Ask Prof Wolff: The True Cost of Sanctions

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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 if conversations like these strike you as something that ought to be part of the national conversation please work with us share this video with people you know who might be interested and if you're interested in the work we do in general this kind of video among them please go to our website democracy at work dot info where you can be added to our mailing list you'll receive notification of the work we do we will not inundate you with emails and of course if you can help with the financial support we need to do these things that will be appreciated as well thank you
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Channel: Democracy At Work
Views: 78,832
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Richard Wolff, democracy, work, labor, economy, economics, inequality, justice, capitalism, capital, income, wages, poverty, yt:cc=on, wealth, Marxism, sanctions, Ukraine, Russia, Russia/Ukraine war, Putin, Cuba, Iran
Id: yMpxJMx-Q3Q
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Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)
Published: Fri Apr 28 2023
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