Strangling People

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Darrell Castle talks about American sanctions placed on other countries, as well as some of the effects of those sanctions.

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Transcription / Notes

STRANGLING PEOPLE

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today is Friday, August 16, 2019, and on today’s Report I will be talking about American economic sanctions placed on other countries, as well as some of the effects of those sanctions. Economic sanctions are acts of economic warfare previously reserved for conduct between warring powers where war has actually been declared. They are a way, short of military conflict, for one nation to impose its will on another.

For example, the British sanctioned, embargoed, and blockaded Germany after declaring war in 1939 and Germany responded in kind by imposing a U-boat blockade of Great Britain. Those nations were officially at war and therefore claimed that war as the legal authority to conduct economic warfare against each other. What then gives the United States the legal, international, or moral authority to conduct economic warfare against other nations? I suggest that it is a simple Malthusian concept of might makes right.

There were a few economic sanctions imposed by Washington prior to the first Gulf War, but that War beginning in 1991, is one of my first memories of Washington’s attempts to impose its will on others by economic warfare. The economic warfare that I continually make reference to is and must be backed by actual military power in order for it to be effective.

For example, you may recall that the first Gulf War did not remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Instead, a No Fly Zone, as well as economic sanctions, were imposed in Iraq that lasted until the second Gulf War, or about 10 years later.

Most of the sanctions against Iraq were conducted by the Clinton Administration, eight of the ten years anyway. The Secretary of State for President Clinton was Madeline Albright, and when she was told that the Iraqi sanctions had caused the deaths of about 500,000 Iraqis, many of them children, she replied, “we think it was worth it”. It’s hard to see the value looking back on it from 25 years of history, what was gained by it all and how was it worth it?

Now we find ourselves sanctioning many nations in the world, along with many individuals from those nations. The reasoning behind sanctions seems to run something akin to the reasoning behind the strategic bombing campaigns of World War ll. We don’t like your leadership and, therefore, we will keep the pressure on until you overthrow your old leaders and accept leaders more to our liking. Strategic bombing was successful in destroying the infrastructure and war making capabilities of targeted nations, but it was not successful in breaking the morale of the people so that they demanded peace from their leaders on terms favorable to their enemy.

The truth is that the bombing strengthened their resolve and made them more determined to fight on. It gave the enemy leaders the opportunity to point to the destruction and say this is peace to your enemies. Now we seem to be engaged in doing both. We impose economic sanctions where bombing is not yet appropriate, or where the target nation is nuclear capable, and physical bombing where it is not.

Russia was sanctioned economically because it invaded Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. My purpose here is not to defend Russian actions, but to argue that economic sanctions often make peace impossible to achieve. The Russian economy has been effectively bottled up by restrictions on its ability to sell petroleum on the world market, a product on which its cash flow depends. Russia went from being a cash flush country before the sanctions to essentially financially cashless after the sanctions. In addition, many individual Russians were sanctioned including many Russian oligarchs. To my knowledge, however, Vladimir Putin, who reportedly has about 40 billion dollars stashed offshore, has not been sanctioned. When you control the world’s financial system, including how money moves across the world, you can freeze assets, and cut off access to offshore accounts, etc. When you are emperor of the world, you can also pressure your allies to cease doing business with the sanctioned country or suffer the consequences.

Conflict with Russia and China has continued, at least economically, since the end of World War ll in 1945 when it was clear that the United States had emerged from the war as the most dominant power in world history. Only three American aircraft carriers made up the Pacific fleet after Pearl Harbor, but by the end of the war America had about 150 aircraft carriers. War in Korea brought the carrier back to center stage and America busied itself with building the 12 super carrier fleet of today. Russia and China tried to compete for awhile but it soon became clear they could not, so they instead built much cheaper missiles, which they hoped could be used to defeat the carriers.

Due to the advanced missile systems developed by Russia, it is probably not completely accurate to say that Russia poses no threat to the United States, but it does not seem so threatening when compared to some of the things Washington is doing to threaten Russia, such as surrounding it with intermediate range nuclear missiles. There are a few nations out there who are still friends with Russia, including Turkey and Iran. Turkey is a NATO member, which was kind of handy during the Cold War, but a royal pain right now. Turkey bought the S400 anti-aircraft missile defense system from Russia, and that missile system was specifically designed to defeat American stealth technology.

Turkey, being a NATO member, was included in the F-35 Stealth Fighter program, but the Trump Administration recently canceled Turkey from the program for obvious reasons. Turkey calls our NATO membership into question because it is now adverse to America. It just might be a good time and a good excuse to consider getting out of NATO and charting our own course.

