US Sanctions Kill Is Not a Metaphor (Patreon)

By Sam (@LiberationistMA)

The pandemic and the supply chain problems are a great teachable moment for Americans to understand US sanctions. We lived through a lack of supplies, not enough hospitals and medical supplies, not having work, and being without money with increased costs. Now we're living through inflation. Think about all that plus the Great Depression, except it never ends.

You need vehicles to ship supplies. For that you need oil. But you can't get oil because you need US dollars for oil, but you can't have US dollars either because you're sanctioned.

Imagine what would happen to the US, or any Western country, if there was no oil? You're also sanctioned from even having goods, let alone importing food. Your currency has no value because of sanctions. You can't bank in any meaningful way because banking is sanctioned.

Commodities to even make your own goods are sanctioned. Even if you have oil in your country, your ability to refine your own oil is sanctioned because you can't get the materials to refine it (let alone the money or contractors). You can't get industrial supplies for agriculture and medical supplies to keep people alive because you're sanctioned. Even if you could manage trade, they wouldn't want to accept your currency because no Western bank will take it. Even if you can manage to get another currency, your trading partner will price gouge you or ask for unfavorable terms because you have no bargaining leverage, and you have to take their deal to live. Or you have to trade away whatever precious natural resources you have to get a fraction of that value in return. You're forced to do many things you wish you didn't. Whatever you have to to survive and for others to survive.

But even still, who would be willing to go against the US? Getting caught would mean more sanctions. It would only be countries the US already lists as enemies, because they already don't like the US but the fact they trade with countries the US sanctions only furthers the argument that they're an enemy. Trying to survive sanctions only proves you're an enemy, which means more sanctions and sometimes military attacks, which means you need more ways to get around the US to survive. It's an endless loop. You can also see why they want the US to go away, so they can get the boot off their neck.

Being on the US enemy list, the US will portray you as an equal rival, but the US can sanction you and no country can sanction the US. Some countries might be able to put tariffs on goods made in their country, but they can't stop the US from working with other countries and they can't control the banking system. The US can do this to anyone and freeze their accounts, even their powerful allies, which is why they remain their allies. But the distribution of power is asymmetrical, the US holds all the cards, and trying to do anything to upset the US means your own demise.

But if you're a sanctioned country working with another country on the US enemy list—now the US can link you two together. Now you're even more of a "bad actor" even though there was no alternative.

You have no choice but to exist in a near moneyless society to survive, and you have to keep working, or other members of your society will die. Capitalism needs other markets and trade to work. The only system that could work under the worst of all circumstances is communism. If you only have food for three months, the only thing you can try is communism.

The privileged West believes that since these countries have no freedom, we have to sanction them when it's the sanctions that eliminate your ability to do anything. Even if a country is badly run, sanctions only make it worse. Lack of freedom doesn't invite sanctions; sanctions rob freedom. The results of this oppression are used to justify more sanctions. It's self-perpetuating oppression: sanctions rob freedom, no freedom means more sanctions, sanctions rob freedom, no freedom means more sanctions. Just as the US robs freedom, US actions pushed many countries into communism as a matter of survival. Now communist, the US must punish you, which further pushes you into communism.

You can't catch up to the West because not only are you forced onto an economic island, you can't take out loans to grow: you can't invest, and you can't print your own money because it won't hold value. Think about how difficult it is even for regular people, let alone poor people, to survive without loans?

Then the US will surveil you to find cause to sanction you further. And even though the US is the one who cut you off, they will then accuse you of shutting yourself off from the world and that you're a dystopian nightmare. They will blame everything they've done to you as self-injury.

Imagine being in school and a bully makes everyone shun you. But to make your life easier, you try to avoid the gaze of your oppressor and keep to yourself but then that's used against you as evidence that you're a weirdo who needs to get picked on and beaten up more. They can make up anything about you, and the school will believe it because you're a mystery. They will act like your isolation is self-imposed because they need to think you deserve it; otherwise, it would mean they're evil.

And we know all too well, bullying can get so bad, bullies can actually kill their victims or cause them to kill themselves. And in that depression of being oppressed, yes, you might blame yourself. The US will find people like that to say, "Hey, they did it to themselves. We're not oppressors, they oppress themselves."

Do you know when the US-led anticommunist campaign genocided over a million Indonesians, the US reported it as them running "amok." Amok is a Malay/Indonesian spiritual word that the West bastardizes to blame Indonesians and other members of the Global South for being killed by US terror programs.

These are the material consequences and victims of sanctions. There is no moral justification for them. But just like how the US victim-blames its poor for being poor, the US has taught its citizens to do the same to other countries. An American might recognize that it's not their fault for being poor but may not recognize the same for other countries. That cognitive dissonance is not by accident but planned.

Sanctions are a slow genocide that's similar to salting your fields. Then the US will ask, "Why did you do that to yourself? Looks like you haven't learned your lesson. More sanctions, and maybe some bombs and some anticommunist terror campaigns."

Many Americans, even nonprogressives, understand that money is god. Then "god" is subservient to the US because global capitalist money is denominated in US dollars. Even if your lens is based on as simple of an idea as "all problems are caused by authoritarians," then understand there is only one supreme authority. One whose power is so absolute, they control every aspect of god.