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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The Stupidity of Sanctions, Venezuela Edition

The U.S. shouldn't be interfering at all, but it certainly shouldn't be taking actions that put the local political opposition in greater difficulty.
deadend

Dan Drezner explains the motivation for U.S. sanctions on Venezuela:

My theory is a bit more simple, and has the virtue of not assuming that the executive branch is filled with moustache-twirling villains or brilliant strategists. This administration’s first option when encountering an unpleasant regime is to use sanctions. If that doesn’t work… more sanctions!! Then maybe something else.

The current administration is especially keen on using sanctions against other states (and it has an unfounded confidence in their deterrent value), but this explanation would apply to the previous two administrations as well. Imposing sanctions on certain authoritarian regimes, especially regimes that make a point of emphasizing their opposition to the U.S. in their particular region, is the default Washington response to all kinds of undesirable behavior. It is a given that they are imposed selectively, inconsistently, and without much serious debate about the merits of imposing them.

It doesn’t matter that the sanctions typically have no constructive effect on regime behavior, and it doesn’t matter that the sanctions invariably provide a political boost to the regime targeted by the sanctions. Sanctions may not change regime behavior for the better, and they may often be harmful to the country and the civilian population, but they are relatively low-cost for the U.S. and they permit the U.S. to show “leadership” on this or that issue. Therefore, that is the tool that is used despite its repeated, predictable failures. After all, the point of imposing sanctions is not to bring about any changes for the better in the targeted country, no matter what sanctions advocates may sometimes claim. It is a punitive action taken to convey U.S. disapproval, and it gives the U.S. something that it can cite when critics insist that it “do something” about regime X. Sanctions are very often applied to protest actions by a regime that don’t actually affect or threaten the U.S. in any way, but they are often justified using absurd appeals to national security. Hence the laughable designation of Venezuela as an “extraordinary threat.” This may be a “formality” required to impose sanctions, but it just shows how meaningless and arbitrary these designations can be.

The language used to justify the sanctions already appears to be undermining Venezuela’s opposition:

Some Venezuelan opposition leaders cringed at the American move and said that it had put them on the defensive.

“Venezuela is not a threat to any country,” said the main opposition coalition, Democratic Unity, in a statement distancing itself from the American action and voicing disapproval of “unilateral sanctions.”

The U.S. shouldn’t be interfering at all, but it certainly shouldn’t be taking actions that put the local political opposition in greater difficulty. Instead of putting more pressure on a faltering government, this move probably helps the government to shore up its support and to portray its domestic opponents as working in the service of a foreign power. Regional governments will be less inclined to criticize the regime than they already were. As ever, the rush to “do something” about the problems in another country will not help and will in all likelihood make things a little worse than they were before.

Like most bad policies that come from the impulse to “do something” about things that are properly none of our business, imposing sanctions on other states is mainly intended to satisfy a domestic audience and to placate temporarily those hawkish critics that want even stronger punitive and coercive measures. At best, sanctions serve as a stop-gap measure aimed at punishing another government, and at worst they are just the first step in a series that leads to worsening hostility with the other government. There is rarely a good argument for sanctioning another regime, and sanctions usually don’t produce any of the desired results promised by their supporters. All that they usually achieve is to inflict some amount of harm on another country, and it is usually not worth doing. It is almost always the wrong thing to do, but it remains the tool that many policymakers and politicians reflexively insist on using in response to events overseas.

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