The infectiousness of international sanctions

International sanctions are an instrument of extreme foreign policy, generally adopted when diplomatic channels do not work as expected.. Trade sanctions aim to isolate the country from international trade flows, leading to a stranglehold on its economy. Thereby, it is expected that the local population will feel the limitations and start to pressure their rulers to change the situation that led to the international sanction. Logically it seems to be a good policy., but it is not.

Even if the sanction is directed to a certain government, in practice, its main impacts are on the population., people who have few, when any, condition of influencing government behavior. Limiting access to international goods, as well as the negative impact of collective impoverishment resulting from a weaker economy falls on people..

Another issue is that economic sanctions are “standardized” after a while. The political agenda that led to the enactment of sanctions is soon generalized and the process becomes much more ideological than actually focused on an issue.. Just look at the issue of economic embargoes imposed by the United States on Cuba, in 1962. The context in which they were created are different in all the dimensions we want to analyze, even so, the proposal continues. The result is clearly failed and the agenda behind the maintenance of these embargoes is more political-electoral of the US than a foreign policy.. It is estimated that the impact on the Cuban economy over the period of the embargoes reaches the amount of 89 billions of dollars.

In the Venezuelan case, US sanctions were initiated in 2013 with the aim of strangling the Maduro government. The result, according to the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics is an impact of 350 billions of dollars for the Venezuelan economy, in addition to the closing of 3 millions of jobs (watch The economic consequences of the boycott of Venezuela).

These are just some of the current sanctions that show their failure as a proposal for international action. Many others around the world could be mentioned, as Congo, North Korea, Lebanon, Russia and Somalia. Only from the United States to other countries today are 19 the affected (see list on here).

Although so far it has focused on US economic sanctions against other countries, they are not the only ones. The European Union has also implemented this same type of strategy, with the same limits of effectiveness.

As we look at the Brazilian condition, not comfortable in terms of potential sanctions and embargoes. We will potentially face big problems in a possible election of Joe Biden in the USA, just look at their statements about Brazilian policies and the behavior of other Democratic governments over the past few decades.

At the same time, as we look at recent statements from the European Union and European countries, we see that the scenery is also very uncomfortable. Our current environmental policy is a major focus of criticism and threat of sanctions, but not only, we've had problems due to human rights..

This is not about defending our environmental policy (what, in my opinion, is currently disastrous), but to signal that trade sanctions and embargoes should not be considered possibilities. In the end, governments will change little of their policies and they will suffer the consequences, are the citizens.

originally published in World map (www.mapamundi.org.br)