this is Richard Wolff from democracy at
work responding to another ask Prof wolf
question from our patreon community and
this question comes from Mary
Mary asks whether it is sometimes
Justified
to impose sanctions on a country
even when they hurt average citizens
because it is a way to stop what we
might believe to be evil behavior on the
part of a government
I would like to broaden Mary's very good
question because it is certainly part of
today's world and today's news
but I'd like to broaden it a little bit
to ask and talk about sanctions
and here we have to understand what
happens when a country
and I might as well use the United
States because it's the single most
frequent applier of sanctions in the
world and number two is so far behind
that it's almost free to say the United
States and some others because it's an
American a tool it's used more by the
Americans over a longer period of time
than any other country and by a lot
and most of the time the United States
justifies
sanctions either by the claim that it is
only affecting the leadership or for
example in the current case with Russia
oligarchs the very name suggesting
something awful and evil uh the whole
idea is it's going to affect the bad
guys over there
and if by chance it were to affect
average people well that's not the
target that's not who we're interested
in hurting that's not what the sanctions
are about a lot of kind of
semi-denials and then when you discover
that of course masses of people are
negatively affected by the sanctions we
apply then Mary's question comes into
effect is that maybe Justified because
we're so angry about so opposed to what
the government is doing
so let me respond as follows I want you
to shift your focus for a moment with me
to the country being sanctioned uh Cuba
has been sanctioned by the United States
for half a century Iran has been
sanctioned by the United States on and
off many times Russia has been
sanctioned and so forth
what happens in those countries is
crucial when they are sanctioned but
what it's crucial to understand is that
when a country is sanctioned it uses its
own internal mechanisms to cope with the
sanctions just like it uses those
internal mechanisms for everything else
it does
and one of those internal mechanisms in
Cuba in Iran in Russia in China is in
almost every case that the people who
have the power and the wealth
use their power and use their wealth to
offload the burdens of the sanction onto
people and lower in the pecking order of
this Society to say it in simple English
people who get sanctioned the president
of a country the prime minister or the
oligarchs the big corporate Executives
the government officials whichever they
are in the prime position to put the
pain somewhere else which is what they
do
in almost every case
not every case but almost and it's
General enough that I can talk to you
about it
it means that the sanctions always
hurt large numbers of people who are the
most vulnerable in society the least
able to protect themselves because they
don't have a lot of power and they don't
have a lot of wealth
if you impose sanctions on a country
you're going to hurt average people who
can handle it least well that may not be
your intent but that is what you're
going to do
and I would be dishonest if I suggested
to you anything other than that
President Biden knows that
and the head of any other country that
imposes sanctions on another country
knows it
Mr Putin is not inconvenienced by these
sanctions they don't change his life
except in one way that I'm going to get
to in a moment
so the sanctions to be blunt don't hit
the people you are told and we are told
they're aimed at because those people
have the best possible means to escape
the impact of those sanctions and to put
the pain onto those below them in the
society which means it's not an
effective way to change the behavior of
the leaders of a country
and it never has been sanctions don't
work
I'll go back to Cuba we've sanctioned
them for over half a century and they
remain opposed to American policy
and a leader in Latin America for other
nations that are becoming opposed to the
United States
sanctions didn't work
Iran is as busy doing what we don't like
the United States officially
the sanctions didn't work and they
haven't stopped Russia in Ukraine either
and I could go on all of the tariffs Mr
Trump imposed on China did it change the
not at all the trade war with President
Trump told us he could easily win
we don't even basically hear about it it
hasn't changed anything basic in the
relationship between the United States
and China
so what do sanctions do two things
number one they're wonderful for the
domestic audience in the country doing
this sanctioning
Mr Biden can get up as Mr Trump did and
pronounce we are hitting them with this
early in the Ukraine war we heard about
the mother of all sanctions will bring
Russia to its knees guess what didn't
work
but that's not surprising they know they
never do
are they costly yeah are they
inconvenient yeah are people hurt yeah
but those are at the bottom because
that's how the societies all work
the vast majority of people who died of
covid were not rich well-positioned
Americans they were poorer people they
were elderly they didn't have the money
and the power to escape the way other
people did
that's what we're talking about that's
the reality
and here's the double irony they don't
just not work because of everything I've
told you there's one more reason
the people in the countries being
sanctioned the leaders that we're
supposed to get they can go to their own
people and say you know the suffering
you're going through
well it's because of the sanctions
those foreigners are trying to force us
to behave differently by making your
life difficult and you know what it does
it solidifies the people behind the
leaders that we're supposed to overthrow
or to get rid of or regime change by
means of these sanctions it makes the
support for the object of our sanctions
stronger domestically and Mr Putin's
support in Russia right now is enormous
and an illustration
sanctions don't work
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