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Assad Doesn’t Care if More of His People Starve This article frames the US as the good guys, but says sanctions won't work. In the real world, “quagmire” is simply a misleading term for a failed state. And failed states leave their populations exposed to hunger, disease, poverty, and predatory warlords. The Trump administration skirts this grim reality by insisting that sanctions work. Yet there is little evidence that economic sanctions ever achieve their objectives. Even the best-designed sanctions can be self-defeating, strengthening the regimes they were designed to hurt and punishing the societies they were supposed to protect. The destruction of Iraq’s middle class in the 1990s is a case in point: U.S. sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Their effect was
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Assad Doesn’t Care if More of His People Starve This article frames the US as the good guys, but says sanctions won't work. In the real world, “quagmire” is simply a misleading term for a failed state. And failed states leave their populations exposed to hunger, disease, poverty, and predatory warlords. The Trump administration skirts this grim reality by insisting that sanctions work. Yet there is little evidence that economic sanctions ever achieve their objectives. Even the best-designed sanctions can be self-defeating, strengthening the regimes they were designed to hurt and punishing the societies they were supposed to protect. The destruction of Iraq’s middle class in the 1990s is a case in point: U.S. sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Their effect was
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important:
This could be interesting, too:
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Assad Doesn’t Care if More of His People Starve
This article frames the US as the good guys, but says sanctions won't work.
In the real world, “quagmire” is simply a misleading term for a failed state. And failed states leave their populations exposed to hunger, disease, poverty, and predatory warlords. The Trump administration skirts this grim reality by insisting that sanctions work. Yet there is little evidence that economic sanctions ever achieve their objectives. Even the best-designed sanctions can be self-defeating, strengthening the regimes they were designed to hurt and punishing the societies they were supposed to protect. The destruction of Iraq’s middle class in the 1990s is a case in point: U.S. sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Their effect was gendered, disproportionately punishing women and children. The notion that sanctions work is a pitiless illusion. The fact is those with guns eat first, and competing with Assad over who can hurt Syrian peasants more is a losing game for Washington.
Foreign Affairs