(Tomado del perfil de
Carlos Alzugaray
)
Algunos amigos que tengo en Facebook, sobre todo si viven en Estados Unidos, y más específicamente en Miami, tienden a llamarle embargo a las medidas coercitivas unilaterales que Washington lleva más de 60 años aplicándole a Cuba. Le debo la frase «medidas coercitivas unilaterales» al diplomático cubano Jairo Rodriguez, quien ha representado a Cuba en el Consejo de Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas en Ginebra. Jairo me ha explicado que ese es el término usual en organismos internacionales al tipo de sanciones que Estados Unidos le tiene impuesto a Cuba. Sanciones es sólo legítimo si se aprueba por el Consejo de Seguridad o la Asamblea General o cualquier otra instancia de la ONU: Aunque mismos no lo dicen o lo reconocen abiertamente, tienden a justificar su mantenimiento y ahora le recomienden a Biden y a los demócratas que no las levanten si Cuba no hace concesiones. Esto no sólo desdice de la posición que adoptó el Presidente Barack Obama, quien llamó varias veces al Congreso a levantar el bloqueo incondicionalmente, sino que tiende a evadir la cuestión de que se trata de sanciones no sólo ilegales sino inmorales porque a quién dañan es al pueblo. Muchos alegan que la palabra bloqueo es un término producto de la propaganda del gobierno cubano.
A esos amigos les recomiendo que lean este artículo de opinión de Peter Beinart en el New York Times de hoy, titulado «La otra guerra eterna de Estados Unidos» (America’s Other Forever War). Beinart alega que las medidas coercitivas unilaterales que Estados Unidos le imponer a una serie de países, entre ellos Cuba, no son otra cosa que una guerra pues son acciones de asedio de una plaza sitiada para rendirla por hambre. Aunque Beinart cae en algunos estereotipos sobre algunos gobiernos de países a los que Washington le aplica estas medidas, no se deja engañar ni por un minuto.
Algunas citas en español:
«Durante décadas, los Estados Unidos han complementado sus ataques con cohetes y sus raids de operaciones especiales con un instrumento de coerción y muerte menos visible. EUA bloquea a adversarios más débiles, asfixiando su comercio con el resto del undo. Es el equivalente moderno de rodear a una ciudad y tratar de hambrearla hasta la sumisión. Los especialistas le llaman a esto ‘sanciones secundarias’. Un término más preciso es ‘asedio’.”
Esa política que se estrenó en Irak causando terribles sufrimientos al pueblo de ese país hasta que Estados Unidos lo invadió en el 2003, para causarle aún mayores, como denunció en su momento el coordinador de las sanciones contra Irak, Denis Halliday, ha sido usada contra un grupo selecto de adversarios, Irán, Venezuela, Corea del Norte, Cuba y Siria, «donde se han iniciado o intensificado asedios que contribuyen al mismo tipo de miseria experimentado por Irak.»
«Las justificaciones varían: proliferación nuclear, terrorismo, violaciones de los derechos humanos. El método, sin embargo, es similar: sanciones secundarias. Estados Unidos no sólo embarga o pone en una lista negra a individuos, negocios, instituciones gubernamentales o sectores completos de la economía de un adversario, lo cual puede ser suficientemente dañino. Le dice a bancos y corporaciones extranjeras que hagan lo mismo o si no se les prohibirá hacer negocios con los Estados Unidos.»
Como señala Beinart, en teoría estas sanciones exceptúan ventas humanitarias pero en la práctica decenas de bancos y negocios prefieren no venderle a estos países productos «autorizados» porque el proceso es complicado y las decisiones norteamericanas son inapelables. Las multas pueden ser gigantescas como la de 9 mil millones de dólares impuestas al banco francés Paribas en el 2014.
No quiero seguir citando excepto por un párrafo que incluyo más abajo, pero recomiendo que todo el que tenga que ver con el debate del bloqueo norteamericano contra Cuba, se lo lea. Esto no es «propaganda comunista». Lo escribe alguien cuyas credenciales patrióticas son difíciles de ignorar.
