Capital paralysis: The scope and impact of Washington-imposed sanctions on Venezuela in the context of international law

By Richard Balzano, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

Washington’s twenty-first century hostilities toward the Bolivarian government of Venezuela have manifested in policies of “democratic intervention” through subversive use of non-governmental organizations, attempts at diplomatic isolation, frequent posturing towards military intervention, and economic hostilities including the use of unilateral sanctions that have exacerbated ongoing economic challenges. Washington contends that the Bolivarian government is an authoritarian regime in a state of humanitarian crisis whose economy is run aground by corruption, economic mismanagement and “socialism,” but with Orwellian precision the impact of Washington’s economic hostilities and subversive efforts remain absent from the anti-Bolivarian narrative as it would delegitimize the ideological rationale for its continued aggression.[1] Sanction-induced deprivation (herein referred to as SID) is intended to generate anti-government energy among the populations of targeted states to leverage the target to alter a behavior in compliance with the sanctioning bodies’ demands,[2] yet often the outcomes of economic sanctions, if not their very premise, are in violation of human rights protections and international law.[3] Thoroughly defining economic sanctions within the context of human rights and international law, and examining Washington’s unilateral sanctions imposed on Venezuela in within this framework and mindful of ongoing economic challenges, demonstrates that Washington has crossed the threshold of international law and human rights protections as outlined by the United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS) and more, challenging Washington’s humanitarian high-road on which its ideological justifications for continued aggressions are sustained. 

Economic sanctions defined in the context of human rights and international law 

The origins of sanctions are rooted in premodern siege tactics whereby aggressors surrounded cities to deprive inhabitants to the point of submission, if not starvation,[4] and in nineteenth century blockades “mounted by powerful European states against smaller nations in Europe and emerging nations in Latin America.”[5] Legitimized under article 16 of the League of Nations’ Covenant and expanded under the UN’s original Charter in Articles 2(4), 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, and the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution, the primary function of sanctions remained a strategic military endeavor through the Second World War, but sanctioning extended to the economic and diplomatic landscape as a mechanism for geopolitical behavior modification in the postwar era. The UN Commission on Human Rights identifies sanctions as being both financial and non-financial, the former including trade restrictions and monetary constraints, and the latter including diplomatic measures (visa revocation), travel prohibitions, cultural restrictions (abstaining from events), and military measures (embargoes and the withdrawal of training or assistance).[6] Dursun Peksen highlights the core of modern sanctions as the application of “economic and diplomatic pressure on target countries to induce the target political leadership to comply with sender countries’ demands,”[7] while Jill Jermono of the Department of Treasury provides a comprehensive explanation of sanctions: 

Susan Hannah Allen further expands the operational dynamics of sanctions herein: 

Within the institutional and scholarly framework provided, the mechanism for change in targeted states are populations engaging in antigovernment activity, and the motivational element to induce antigovernment activity is SID.[10]

The undesirable behaviors warranting the use of sanctions include peacekeeping and humanitarian initiatives “ranging from preventing bloodshed between ethnic groups to punishing countries harboring terrorists, restoring democratic regimes, or ending the use of repression by the government,”[11] and critical observers may consider the coercive nature in which these labels have been manipulated in rationalizing intervention. If applied with integrity, however, few legal barriers existed to prevent states from issuing sanctions, as Article 2(4) of the UN Charter “imposes no constraint on individual states undertaking coercive measures short of war.”[12] Lance Davis and Stanley Engerman outline the expanding motivations for the application of sanctions herein:

In line with these closing remarks, within the increasing application of sanctions emerged a key characteristic that exposes an imperialistic dynamic: smaller states tended to be targeted by larger Western states. This asymmetrical pattern is not universal as smaller states may and have unilaterally sanctioned states of similar proportion, but states with smaller or less dynamic economies are limited in their capacity to sanction states with larger economies by use of sanctions.[14] In consideration of sanctions’ origins in the premodern siege, the surrounding force cannot starve a city if it has less food than lies within the city walls.  Davis and Engerman explore this dynamic in detail:

In a postwar context provided, the relative effectiveness of sanctions is asymmetrical and lends to Western hegemony, as is demonstrated by their applications over time.

