Name a US sanction that has achieved its stated goal against the target of the sanction. Take your time; we’ve got all night. Can’t do it? From Ryan McMaken at ronpaulinstitute.org:
After fifty years of imposing embargoes and other sanctions, the United States never managed to topple Cuba’s communist regime. After forty years of the same in Iran, the US met with similar amounts of success. Ongoing sanctions against North Korea have not toppled to regime there.
But, some people in Washington won’t let decades of failure dissuade them.
Last week, Congressman Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) introduced new legislation to bar Americans from importing oil products from Venezuela. The Washington Examiner reports:
[T]he Protecting Against Tyranny and Responsible Imports Act, or the PATRIA Act … would target Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro after he stripped the country’s democratically elected national assembly of its power and authority. According to the bill, the proposed ban on imports would last until the assembly’s power is fully restored.
‘The goal is to change the conduct, the character of the Venezuelan government under Maduro. I think the window is closing,’ Coffman told the Washington Examiner. ‘They are dependent upon the export of oil really to fund their government, and without that, they can’t pay their security forces.’
Experience suggests there is little reason to believe that sanctions will cause the regime to give up in Venezuela. If the regime has less oil money with which to pay the military, the regime can always steal more from the average citizen to make up the difference. In other words, ordinary Venezuelans will suffer more in response to US sanctions.
Moreover, aggressive moves such as these against the Venezuelan regime have tended to only solidify support for the regime among its supporters. Both the current president Maduro, and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, were both successful in building support for themselves on a platform of opposing US meddling in Venezuelan political and economic institutions.
To continue reading: US Sanctions Against Venezuela Will Hurt Americans
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