The Washington Post reported that 60 percent of low-income countries have faced economic repercussions due to US sanctions.
The newspaper revealed that sanctions imposed by the US currently affect a third of the world’s nations. The sheer volume of these sanctions has overwhelmed the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is responsible for managing their implementation.
OFAC’s workload has dramatically increased since the 9/11 attacks, with the US now imposing three times more sanctions than any other country or international organization. The Post noted that these penalties target “a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations,” including 60% of the world’s low-income countries.
According to two anonymous sources, OFAC is struggling to process “tens of thousands of requests from the private sector,” as companies try to avoid sanctions violations. The White House has reportedly delegated decisions on whom to sanction to nonprofits and think-tanks.
The Post reported that OFAC staff members have unsuccessfully pushed for a reduction in the use of sanctions. High-ranking officials in both the Treasury and State departments have reportedly dismissed their concerns.
“The abuse of this system is ridiculous, but it’s not Treasury or OFAC’s fault,” Caleb McCarry, a former State Department official, told the newspaper. “They want relief from this relentless, never-ending, you-must-sanction-everybody-and-their-sister, sometimes literally, system,” he continued, adding that “it is way, way overused, and it’s become out of control.”
US sanctions have often failed to achieve their desired outcomes. George W. Bush’s sanctions on North Korea did not stop the country from developing nuclear weapons; Barack Obama’s sanctions on Syria failed to remove Bashar Assad from power; Donald Trump’s sanctions on Venezuela did not lead to the overthrow of Nicolas Maduro; and Joe Biden’s sanctions on Russia – exceeding 6,000 in two years – have not ended the war in Ukraine.
While Russia has withstood these sanctions and experienced economic growth, other nations have been less fortunate. North Korea has faced severe food shortages since the late 1990s. Trump’s sanctions on Venezuela have caused a significant economic decline, and estimates suggest that they may have contributed to the deaths of up to 40,000 people between 2017 and 2019.
“The mentality, almost a weird reflex, in Washington has just become: If something bad happens, anywhere in the world, the US is going to sanction some people. And that doesn’t make sense,” Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to Barack Obama, told the Washington Post. “We don’t think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war, but we should.”