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News ID: 42094
Publish Date : 24 July 2017 - 21:39

U.S. Sanctions Policy Is a True Failure


 
By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer
 
U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign a new legislation to impose sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Congress is expected to vote on the legislation on Tuesday.
In response, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on international affairs, has said Iran will respond to any failure on the part of the U.S. to meet its commitments under the 2015 nuclear agreement, to which Washington is a signatory.
"Undoubtedly, the U.S. breach of the JCPOA won’t go unanswered,” he said Saturday, referring to the nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He also said the supervisory committee on the implementation of the nuclear accord would discuss the U.S. non-compliance and make a collective decision after hearing the results of the eighth meeting of the Iran-P5+1 Joint Commission in Vienna this week.
No doubt, the strategy of sanctions has mainly proven ineffective at turning around the situation in the region, and by some accounts has radicalized U.S. supporters and allies. Beyond the specific case of Russia and its territorial dispute with its neighbor, economic sanctions have been widely used since the Second World War in various parts of the world by western countries in order to trigger policy changes in independent states.
The problem is the "sanctions approach”, praised by many Western diplomats, has almost never contributed to create a regime change. On the contrary, revolutions took place in the countries that were widely supported economically by western countries. The truth is from North Korea to Syria, Iran, Cuba, Sudan or Zimbabwe, U.S.-led economic sanctions have had little or no results over the years on those countries.
Quite the contrary, it’s America’s allies that are increasingly feeling the pinch, leading Washington to wonder whether its favorite economic power tool has been so overused it’s becoming ineffective and, in some cases, even counterproductive.
Tensions wrought by U.S. sanctions against Russia, for example, have divided U.S. allies in Europe that were already financially struggling before being hit with the economic penalties’ knock-on effects. That’s why the lower house of France’s parliament has voted in a nonbinding agreement to lift EU sanctions against Russia.
It’s yet another evidence that the sanctions policy is a true failure. New research from the Cato Institute and the Center for a New American Security has raised questions about how effective sanctions actually are — and shows mounting evidence of their negative ripple effect:
The institute has called the sanctions against Russia and Iran an "outright failure” that are "harming U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.” But the flip side of that coin is the economic impact the sanctions have had on Europe.
The European Commission estimates sanctions cut EU growth by 0.3 percent of GDP in 2015 at a time when economic expansion was desperately needed. The Austrian Institute of Economic Research found that continuing penalties against Russia could cost more than 92 billion euros, or $104 billion, in export revenue and more than 2.2 million jobs over the next few years. The financial pain is especially acute in Germany, which stands to lose nearly 400,000 jobs due to the sanctions.
Western officials are doing the right thing re-thinking sanctions’ power in lieu of other means to stare down adversaries. Brussels has urged U.S. lawmakers to coordinate their anti-Russia actions with European partners, as Washington steams ahead with a new bill to expand sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea. The EU warns that unilateral measures could undermine transatlantic unity and have "unintended consequences.”