The U.S. Sanctions List Goes from A-Z Like a Children’s Book
From The Observatory
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctions list almost goes A-Z, like a children’s book, at any given time you might find, “Balkans-Related Sanctions” going all the way to “Zimbabwe Sanctions.” There are the obvious ones: China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela. However, this is not the total list. There are also sanctions for counterterrorism and for counternarcotics, for the rough diamond trade and for non-proliferation. These are not always the “strongest sanctions.” Those are reserved for a handful of countries.
Rogue States
The objectives of these sanctions are broadly all the same—that the United States will suffocate a country’s ability to trade and access finance as long as it does not do what the United States of America asks it to do.
The 1990s name for the countries that are targeted for sanctions was “rogue states” (a term adopted by U.S. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake). If they were “rogue”—meaning that they were unwilling to bend to U.S. power—then they needed to be brought to heel. The initial list of “rogue states” from 1994 included Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea.
The 2019 list of “rogue states” (although the term has not been used officially since 2000) included for example: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela. The change in the list came not because of sanctions but because of massive U.S. military intervention against Iraq and Libya, killing their leaders and destroying their state institutions. When U.S. officials added Venezuela to the list of highly sanctioned states, they called it a “rogue regime” (Donald Trump) and they called it a “violent narco-state” (Nikki Haley).
Propaganda
The use of terms like “rogue regime” and “violent narco-state” is intended for a global public relations campaign. No sanctions policy, even if driven by the U.S. government, can succeed without international support, whether through the United Nations or with the conventional partners of the United States (principally the European Union). The point of using such harsh language about a country (dictator, authoritarian, starvation, terrorism, drug cartels) is to delegitimize the government of that state and to begin to legitimize much more dramatic regime change protocols.
Massive military attack (Iraq and Libya) is the ultimate weapon to overthrow a government, while authorizing political change through the use of local force (Honduras, Haiti) is a preferable—because less bloody—option. Ground-level realities are irrelevant to this propaganda exercise. It is far more important to remain with the talking points, to flood media channels with the view that the government of this or that state is diabolical and that only its removal will open the way to solve the problems of the country.
It is a wonder that the major media outlets find themselves so easily sucked into the worldview of the U.S. State Department.
🔭 This summary was human-edited with AI-assist.
