In his effort to promote the United States government pursuing a noninterventionist foreign policy, Ron Paul has often commented that sanctions are an act of war. Like other acts of war, Paul argues, the right course is to avoid sanctioning unless actually necessary to defend America from attack.
Over at the Washington Post, Jeff Stein and Federica Cocco presented on Thursday a much less sweeping critique of US sanctions. They defend sanctions as good policy to an extent, but they also document that over this century US sanctions have proliferated enormously, leading to various problems. Stein and Cocco describe the lay of the land regarding the state of US sanctions with this introductory paragraph:
Today, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations. They have become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare, and their overuse is recognized at the highest levels of government. But American presidents find the tool increasingly irresistible.
From there, Stein and Cocco delivered an interesting analysis, which you can read here, of how this situation arose and some of the problems associated with it.
Maybe the Washington Post article is a sign that there is hope for a significant receding of US sanctions. And maybe. once that receding begins, support will grow for the Paul recommendation of ending all the sanctions.
