Sanction is the new language of diplomacy

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

We live in a world of sanctions that are now imposed not only by the United Nations, but also by stronger countries against weaker ones, if they consider that they violate generally accepted rules, in their opinion. The world has moved from penal sanctions for violation of the terms of contracts between economic entities to prohibitions for countries in order to achieve their political goals.

What are the sanctions?

The United Nations, groups or individual states quite often try to change the policy they do not like by imposing various restrictions. Sanctions are measures or a system of measures that are applied against a subject of international relations in order to induce him to change his political course. Basically, restrictive measures against states are of an economic nature, they are divided into trade and financial.

Sanctions Champion

Sanctions are measures that are usually imposed by strong states against weak ones, if they are not yet ready and do not want to resolve controversial issues by force of arms. USA as oneof the strongest states since the second half of the 20th century, more often than other countries uses this instrument of coercion.

The longest-running sanctions are against Cuba. it happened when, in response to the revolution and the nationalization of American corporate property in 1960, the US imposed an economic blockade.

Any activity related to Cuba was banned, American citizens were even forbidden to smoke Cuban cigars not only in the US, but throughout the world. True, this is probably one of the few prohibitions that no one has seriously observed. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly condemned the economic blockade of Cuba, while 187 countries voted in favor of the resolution condemning the embargo, 2-3 countries voted against.

US sanctions against Iran and North Korea were imposed for the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Iran in 2016 agreed to a "nuclear deal" - for the abandonment of the nuclear program, economic sanctions were to be softened and then lifted. The partial lifting of trade restrictions led to a revival of the Iranian economy. However, in 2017, the US imposed new bans against Iran, accusing the country of financing terrorism. For the United States, sanctions are a tool to fight for its dominant position in the world and a way to punish the "recalcitrant". International restrictive UN measures were also introduced against the DPRK. The country is, as announced by the United States, under the toughest sanctions ever imposed against a state.

Old story

The most famous sanctions were imposed by the US in 1974year against the Soviet Union for preventing emigration and violating human rights. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the American Trade Act prohibited the granting of most favored nation treatment in trade, the issuance of loans, investments and government guarantees to countries with non-market economies. Since then, sanctions have been a tool of the US struggle for human rights to free movement.

The sanctions were mainly imposed due to restrictions and obstacles to the emigration of Jews to Israel. After the collapse of the USSR, the amendment was extended to most post-Soviet countries. Since 1994, the US has imposed an automatically extended moratorium on his activities. Now the amendment is valid for Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For the rest of the former Soviet republics, the Jackson-Vanik amendment was repealed, including for Russia in 2012. But the story did not end there, at the same time new sanctions were introduced under the Magnitsky Law.

Sanction exchange

A sluggish exchange of sanctions, when in response to the Magnitsky Act adopted by the United States and the imposition of personal restrictions against Russian citizens, Russia imposed mirror sanctions against Americans with the "Dima Yakovlev Law" (ended in 2014). And for the fourth year now, the United States, the European Union, international organizations and individual states have been introducing sanctions packages related to the annexation of Crimea, the conflict in Ukraine, interference in American elections. It all started with relatively harmless bansagainst Russian and Ukrainian individuals and companies involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Serious packages of sanctions were introduced under US pressure further: a ban on cooperation with Russian defense, commodity companies and banks. A ban was also introduced on the supply of certain groups of goods, the transfer of new technologies and restricting access to the capital market.

Russia's retaliatory sanctions included a ban on the import of certain types of agricultural raw materials, food, light industry products from the countries of the European Union, which joined the US prohibition measures.