No matter how ineffective sanctions are at toppling so-called “rogue nations”, American lawmakers continue to pursue them enthusiastically. They’re doing so in the case of Russia for its military actions in Ukraine. But this time these sanctions will not only fail to deter Russia but also potentially embolden it and turn its original mission of neutralizing and demilitarizing Ukraine into a mission of fully annexing the country.
We already have the case of Imperial Japan continuing its expansionist agenda in the lead-up to World War II despite the US’s best efforts to economically sanction and diplomatically isolate it.
Few legislators in the US get this. Some of the few who understand the true nature of sanctions are Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and his state compatriot Congressman Thomas Massie.
According to a report by Jack Hunter at Based Politics, Paul is holding up a sanctions package in the Senate. Hunter noted that Paul is doing so because “the current language is vague enough that it could give presidents virtually unlimited sanctioning power.” This is the same reason why Massie opposed this bill.
In Paul’s view, granting the executive branch too much unilateral power is a “terrible idea.”
“Many on the other side had arguments with the previous president and they worried about him having unlimited power,” Paul declared on the Senate floor on March 24, 2022. “So they want to give unlimited power to their president because they like him better.
“Well guess what,” the senator added. “I’m an equal opportunity, ecumencial kind of guy that says no president should have vast power.”
Paul is concerned about the bill’s broad language and how Biden or future presidents could unilaterally impose sanctions on countries unilaterally. The Kentucky senator proposed an amendment to put more limited language in the bill.
The House version of the bill featured the same problems. Massie stated:
Paul wants the House-passed measure amended to limit what he believes is a wide authorization for executive-branch sanctions under the Magnitsky Act passed in 2016 to punish nations for human-rights abuses. The legislation is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian attorney and tax auditor who exposed corruption in his government and was imprisoned for it before dying in 2009 under suspicious circumstances.
Paul believes that a president’s power to declare what constitutes a human rights violation is too broad in scope.
“If you don’t define what human-rights abuses are, you set up something so wide open that you could have abuse of a president who’s allowed to sanction anyone in the world for anything they feel like,” the senator said to Politico on March 24.
Overall, Paul is correct to point out the dangers of giving the Executive Branch so much power. However, sanction opposition needs a much more principled grounding. First off, they do nothing to topple authoritarian regimes. In fact, sanctions strengthen the authoritarian regime’s popularity among the populace through the rally “round the flag” effect.
Moreover, sanctions make the targeted countries gravitate towards other stronger “rogue” actors like Russia and China to form new geopolitical and geoeconomic axes. This will hasten the US’s demise as the premier superpower.
If we’re being brutally honest, there’s few politicians who get this cold, hard truth about international relations these days.