The UN modestly applied sanctions on five occasions prior to 1990, but in the latter half of the twentieth century Washington initiated the expansion of sanctions unilaterally, through a “significant role” in UN applications, or by way of coalitions. Davis and Engerman observe that over 145 sanctions were issued between 1950 and 2000, that between 1960 and 1990 “the majority of sanctions were imposed unilaterally, most frequently by the United States,” and that “trade sanctions were imposed in 117 cases between 1970 and 1998, with the United States primarily responsible or ‘part of the sanctions coalition’ in over two-thirds of them.”[16] Washington’s economic hegemony (and to a lesser extent the larger European Union states) incentivized its use of sanctions, and their application transformed into a preferred geopolitical mechanism for exerting Western authority.[17] As the UN began issuing sanctions more frequently in concert with the US, the final years of the twentieth century became known as “the sanctions decade.”[18]

The effectiveness of sanctions has been contested, though scholars have observed both their ineffectiveness in promoting change and their tendency to create adverse humanitarian outcomes. Though a case can be made that the use of sanctions provides a non-violent alternative to military intervention,[19] this argument only has merit if the motivations and desired outcomes are honorable and beneficial for targeted states, and it disregards the prospect that the outcomes of SID may result in human suffering through passive means nonetheless comparable to the use of physical violence. Robert A. Pape contends that “there is little empirical evidence that sanctions can achieve ambitious foreign policy goals;” convincingly challenging Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott’s influential “Economic Sanctions Reconsidered” (1985) and scaling back their assertions of the successful implementation of sanctions in the twentieth century from forty to five, Pape contends that economic sanctions come with “significant human costs,” and that hostile rhetoric has the capacity to induce military intervention if and when sanctions are unsuccessful, suggestinging that “overreliance on sanctions may contribute to [unnecessary wars].”[20] Peksen argues that “economic sanctions ...may cause disproportionate stress on ordinary citizens,” and that “[e]xtensive sanctions, including comprehensive trade and financial restrictions, appear to be ...detrimental to human rights,” concluding “economic coercion remains a counterproductive policy tool, even when sanctions are specifically imposed with the goal of improving human rights conditions.”[21] Use of SID to promote change has limited appropriate applicational space, as compliance with the requests of sanctioning bodies is more likely when the targeted state is democratic and its population has the capacity to effectively generate change through productive antigovernment activity, but less likely in repressive autocratic states in which the population is incapable of altering policy, thus reducing the scope of the successful application of sanctions to target states in which state-imposed humanitarian crisis is not present or where unwarranted international aggression is less likely.[22] This would suggest a reduction in much of the legitimate criteria under which sanctions are warranted, prompting the issuing body to employ manipulative and at times hyperbolic justification to issue sanctions, or otherwise do so in defiance of emerging legislation outlined below. While Davis and Engerman argue that economic sanctions are most likelyto succeed, they nonetheless conclude that “sanctions have not proven very effective as a tool to secure foreign policy goals.”[23]

Legal protections began to emerge in the latter third of the twentieth century in response to the growing use of sanctions, and at present utilizing SID as a coercive mechanism for change violates multiple pieces of international legislation.[24] The UN’s long ignored 1970 Declaration on the Principles of International Law’s “Duty Not to Intervene in Matters Within the Domestic Jurisdiction of Any State” dictates: 

Within the framework of this legislation, use of sanctions requires the target be in violation of human rights, and as such the applications of “democracy promotion” and “dictatorship” are often manipulated to initiate sanctions; this pattern is ever present with Washington’s sanctions on Venezuela, which have been initiated by Executive Order (EO) since 2015 through invocation of the 1976 National Emergency Act (HR3884),[26] which sets no criteria for determining a national emergency and as such remains susceptible to manipulation and hyperbole.[27] Despite increased UN sanctioning activities in the 1990s, several measures to preserve human rights and restrict coercive practices were adopted through Resolutions in the General Assembly, Human Rights Council (HRC), and Commission on Human Rights, while the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 called upon states to abide by international law regarding coercive practices. The Resolutions went ignored in the coming decades, notably by the US, and in September 2014 the HRC’s “Resolution 27/21 Human rights and unilateral coercive measures” reaffirmed the illegalities of coercive practices, highlighted the human toll of coercive practices on human rights and condemned their continued use in defiance of past Resolutions, and created the Office of the Special Rapporteur to examine reports of human rights violations. This was done without the supporting votes of the US and major Western powers.[28] Most recently, “Draft Resolution 40: The negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights” was adopted in response to Washington-imposed sanctions against Venezuela, but in maintaining consistency with its commitment to international cooperation, the US was not in attendance for the vote.[29]

