國會也參與其中，向國務院和白宮發出大量製裁請求，在某些情況下，這些請求似乎旨在切斷本國產業的外國競爭。
2011 年，在華盛頓市中心哈靈頓酒店的一次節日派對上，時任 OFAC 主任的亞當·斯祖賓演唱了一首名為“我們所做的每件小事都是製裁”的歌曲，曲調是警察樂隊的“她所做的每件小事都是魔法”，斯祖賓在一封電子郵件中證實了這一點。
一些專家認為，這種激增正在失控。
“智能製裁本應是一盤自助餐，你可以根據該國的罪行和弱點選擇特定的製裁，”聖母大學製裁學者喬治·洛佩茲 (George Lopez) 表示，他被廣泛認為在 20 多年前幫助推廣了這一想法。“相反，政策製定者走進自助餐時說，‘我要把所有東西都堆在我的盤子裏。’”
2014 年，俄羅斯非法入侵並吞並烏克蘭的克裏米亞，給財政部帶來了巨大挑戰。朝鮮和伊朗等國家被視為嚴重的國家安全威脅，但沒有人認為它們是全球金融不可或缺的一部分。現在，財政部被迫麵對全球十大經濟體之一。錯誤的舉動可能會讓全球市場陷入混亂。
2014 年 3 月，一名兒童走在親俄士兵中間，他們包圍了克裏米亞的一個烏克蘭軍事基地。（Vadim Ghirda/美聯社）
曾經默默無聞的財政部助理將建議直接提交給內閣官員，內閣官員同時聽取了震驚的財富 500 強首席執行官和華爾街銀行負責人的意見。製裁突然成為華盛頓、北京和莫斯科之間重新出現的“大國”競爭的一個關鍵特征。
“你會收到來自政府各個角落的請求和評論：‘你為什麽不對這些人實施製裁？那些人呢？’”曾在奧巴馬政府期間擔任 OFAC 高級顧問和國家安全委員會多邊事務主任的亞當·M·史密斯說。
“無論你是民主黨人還是共和黨人，思考過程總是：你為什麽不繼續這樣做？”史密斯說。
隨著製裁的升級，挑戰也隨之而來
但政府官員開始注意到財政部複雜的新製度存在問題。針對俄羅斯總統弗拉基米爾·普京的盟友和國有銀行的製裁對克裏米亞的控製沒有明顯影響。歐洲領導人對銀行被處以罰款感到憤怒。華爾街的權力掮客開始抱怨遵守令人眼花繚亂的新指令的成本。
受製裁實體的數量似乎增長得太快，OFAC 無法跟上。細微差別導致混亂；要求澄清的請求大量湧入，針對該機構的訴訟數量增加了兩倍。人員流動加劇，因為風險不斷上升，財政部工作人員紛紛跳槽到私營部門，這可能使他們的收入翻兩番。
此外，一個更現實的挑戰也出現了：製裁的力量在於阻止外國參與者獲得美元。但如果製裁使得依賴美元變得危險，各國可能會找到其他貿易方式——從而完全避開美國的製裁。
2016 年 3 月，奧巴馬財政部長傑克·盧公開警告“製裁過度”，並指出“過度使用製裁最終可能會降低我們有效使用製裁的能力”。
然而，即將上任的特朗普政府再次發現了這一金融武器的新用途，因為它實施了比以往更多的製裁。作為總統，唐納德·特朗普以前所未有的方式使用製裁進行報複——例如，在國際刑事法院對駐阿富汗美軍的行為展開戰爭罪調查後，特朗普下令對國際刑事法院官員實施製裁。
特朗普政府還對委內瑞拉實施了嚴厲的製裁，旨在抹黑尼古拉斯·馬杜羅的獨裁統治並鼓勵反對派運動。這些製裁未能趕走馬杜羅——現在人們常常指責這是現代史上最嚴重的和平時期經濟崩潰之一的加劇。
“該係統的濫用令人發指，但這不是財政部或 OFAC 的錯：他們是優秀的專業人士，承擔了所有這些政治工作。他們希望擺脫這種無情、永無止境、必須製裁所有人及其姐妹、有時甚至是字麵意義上的製度，”曾擔任參議院外交關係委員會高級職員並在喬治·W·布什政府期間擔任國務院古巴政策負責人的 Caleb McCarry 說。
“它被過度使用，已經失控了。”
改革計劃被擱置
到拜登就職時，他的過渡團隊已經達成共識，認為必須做出一些改變。
2021 年夏天，五名財政部工作人員起草了一份內部草案，提議重組製裁製度。據兩名參與人士稱，這份草案大約有 40 頁，將是幾十年來對製裁政策最重大的改革。
但與前三屆政府一樣，拜登的團隊發現很難放棄權力。
加拉加斯的一塊廣告牌將美國對委內瑞拉製裁造成的傷害歸咎於反對派，而獨裁的尼古拉斯·馬杜羅正準備在 7 月的選舉中連任第三任總統。 （Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images）