The Iranians have severe economic sanctions against them, which prevent them from selling their oil upon which their economy is 100% dependent. Sanctions placed on the Iranian banking system also prevent them from importing raw materials to manufacture products. China refuses to respect the sanctions and still buys Iranian oil thus the so called “tanker war” being carefully monitored in the Persian Gulf by an American carrier battle group. The Iranians always appear to be great friends with Russia and all other sanctioned states as well as with all international terrorist groups. Sanctions drive people no matter how diverse, together as allies against a common enemy.  Speaking of common enemies, the United States aids, and supplies the Saudi war against Iran in Yemen where perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of them children, have died from starvation and war. It’s kind of an anything that is anti-Iranian argument, but the result is most likely permanent enemies and permanent war.

Venezuela is another heavily sanctioned country apparently because Washington doesn’t like its duly elected leader, Nicholas Maduro.  I suppose that Washington will keep the sanctions in place until Maduro is replaced by someone of their own choosing or until all the Venezuelan people are dead from starvation and disease. It’s hard to tell whether the stupid socialism of Maduro or the stupid economic warfare of Washington is more to blame. The warfare does serve to make it more difficult to point to Venezuela and say, see that’s what socialism does to nations.

Cuba, of course, has been under sanctions since the Kennedy Administration in 1961. The Cuban people saw some little bit of relief under President Obama’s lifting, at least partially, some of the sanctions; one of the few things he ever did that I agreed with. The neo-conservative, Washington warriors in the Trump administration wanted the sanctions re-imposed and so they were.   The continuation of sanctions after 59 years is a very stupid, counterproductive policy, and only serves to continue the tension and harm the Cuban people, and doesn’t help anyone.

There are some other mild economic sanctions against Latin American Countries such as Nicaragua, but the next most obvious one is in the Far East, and that country is North Korea economically sanctioned for obvious reasons. President Trump said recently that he communicates often with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by letter because he could not trust email or telephone calls not to be intercepted. That speaks volumes about the state of hacking and communications today doesn’t it. Even the President of the United States and the leader of a foreign nation have to use old fashioned paper. Well North Korean sanctions are severe but President Trump says the two nations are friendly and their differences will eventually be worked out so time will tell. Perhaps in North Korea the sanctions have actually helped.

Here in America the Democrats running for president all want to talk about gun violence by individual Americans, but not the state sponsored violence abroad. In fact, the government’s violence is non-partisan and all approved by congress, except for Tulsi Gabbard, that is. Tulsi is all in favor of talking about the government’s violence, but we are told that she is “not credible”, so I guess that’s it for her. She is currently serving her two week annual active duty in the Hawaii National guard. I understand that her unit is in Indonesia or Malaysia so I hope it goes well for her there. I’m sure the elite in the Democrat party don’t want a populist uprising ala Donald Trump in their own party so Tulsi and her views will not be heard. Since they have complete control of the media they can all decide that we will not hear her.

Meanwhile the economic warfare continues, but only China seems to be in the news right now. China continues its efforts on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that we talked about last week despite the trade war and the currency war. Why would China be a military threat to the United States anyway? Why would a nation totally dependent on exports to one country threaten that country’s existence? No, it’s the BRI that threatens, not the Chinese military. Sanctions have a way of driving people together as I said, and now China is forming trade alliances across Eurasia and Africa.

Economic sanctions, as well as tariffs, are essentially the weaponization of commerce. Something that is inherently as peaceful as international commerce is made into a weapon, and all in power and all who seek power seem to want it. We are not allowed to consider anyone who does not want it. The American people watch all this but they don’t seem to care. Perhaps they just don’t understand it, but more likely they are victims of propaganda similar to the German people, and also victims of a middle class assassinated by decades of politicians so they have to worry more about feeding their families than foreign policy.

These interventions whether economic, military, or both, are usually couched in humanitarian terms. We have to save the people, especially the children, but they are actually one group’s or one person’s grasp for more power. There is a false narrative presented to justify the intervention and people die for the lies, often thousands of people. No one seems to care or at least care enough to say stop. We can’t even agree that these disasters are no longer affordable if they ever were. We will someday be forced by economics to do what we should be doing now, which is mind our own business.

The bottom line is the debt that is on paper exceeds 22 trillion dollars cannot and will not ever be paid. During the Reagan buildup when he was trying to swamp the Soviet Union with military hard ware purchases and development of weapons, Congress argued over 400 billion but now our military spending is over 800 billion and no one bats an eye. If you count the expenditures for the security state the spending is over a trillion. We have accepted trillion dollar plus deficits for the foreseeable future.

Finally folks, what is correct or what should we do? End all sanctions; open up trade, unleash productivity and prosperity and stop apologizing for it because it’s the one chance we have to move toward some level of peace, liberty, and understanding. The Democrat candidates should be screaming about it but instead they compete to decide who can steal the most of our labor to buy the most votes.

At least that’s the way I see it,

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle,

Thanks for listening.