Further legislation outside the scope of the UN challenges the use of coercive economic practices. Within Chapter IV of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Charter, Article 19 stipulates:

The OAS Charter’s Chapter IV, Article 20 confronts sanctions more directly, insisting that “[n]o State may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State and obtain from it advantages of any kind.”[31]

In consideration of SID, international regulations prohibiting collective punishment can be found in Article 50 of both the 1899 and 1907 Hague Regulations, which specifically address civilians, Article 26 (III) of the 1949 Geneva Convention which prohibits “[c]ollective disciplinary measures affecting food,” Articles 87 (III) and 33 (IV) of the 1949 Geneva Convention which prohibit collective punishment, along with Article 75(2)(d) of the 1977 Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I, Article 4(2)(b) of the 1977 Additional Protocol II, and Article 20(f)(ii) of the International Law Commission’s 1996 Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind.[32] While several of the aforementioned protections are intended for conflict scenarios, the applicability of these protections are relevant if and when the stated objective in imposing sanctions is regime change, when desired outcomes are aided by subversion, when the threat of military intervention is utilized by the sanctioning body, and when sanctions escalate to armed conflict initiated by the sanctioning body. In the case of Venezuela, the former three conditions are applicable at this time, while the latter is, according to US President Donald Trump,  “on the table.”[33] Despite the aforementioned protections, international law has proved an ineffective means of deterring sanctions,[34] perhaps due to the asymmetrical nature in which sanctions favor hegemony, leaving no mechanism for accountability of comparable stature.

Washington-imposed sanctions on Venezuela

While many credit the Obama administration for introducing sanctions on Venezuela with the creation of the 2014 Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act, the origins of US-imposed sanctions are traced to the W. Bush administration’s volatile relationship with the Bolivarian Republic.[35] As Hugo Chavez vocally denounced US imperialism, “[t]he Bush administration made no attempt to disguise its distaste for ...his personality, and his policies.”[36] The failed 2002 coup was credibly linked to Washington, and millions of US dollars were directed to NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy and the Office of Transition Initiatives to unite opposition groups and fund subversive initiatives under the policy of “democratic intervention.”[37] Cognizant of these ongoing efforts, in 2005 Chavez claimed that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents engaged in espionage and expelled them; in response, Washington asserted with no substantive supporting evidence and in contrast to DEA reporting that Venezuela had aided Colombian cocaine trafficking and “failed demonstrably ...to adhere to their obligations under the international narcotics agreements.” Under the 2000 Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, 22 individuals and 27 companies were branded “Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers” and sanctioned by the Treasury Department,[38] while democratic intervention practices intensified.[39] Peter H. Smith contends that “[o]ver the years, U.S. antidrug campaigns ...became linked to larger geopolitical goals,” and that in time “the drug control policy had become part and parcel of the antiterrorist campaign;”[40] in this context the W. Bush administration’s hostile rhetoric towards Venezulea expanded to include accusations of terrorism, under which further sanctions could be rationalized.[41] In 2006 and annually thereafter, the Secretary of State asserted that Venezuela fails to cooperate with anti-terrorism efforts in accordance with the Section 40A of the 1976 Arms Export Control Act; Washington discontinued arms sales to Venezulea in 2006 and disrupted military sales agreements between the Bolivarian government and Spain, Norway, and Brazil, and in 2008 the Treasury Department sanctioned two Venezuelan nationals and two travel agencies for reporedly supporing Hezbollah under the auspices of EO 13224 (2001).[42] That Venezuela has been forced to purchase arms from other sources, especially Russia, has fueled Washington’s rhetoric in categorizing the Bolivarian government as rogue.[43] Although sanctions issued during the W. Bush administration did not meet the humanitarian or coercive elements prohibited by international law, the manipulation of criteria under which sanctions were issued set dangerous precedent for future administrations, while the use of subversion remains illegal under the UN Charter. 