Les facilito a mis amigos el texto completo del artículo que de Beinart. Puede ser que a alguno de mis amigos les cause molestia uno de los párrafos por sus virulentos ataques a estos gobierno, pero el resto de la columna tiene argumentos muy sólidos. Aquí una apreciación que resulta clave:
«Why are policies that have proved so ineffective and immoral so hard to undo? Because abandoning them would require admitting hard truths: North Korea will not abandon its nuclear weapons. Iran will remain a regional power. Mr. Assad, Mr. Maduro and the Communist government in Havana aren’t going anywhere. America’s leaders would rather punish already brutalized populations than concede the limits of American power.»
«¿Por qué políticas que se han comprobado son tan inefectivas e inmorales son tan difíciles de abandonar? Porque abandonarlas requeriría admitir duras verdades: Corea del Norte no abandonará su programa nuclear. Irán seguirá siendo una potencia regional. El Señor Assad, el Señor Maduro y el gobierno comunista en La Habana no se están yendo a ningún lugar. Los dirigentes norteamericanos prefieren castigar a poblaciones ya brutalizadas antes de admitir los límites del poderío norteamericano.»
Beinart probablemente se equivoca en sus calificativos a estos gobiernos pero no se equivoca en definir estas políticas como bloqueos, formas de guerra que se han mantenido a través de los años (59 en el caso de Cuba), asedios de poblaciones sitiadas, inmorales, ilegítimas y, para su forma de ver las cosas, inefectivas.
America’s Other Forever War
The United States doesn’t just bomb its enemies. It chokes them.
The New York Times
Feb. 15, 2021
By Peter Beinart
Mr. Beinart is a contributing Opinion writer who focuses on American foreign policy and politics.
“It is past time,” Joe Biden pledged last year, “to end the forever wars.” He’s right. But his definition of war is too narrow.
For decades, the United States has supplemented its missile strikes and Special Operations raids with a less visible instrument of coercion and death. America blockades weaker adversaries, choking off their trade with the outside world. It’s the modern equivalent of surrounding a city and trying to starve it into submission. Wonks call this weapon “secondary sanctions.” The more accurate term would be “siege.”
America launched its first post-Cold War siege in 1990, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. For the next 13 years, Iraq — which before the war had imported roughly 70 percent of its food and medicine — needed United Nations approval to legally import anything. Claiming that everything from water tankers to dental equipment to antibiotics might have military use, Washington used its muscle at the U.N. to radically restrict what Iraq could buy. In her book, “Invisible War,” the Loyola University professor Joy Gordon notes that between 1996 and 2003, Iraq legally imported only $204 per person in goods per year — half of the per capita income of Haiti. After resigning to protest sanctions in 1998, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, warned, “We are in the process of destroying an entire society.”
The U.N. ended its blockade of Iraq when the United States invaded in 2003. Since then, Washington has often claimed to employ “targeted” sanctions, which restrict arms sales or penalize only specific officials or companies, not entire populations. And in some instances, the sanctions are indeed targeted. But in the case of a few select foes — Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba and Syria — the United States has initiated or intensified sieges that contribute to the same kind of misery experienced in Iraq.
The justifications for these sieges vary: nuclear proliferation, terrorism, violations of human rights. The method, however, is similar: “secondary sanctions.” The United States doesn’t just blacklist individuals, businesses, government institutions or even entire sectors of an adversary’s economy, which can be damaging enough. It tells foreign banks and corporations to do so as well — or else be barred from doing business with the United States.
The penalties for violating America’s secondary sanctions can be stunningly harsh. After charging the French bank BNP Paribas with flouting American sanctions laws, prosecutors in 2014 forced the bank to pay almost $9 billion in fines.
In theory, these sanctions — like the embargo against Iraq in the 1990s — contain exemptions for humanitarian goods. But, in practice, as Human Rights Watch has detailed, the exemptions are often murky and cumbersome. To avoid running afoul of American law, many foreign banks and businesses cease trading with besieged countries altogether.
