We live in a world of sanctions, which is now introduced not only by the United Nations, but also stronger countries against weaker ones, if they consider that they violate the generally accepted, in their opinion, rules. The world has gone from penalties for violating the terms of contracts between business entities to prohibitions for countries in order to achieve their political goals.
What are the sanctions?
The United Nations, groups or individual states quite often try to change policies they do not like by introducing various restrictions. Sanctions are measures or a system of measures that are applied against a subject of international relations in order to induce him to change his political course. Basically, restrictive measures against states are economic in nature, they are divided into trade and financial.
Sanction Champion
Sanctions are measures that are usually introduced by strong states against weak ones, if they are not ready yet and do not want to resolve disputed issues by armed means. The USA, as one of the strongest states since the second half of the 20th century, more often than other countries uses this tool of coercion.
The longest sanctions are against Cuba. this happened when, in response to the revolution and nationalization of the property of American corporations in 1960, the United States imposed an economic blockade.
Any activity related to Cuba fell under the ban; American citizens were even forbidden to smoke Cuban cigars not only in the United States, but throughout the world. True, probably this is one of the few prohibitions that no one has seriously complied with. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly condemned the economic blockade of Cuba, while 187 countries voted for the resolution condemning the embargo, and 2-3 countries voted against.
US sanctions against Iran and North Korea were imposed for the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. In 2016, Iran entered into a "nuclear deal" - for abandoning the nuclear program, economic sanctions should have been relaxed and then lifted. Partial removal of trade restrictions led to a revival of the Iranian economy. However, in 2017, the United States introduced new bans against Iran, accusing the country of financing terrorism. For the United States, sanctions are an instrument of struggle for their dominant position in the world and a method of punishing the “rebellious”. The United Nations also introduced international restrictive measures against the DPRK. The country is, as the United States announced, under the toughest sanctions ever imposed against the state.
old story
The most famous sanctions were introduced by the United States in 1974 against the Soviet Union for obstructing emigration and violating human rights. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the US Trade Act prohibited the most favored nation treatment of trade, loans, investments, and government guarantees for non-market economies. Since that time, sanctions have been an instrument of the US fight for human rights to free movement.
Mostly sanctions were imposed due to restrictions and obstacles to the emigration of Jews to Israel. After the collapse of the USSR, the amendment was extended to most post-Soviet countries. Since 1994, the United States has imposed an automatically renewed moratorium on its actions. Now the amendment is valid for Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For the rest of the former Soviet republics, the Jackson-Vanik amendment was canceled, including for Russia in 2012. But the story did not end there, at the same time new sanctions were introduced under the Magnitsky Law.
Sanctions exchange
A sluggish exchange of sanctions, when in response to the Magnitsky Act passed by the United States and the introduction of personal restrictions against Russian citizens, Russia imposed mirror sanctions against Americans with the "Dima Yakovlev Law" (ended in 2014). And for the fourth year already, the United States, the European Union, international organizations and individual states have introduced sanctions packages related to the annexation of Crimea, the conflict in Ukraine, and interference in American elections. It all started with relatively harmless bans against Russian and Ukrainian individuals and companies involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Serious sanctions packages were introduced under US pressure further: a ban on cooperation with Russian defense, commodity companies and banks. A ban was also introduced on the supply of certain groups of goods, the transfer of new technologies and the restriction of access to the capital market.
Russia’s retaliatory sanctions included a ban on the import of certain types of agricultural raw materials, food, and light industry products from European Union countries that joined the US prohibitive measures.