知情人士表示，財政部工作人員眼睜睜地看著他們的老板刪除了他們計劃的關鍵部分，包括一項設立中央協調員的條款。知情人士不願透露姓名，以反映機密討論。到當年 10 月財政部公開發布其“2021 年製裁審查”時，40 頁的草案已縮減至 8 頁，其中包含了之前文件中最無力的建議。（兩位知情人士將修改範圍歸咎於與國務院的內部分歧，並表示財政部領導層也反對修改。國務院發言人拒絕置評。）
四個月後，俄羅斯軍隊進軍烏克蘭，拜登在兩年內發起了前所未有的 6,000 多項製裁。而且製裁對象不僅限於俄羅斯：拜登政府製裁的對象包括約旦河西岸的以色列定居者、阿富汗前政府官員、墨西哥涉嫌販賣芬太尼的人員以及一家北馬其頓間諜軟件公司。與此同時，拜登曾表示將放鬆的製裁，例如特朗普對古巴實施的製裁，在國會山的壓力下基本得以維持，盡管政府高層官員認為，製裁適得其反，是一種失敗。
2022 年，哈瓦那一名小販在賣麵包，當時該國經曆了一場由多種因素引發的經濟危機，包括特朗普時代的製裁，該製裁在拜登總統任期內繼續存在。（Sarah L. Voisin/華盛頓郵報）
拜登政府已采取措施減輕意外後果。去年，財政部宣布已聘請經濟學家為一個分析製裁經濟影響的新部門配備人員。人道主義組織稱讚拜登政府為確保關鍵醫療用品和食品能夠進入受製裁國家所做的努力。而且，批評人士最擔心的事情並沒有成為現實：至少目前，美元仍然是世界第一大儲備貨幣。
“製裁是一種重要的工具，可以幫助促進我們的國家安全，但隻能作為更廣泛的外交政策戰略的一部分來使用，”美國財政部副部長沃利·阿德耶莫在一份聲明中表示。“2021 年財政部製裁審查提供了一個有用的路線圖，幫助我們改進這一重要工具的使用。”
但其他問題似乎正在惡化。現任和前任美國官員稱，OFAC 的工作量巨大，該機構收到了來自私營部門的數萬份請求。據兩位知情人士透露，一些白宮官員已將國家安全問題外包給非營利組織，他們集思廣益，設想了在哪些情況下必須大幅加大製裁力度以對抗美國的對手，這兩位知情人士不願透露姓名，以描述內部談判的情況。
2022 年底，白宮高級顧問再次就改革美國製裁舉行了討論。在包括拜登在內的閉門會談中，助手們談到了製定經濟治國方略指導方針的必要性，包括將製裁的使用限製在“和平與安全所依賴的核心國際原則受到威脅”的時刻，其中一位官員說。
但這些想法在更緊迫的要求麵前被擱置了。
“華盛頓的心態，幾乎是一種奇怪的反射，已經變成了：如果世界上任何地方發生了不好的事情，美國就會製裁一些人。這沒有道理，”曾擔任奧巴馬政府副國家安全顧問的本·羅茲說。
“我們對製裁的附帶損害的看法與對戰爭的附帶損害的看法不同，”羅茲說。“但我們應該。”
關於這個故事
由 Stephanie Hays 設計和開發。Chantal Jahchan 插圖。Haley Hamblin 照片編輯。Betty Chavarria 設計編輯。視覺編輯：Karly Domb Sadof。圖形編輯：Kate Rabinowitz。
編輯：Mike Madden 和 Lori Montgomery。文字編輯：Feroze Dhanoa 和 Brian Malasics。
項目編輯：Ana Carano。Jordan Melendrez、Sar
方法論
為了研究美國製裁的增加，《華盛頓郵報》獲取並分析了 Enigma Technologies 從美國財政部外國資產控製辦公室抓取的 30 年曆史數據，Enigma Technologies 是一家專門從事製裁篩選和商業智能的數據和實體解析公司。記者使用 Castellum.ai 提供的數據將美國的製裁與其他當局發布的製裁進行了比較，Castellum.ai 是一個涵蓋全球製裁、出口管製和其他金融犯罪風險的合規平台。
《華盛頓郵報》使用了全球製裁數據庫，這是一個由康斯坦茨應用技術大學、奧地利經濟研究所和德雷塞爾大學經濟學院協調的學術項目，以確定哪些國家在 1950 年至 2022 年期間受到了美國的製裁。世界銀行的收入分類框架幫助記者評估低收入國家是否比其他國家受到更多的製裁；該銀行的區域分類有助於說明哪些地區已成為目標。
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
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.