In 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported that one of Syria’s largest public hospitals was struggling to buy spare parts for its MRI machines and CT scanners because, as a U.N. report concluded, “private companies are unwilling to jump the hurdles necessary to ensure they can transact with Syria without being accused of inadvertently violating” American and other sanctions. Last spring, as the coronavirus raged out of control in Iran, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut warned that sanctions were “making it very hard, if not impossible, for medical supplies to reach” that country as well. In 2019, a California-based charity complained that it could not send wheelchairs, crutches or canes to North Korea.
Again and again, human rights groups like Amnesty International and humanitarian organizations like UNICEF have denounced America’s blockades. In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the United States’ embargo against Cuba by a vote of 187 to 3. In Washington, however, these sieges are cause less for shame than for self-congratulation since they signal America’s opposition to oppressive governments.
The problem with this moral logic is that besieging an oppressive regime usually harms not the oppressor but the oppressed. In a 2019 study, the economists Antonis Adam and Sofia Tsarsitalidou found that when the United States sanctions an autocratic government, civil liberties get worse. A 2020 article in the Journal of Development Studies found that both American and United Nations sanctions lead to lower life expectancy. As the political scientists Dursun Peksen and Cooper Drury have explained, dictators respond to embargoes by hoarding scarce resources, and using them to reward their cronies and starve their opponents, thus further entrenching their power. “They think they are hurting President Maduro,” a Venezuelan woman whose child couldn’t get epilepsy medicine told the German media outlet Deutsche Welle in 2019, “and they’re really hurting the people.”
America’s sieges might be more defensible — or at least briefer — if they stood a reasonable chance of success. The sanctions on Iran that the United States and the U.N. imposed during Barack Obama’s presidency harmed ordinary Iranians. But their intent was to convince Iran’s government to compromise on its nuclear program, not utterly capitulate, or give up power. And, arguably, they helped achieve that relatively modest goal.
By contrast, none of America’s current sieges are married to remotely realistic objectives. Despite America’s efforts to oust them, Mr. Maduro and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria are more firmly in control today than when the United States imposed its harshest sanctions. After more than a decade of escalating punishments aimed at pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, that nation possesses as many as 60 of them. Iran is closer to the bomb than it was when the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign began, and just as influential across the Middle East.
Despite this, America’s other forever war retains substantial bipartisan support. That’s especially true in Congress, where politicians who have lost their appetite for deploying troops see an apparently cost-free way to signal their opposition to repressive and adversarial governments — and don’t care if the real costs are borne by the suffering people they claim to support.
To its credit, the Biden administration is reviewing whether sanctions are “unduly hindering responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.” But the agony caused by America’s sieges didn’t begin when the virus hit, and won’t end when it passes.
Mr. Biden wants to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, which would entail lifting nuclear sanctions on Tehran. However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has promised that America’s numerous non-nuclear sanctions will remain. He has called the 2019 law that threatens foreign companies doing business in Syria with secondary sanctions a “very important tool.” He’s proposed that the United States “more effectively target” sanctions on Venezuela, yet suggested that America’s siege of North Korea — which has forced multiple international charities to leave the country — isn’t tough enough.
Why are policies that have proved so ineffective and immoral so hard to undo? Because abandoning them would require admitting hard truths: North Korea will not abandon its nuclear weapons. Iran will remain a regional power. Mr. Assad, Mr. Maduro and the Communist government in Havana aren’t going anywhere. America’s leaders would rather punish already brutalized populations than concede the limits of American power.
But by deluding themselves about the extent of America’s might, they are depleting it. A key source of America’s power is the dollar, which serves as the reserve currency for much of the globe. It’s because so many foreign banks and businesses conduct their international transactions in dollars that America’s secondary sanctions scare them so much. But the more Washington wields the dollar to bully non-Americans into participating in our sieges, the greater their incentive to find an alternative to the dollar. The search for a substitute is already accelerating. And the fewer dollars non-Americans want, the harder Americans will find it to keep living beyond their means.
Ideally, America would stop besieging weaker nations because it hurts them. Unfortunately, we’re unlikely to stop until it hurts us.
Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is professor of journalism and political science at The Newmark School of Journalism at The City University of New York. He is also Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.
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