The Obama administration oversaw the Venezuelan presidency transition to Nicolas Maduro. Tempering hostilities toward Venezuela in the public sphere at the onset, the Obama administration later applied sanctions using “exaggerated rhetoric” under the pretext that Venezuela presented an “extraordinary threat to national security” in 2015.[44] Targeted sanctions were issued in response to protests in 2014 led by opposition groups long fueled by US dollars, and as protests had become violent the conduct of both government and opposition were mutually called into question: opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez and other actors were arrested under accusations of inciting violence, while Washington condemned the actions of the Bolivarian government as repressive and undemocratic.[45] The Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014 was enacted in December of that year to authorize the use of sanctions outlined herein:

The Act was extended by Congress in 2016 and remains quite active at this time, and under its provisions President Obama issued EO 13692 which sanctioned targeted individuals that included the Finance Minister, thus obstructing or making foreign transactions difficult.[47] Similar to the previous administration, sanctions imposed by the Obama administration utilized questionable rationale, most notably in the absence of accountability for the opposition. In both cases the US-initiated sanctions did not generate SID, but the 2015 sanctions declared under a hyperbolic state of “national emergency” generated insecurity within the financial community,[48] and prompted the closure of two foreign-owned manufacturing facilities in Venezuela.[49]

The Trump administration initiated an unprecedented volume of sanctions on Venezuela with menacing rhetoric, manipulated logic, and unreasonable objectives. Washington expanded targeted sanctions within the framework of alleged narcotrafficking and terror activities in 2017 and 2018, placed restrictions on transactions with Venezuelan “Petro” currency on the grounds that it was created to evade sanctions under EO 13827 in March 2018, and prohibited the purchase of Venezuelan debt with stretched assertions of eliminating corruption under EO 13835 in May 2018.[50] Broader sanctions initiated through EO 13808 in August of 2017 were rationalized as “necessary in order to encourage the government of Venezuela to respect human rights,” yet were accompanied by threats of intervention from both Trump and within his circle;[51] these sanctions prohibited the Venezuelan government from borrowing within US markets and ostensibly imposed a “financial embargo” on an already recessed Venzeuelan economy challenged by balance-of-payment issues and in dire need of debt restructuring, while prohibiting PDVSA’s affiliate Citgo from returning its earnings to Venezuela.[52] In September of that year, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network put forth an “Advisory to Financial Institutions on Widespread Political Corruption in Venezuela,” which generated further borrowing limitations and account closures.[53] Though EO 13850 of November 2018 initially introduced targeted sanctions on the high-ground of challenging corruption with regard to the gold sector, Washington extended 13850 to encompass PDVSA’s assets while declaring support for Juan Guiado’s self-declaration as interim-president of Venezuela in January 2019. This was  followed by further extensions of 13850 in March and April that included multiple banking institutions and PDVSA’s transport capacity. Specifically, since 2017 the Trump administration has sanctioned 63 persons, one aircraft, and six institutions under EO 13692, while five persons and 33 institutions were sanctioned under the Kingpin Act, and seven persons, 30 institutions, one aircraft and 44 ships were sanctioned under EO 13850. On the whole, over 150 persons have been sanctioned since 2017,[54] and as of May 2019, the Treasury Department maintained sanctions on 112 individuals,[55] revoking the visas of 718 persons since recognizing Guaido, 107 of which were of diplomatic significance. The leverage of Washington’s hegemony is evidenced in the recognition of Juan Guaido as echoed by the OAS, the Inter-American Development Bank, eleven signatories of the Lima Group, and fifty-four countries, along with the European Parliament of the European Union’s issuance of a nonbinding resolution in March 2019 that called for additional sanctions.[56] Reports in May 2019 indicate Washington seeks to sanction CLAP, a community food distribution program designed to relieve inflation-related hunger, under corruption allegations.[57] While the Trump administration's rhetoric is reflective of the W. Bush administration’s tone, and while the sanctions issued by the Trump administration are consistent with both the W. Bush and Obama administrations’ hyperbolic claims of national security threats posed by Venezuela, the elevated objective of regime change has not been overtly present in collaboration with the use of sanctions, and the impact of sanctions have not been so broad as to induce poverty in prior administrations.

Ongoing economic hardships in Venezuela were exacerbated by sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. Prior to the 2017 sanctions, the Venezuelan economy was in a state of depression with inflation in excess of 750 percent, and the 2019 sanctions have contributed to an “astounding” 37.4 percent drop in GDP as of March 2019.[58] In historical perspective, the most devastating economic sanctions to date are observed in Iraq with a decline of about 48 percent GNP, “with a particularly heavy burden on the incomes and mortality of the poorer segment of the population,” while the only other cases in which sanctions impacted more than 10% of GNP include UN sanctions on Rhodesia between 1966 and 1979, and Nigerian sanctions on Biafra from 1979.[59] Washington boasts that $3.2 billion in Venezuelan assets have been frozen abroad,[60] including $1.2 billion in gold seized by the Bank of England and a Colombia-based agrochemical operation valued at over $250 million, but the total loss of assets is much higher when factoring Citgo, valued at over $5 billion, was granted to professed interim-government of Juan Guaido.[61] Gold transactions have declined and in some instances been terminated in response to international pressure, while oil production has declined to half of its 2018 monthly output, forcing Caracas to sell at discounted rates.[62] Oil production has further declined 36.4 percent between January and April 2019, and predicted to drop a “cataclysmic and unprecedented 67.2 percent” by year’s end if sanctions persist.[63] Venezuela has been sanctioned to a state of capital paralysis at present, and hyperinflation and reduced import capacity have created what many deem a humanitarian crisis. Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs outline these dynamics for the Center for Economic Policy Research:

Imports declined by 75 percent between 2013 and 2018, with observed shortages in food products and medicine, the latter experiencing 85 percent shortages of “essential” drugs like insulin and cardiovascular medications in 2018. General mortality rose 31% and nutritional deficits were noted in 22 percent of children between 2017 and 2018. Infrastructure has suffered, most notably with inconsistent electrical service as diesel is not available to import for generator backup, and in water purity and sanitation-based subfields.[65] Venezuela has experienced an exodus of persons seeking opportunities abroad. In breaking with prior administrations, the sanctions issued by the Trump administration have had broad social, economic, and humanitarian implications for the citizens of Venezuela.

Establishing SID in the context of international law

While a case can (and should) be made that sanctions are issued in concert with “democratic intervention” (subversion) and a collaborative Washington-media narrative to hyperbolize Venezuela’s economic state as a means to make intervention palatable to domestic and international observers, that is not the scope of this piece. Whether or not Washington-imposed sanctions cross the threshold of international law, however, can be established by determining if the hardships Venezuela continues to experience meet the criteria for SID, and herein contested debates are observed by both scholars and state actors as to the causes of Venezuela’s economic crisis. The initial application of sanctions and hostile rhetoric from Washington coincided with declining global oil prices and early signs of stagnation from the Venezulean petroeconomy during the Chavez administration, and Washington’s aggressions conveniently intensified in step with the economic decline of the Maduro government, providing Washington, Caracas, and the Venezuelan opposition with misleading narratives. While Washington cites corruption, authoritarianism, economic mismanagement, and “socialism” for Venezuela’s economic woes,[66] the Venezuelan opposition, mindful of the hand from which it is fed, echoes this narrative, contending that the Bolivarian government’s economic spiral preceded sanctions. The rhetorical alibi from Miraflores places blame primarily on US hostilities,[67] enhanced by Washington’s hostile rhetoric which feeds into the Bolivarian anti-imperial narrative. Neither camp is wholly correct, yet elements of truth exist within them. Assertions that Venezuela was already in crisis prior to the 2017 sanctions attempt to absolve Washington of culpability and place blame wholly on the Bolivarian government, but absent from this argument is the economic momentum of prior US hostilities, antigovernment activity sponsored by Washington through democratic intervention, and a private sector partial to regime change all prior to 2017.[68] In contrast, assertions that Venezuela’s economic crisis rests wholly on external forces avoids the Maduro government’s failure to address foreign-exchange challenges and restructure its debt prior to the issuance of sanctions, but absent here is that these options are no longer available nor have they been since 2017, calling the morality and coercive nature of sanctions into question.[69] Neo-extractivists will challenge the Bolivarian government for remaining dependent upon basic-commodity exports,[70] but George Ciccariello-Maher describes Venezuela’s lack of economic dynamism as a product of “centuries of perversion of development,”[71] and world-systems and dependency theorists alike may validate Bolivarian rhetoric in contending that commodity export vulnerabilities are remnants of neocolonialism that previous administrations opted not to address. The Chavez administration’s initiatives to increase dynamism were funded with oil revenues and fell short of fruition due to declining oil prices and domestic obstruction from the Washington-backed opposition.[72] Chasing the multidimensional origins of Venezuela’s economic crisis down the rabbit hole of history to determine if and the precise moment when Washington’s imposed sanctions generated SID may prove unnecessary, for if deprivation exists, regardless of the cause, and sanctions persist, they are thereby illegal. As the 2019 sanctions target the heart of the Venezuelan economy alongside frequent threats of intervention and the stated objective of regime change, Washington’s boastfully purports to knowledge of deprivation and seeks to enhance it, which is thereby a declaration of guilt. In light of this, Washington at present is in violation of international law, and if CLAP is targeted, another violation is irrefutable. 

Richard Balzano is a graduate student at Western New Mexico University.

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