It impoverishes ordinary citizens, not their leaders
Imposing unilateral sanctions could narrow the horizons of US leadership in the world
America impedes international trade with a network of sanctions.
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Russia's war on Ukraine has become a battle for Biden to defeat Putin.
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The US-led campaign to ensure Russia's "strategic defeat" and "to enable the Ukrainians to defend themselves, to reduce Russia's ability to fight in this war, and to project power into the future" became;
More important than just a confrontation between Washington and Moscow.
Even without this being intended, US President Joe Biden's battle to defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin has become a critical test of Washington's ability to craft a global economic and security order that is widely accepted or accepted by the world.
It has been clear for some time that the policies defining the American century built by the "greater generation" from the ashes of World War II have lost energy and support, says Jeffrey Aronson, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington. among Americans.
The leadership of former President Donald Trump opened the door for the Republicans to abandon the core elements of those policies, as he recalled his poor handling of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the American protection of the Gulf, and the Democrats abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership and preferred the expansionist doctrine of The “responsibility to protect” on the priority of state sovereignty at the heart of the international system in the post-World War II era.
In Aronson's view, the political class in Washington, whatever its orientation, no longer sees a great advantage in expanding the global trading system and mobilizing political support through the United Nations, let alone expanding the system of confidence-building relations with Russia and China, which turned out to be an attractive and successful system in the second half of the century Twenty.
Instead, Aronson said, Washington is seeking to force the adoption of what it calls a "rules-based international order," a term notable for the flexibility it affords Washington to selectively and sometimes unilaterally define the rules of each game.
It has become an organized address for the mobilization of "coalitions of the willing", as far afield as Libya, Iraq, the Pacific and now Russia.
Aronson considered that Washington's explosive or extensive use of sanctions is at the heart of this new, evolving regime. The imposition of broad economic and cultural sanctions has evolved from its beginnings as a modest stock in an expanded policy toolbox against the former Soviet Union in the 1970s, to now become the preferred foreign policy weapon, not Not only against Russia, Iran and China, but also against friends and allies.
US sanctions aim to isolate, punish, and impose submissiveness as part of a practice that achieves nothing in US interests.
At their most effective, as in Syria and Iran, sanctions have impoverished ordinary citizens rather than their leaders in economics and politics, and failed to advance the broader political goals of the United States.
Under these circumstances, one might be wise to ask whether Washington, by reliance on sanctions as the main instrument of its foreign policy, can ultimately lose despite its gains.
This is particularly the case when a rising China touts the merits of its win-win philosophy in international affairs, backed by a multibillion-dollar program of strategic engagement and development that has left Washington at a standstill.
On the other hand, Aronson said that Washington's adoption of sanctions as a primary option suggests that American policymakers and politicians alike today believe that the best way to enhance US leadership in the world is to adopt a policy that many countries consider coercive and unilateral, and a reflection of the exercise of American power that is no longer confident in its ability to lead. By setting an example as a healthy democracy and a fair economy.
No matter how much the Biden administration touts and brags about the success of the alliance that was forged to defeat Russia—rather than expand the United States' circle of friends—sanctions and a policy generally based on punishment and punishment narrow the prospects for U.S. leadership in the world while providing little evidence that they will compel Russia. to withdraw.
At the height of their success, Aronson says, the great powers, from Rome to Washington, maintained and enhanced their influence by expanding their sphere of influence, not by devising ways to exclude people from the advantages of the international system they were trying to promote.
Aronson concluded his report by saying that it would be truly remarkable if the United States' continued claim to lead the international community in the twenty-first century could successfully rely on narrowing rather than expanding the circle of allies and obstruction of international trade by a growing web of sanctions that no longer distinguish between friend and foe.
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