Sanctions are often ineffective, but this kind is worth keeping – DNyuz

Pascale Solages, an anti-corruption activist from Haiti, burst into tears of joy last month when she learned that the U.S. Treasury Department had finally imposed sanctions on Michel Martelly, a former president of Haiti accused of drug trafficking, money laundering and stirring up gang violence in Port-au-Prince. It was a sign that the U.S. government, which once supported Mr. Martelly, was actually listening to the Haitian people. And it raised her hopes that Mr. Martelly, who lives in Miami, would finally lose his political influence and be brought to justice.

“It’s a very important step,” she told me.

Her words struck me because I’ve been critical of the proliferation of U.S. sanctions in recent years, reading investigative articles about their collateral damage in one sitting. The more I read, the more convinced I became that crippling sanctions against entire countries—as in the cases of Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela—are counterproductive. They create widespread misery, but they strengthen the grip of autocrats on power by bankrupting independent businesses that could have served as a counterbalance. Those who survive become dependent on the regime or on criminal networks that can help them circumvent U.S. law.

Sanctions also backfire by pushing adversaries like Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela further into the arms of Russia and China, cementing what’s been called an “axis of the sanctioned.” Don’t take my word for it. Read the analysis The Washington Post published this summer on how even senior U.S. officials fear that sanctions, which have become a tool of first resort, are being overused. Or read the letter that hundreds of legal scholars from around the world wrote to President Biden last month describing sanctions on Iran, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea as “collective punishment.”

But asset freezes and visa bans for individuals — like the former president of Haiti — can be a different story. Targeted sanctions like these are often the only way kleptocrats and human rights abusers are ever held accountable. While the sanctions may not change behavior, they send a strong message and create a stigma that can warn others. They cause less collateral damage and provide more opportunities to cut deals that could change the status quo. Once imposed, they give the United States a valuable bargaining chip, such as a promise to unfreeze assets if the offender releases political prisoners or steps down.

Thomas J. Biersteker, who advises the United Nations and several governments on designing effective targeted sanctions, told me that targeted sanctions on individuals “offer more choices and opportunities” than blanket sanctions on entire countries. He thinks governments should be more strategic about how they are used, and that governments should experiment more often with rolling them back to see if that changes behavior. “That’s why I say sanctions are overused but underused,” he said.

They are not perfect. Questions of due process — how much evidence of bad behavior should be needed to sanction someone, and whether their spouses or children are fair game — remain unresolved.

Still, in countries eager to stay on Washington’s good side, targeting a single bad guy with sanctions can yield quick results. In 2019, sanctions against a corrupt Latvian oligarch led the Latvian government to strip him of control of a port he ran. In 2022, U.S. sanctions against a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian judge helped trigger some long-awaited judicial reforms.

And last year, targeted sanctions in Guatemala helped save the country’s democratically elected president, Bernardo Arévalo — an anti-corruption crusader — from a coup by the kleptocratic elite. Just as powerful forces seemed poised to prevent Mr. Arévalo from taking power, two things saved the country’s democracy. The first was an unexpectedly powerful protest movement sparked by indigenous leaders and youth in Guatemala. The second was the Biden-Harris administration, which revoked nearly 300 U.S. visas for members of Guatemala’s elite and imposed sanctions on Miguel Martínez, a close associate of the incumbent president, Alejandro Giammattei, for corruption and “interference in the country’s democratic transition of power.”

A month later, Mr. Arévalo was sworn in. “The Biden administration and Kamala Harris have been very important for democracy in Guatemala,” Andrea Reyes, a Guatemalan lawmaker from the Seed Movement party, told me.

Of course, such victories are fragile and most elusive in countries that don’t mind antagonizing Washington. In Venezuela, the Western Hemisphere’s bleeding wound, the Biden administration eased oil sanctions in exchange for free and fair elections. But President Nicolás Maduro has refused to give up power since a presidential election in July, in which he was almost certain to be defeated. Instead, he has dug in and cracked down hard on protesters and political rivals. Edmundo González, a former diplomat widely believed to have won the election, fled the country to Spain. María Corina Machado, the opposition leader, has gone into hiding.

The United States cannot just sit back and do nothing. It has little choice but to continue adding people to the list of sanctioned Venezuelans. Even if they do not remove Maduro from power, the sanctions are a way to get some justice for the people of Venezuela.

According to Ewald Scharfenberg, a Venezuelan investigative journalist, Maduro and his wife have already been hit by sanctions, but there are still a lot of businessmen with ties to the regime. Among them are 232 current and former military officers who live in Florida or have businesses there.

“It’s almost a joke,” he told me.

His reporting shows that one of the most notorious members of the Maduro regime, Alexander Enrique Granko Arteaga, who has been accused of torture by the European Union, manages to maintain a financial foothold in Florida through a network of companies owned by his relatives and allies, despite being personally hit by US sanctions in 2019.

He argues that targeting businessmen with ties to Mr. Maduro in Florida could weaken support for the regime. “They want to enjoy their wealth, not in Havana or Belarus, but in London or Paris or Miami — especially Miami, the dream of every Venezuelan,” Mr. Scharfenberg said.

It may be that the biggest benefit of such sanctions is that they boost the morale of activists on the ground who risk their lives looking for signs that the dictatorship can one day be defeated. Adam Keith, director of accountability at Human Rights First, which works with human rights defenders around the world, told me: “Hearing an outside voice as powerful as the US government means something to them.”

For Ms. Solages, it means vindication. She has spent the past six years fighting corruption and impunity in Haiti through her organization Nou Pap Dòmi — and trying to get U.S. officials to acknowledge and address the former president’s involvement in drug trafficking and gangs. She has been forced to flee her country and friends have been killed in the fight for justice and better governance in Haiti.

Sanctions alone are not enough, she said. “We want them to go to jail,” she told me. “We want to confiscate what they stole from the country.” But sanctions at least serve as a kind of promise that the Haitians’ struggle will not be in vain.

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