Why US sanctions aren't hitting Putin or Xi – but us

The US President at the time already recommended it 1910 economic warfare as the ultimate: "One nation, which is widely boycotted, has no choice, than to give up. Thanks to this economic, peaceful, mute, but despite deadly medicine, the use of armed forces is no longer necessary.”

The belief in the omnipotence of economic sanctions persists to this day. As US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin 2019 was asked, what the US will do against a Turkey, who killed the Kurdish minority in Syria, he answered: „We can shut down the Turkish economy.“

That's what Trump thought. That's how Biden thinks. Economics Minister Robert Habeck thinks the same way, who is in Washington today. But they are all united in error. the fact is:

resist nations.
That's what Trump thought. That's how Biden thinks. Economics Minister Robert Habeck thinks the same way, who is in Washington today. But they are all united in error. the fact is:

resist nations.
sanctions fail.

The outcasts forge alliances with each other.
Because, Iran, Russia, China: US sanctions largely unsuccessful

Example Cuba: To date, the Caribbean state has not been impressed by either military infiltration or economic sanctions. On the contrary: Castro offered his island to the Soviets as a launch pad for nuclear missiles. Former German Ambassador to Cuba, Bernd Wulffen, said recently: “Harsh language or even economic sanctions lead to this, that the bunker mentality will be cemented in Cuba.”

Example Iran: The Islamic Republic, which is hostile to the USA, has reorganized its supply chains and is now in the economic heyday of its time. Gross national product has doubled in just three years and according to an IMF projection of 2023 bis 2027 increase by another twenty percent. According to all Western experts, the construction of their own atomic bomb is also nearing completion.
Example Russia: Within a very short time, Putin was able to adapt to circumventing the sanctions and importing new ones- and acquire export partners. The whole world is keen on Russian oil and gas. The world's largest democracy - India - takes the place of the small German democracy as a buyer of the fossil product range. For 2024 According to the current forecast of the International Monetary Fund, the Russian Federation expects economic growth of 2,1 percent, which is significantly higher than that of the Federal Republic 1,4 percent lies.
Example China: The US sanctions are the most important driver in the emergence of a Chinese domestic market. Its number of consumers exceeds the American domestic market by a factor of three. China has come under pressure from Western sanctions with Russia, If, Iran and Turkey formed a powerful economic alliance.
The US ignores inconvenient truth

Why this matters?

Because America absolutely does not want to acknowledge this uncomfortable truth - and is driving itself and its partners into a veritable frenzy of sanctions. Agathe Demarais, Director of the Economist Intelligence Unit in London, dem Analysis-Institute of Economist, has precisely recorded the increase in sanctions:

US President George W. Bush decreed 3484 sanctions against companies, individuals, Nations and organization in eight years
President Donald Trump brought between 2017 and 2020 around 3900 sanctions against the same group of people. That was four sanctions per working day.
With Joe Biden taking office, the pace has increased enormously. Today, the US operates out of the Treasury 70 different sanction programs, die 9000 nations, individuals, affect states and organizations. Agathe Demarais speaks of "Sanction Overkill" in her book "Backfire".

Sanctions do not work on opponents, but with friendly nations

Why this is particularly dangerous for German and European companies?

Because the US discovered, that sanctions do not work on opponents, but are all the more effective in the camp of their own friends and business partners. They are used to end their hitherto successful economic relationships - e.g. B. to Cuba, Iran, Russia and China - forced and pushed to the side of the Americans.

A sanctions monopoly is created, that pushes market forces aside. In the absence of alternatives, Germans buy, French and other NATO countries now in the US, necessarily also expensive liquid gas.
With the threat, the sanctions breaker will be excluded from the US market, turns political friends into willing trading partners. And if the friend is not willing, this is how you use fiscal force, as researched by Agathe Demarais:

Von 2009 until today, American companies only had to 300 Pay millions of dollars in penalties, meanwhile other states paid in total 4 billion.
A foreign company pays on average for violating the sanctions regime 139 million dollars, meanwhile, a US firm on average only 2 million and so 70 times less pays.

We summarize: Die, which it should actually meet, it doesn't. But political friends and partners are suffering, because their previous business is more expensive, complicated or made impossible.

Perhaps that is precisely the irony of modernity: The US economic sanctions are working – just differently than Woodrow Wilson thought.

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