Innocents and Responsibility: In Defense of Sanctions

Post World War II, the United States and its so called allies have utilized economic sanctions against various opponents. In some instances, sanctions have been the only weapon used, in other instances they have been used together with military actions. Some of these economic sanctions have endured for more than half a century and in other instances for relatively short periods of time. The target nations have often appealed to various international organizations for relief, often citing indiscriminate harm to allegedly innocent members of their populations. The concept of collateral damage arose during the Vietnam War and was a major issue regarding the American bombing of that country. That war was noted for the use by North Vietnam of asymmetrical warfare techniques often making it impossible to distinguish between “civilians” and "combatants”. The effect of economic sanctions on supposedly innocent citizens of the target nation has aroused the anger of progressive academics and their allies. How independent they are, how idealistic they truly are and where their political tendencies are, leaves much of their argument open to suspicion if not outright dismissal. After all, who really is innocent? Can even a despotic totalitarian regime long remain in power if it is opposed by the overwhelming majority of its citizens? As a corollary to this, we may ask, is it possible to put an entire nation into jail? In the early 1980s, after the organization of the non-Communist Polish labor union Solidarity, and the disruptions caused by striking Gdansk shipyard workers which spread throughout Poland, it appeared that that totalitarian Communist regime was finished. Prodded by Moscow, the Communist led Polish Army seized power, established martial law and installed Gen. Wojiech Jaruzelski as supreme ruler of that country. It appeared that you could put an entire nation into jail. It took about seven years, but in the end, Communism fell and a non-Communist regime took power. The unified opposition of the overwhelming majority of Poles made the dictatorship untenable, and it collapsed.

Another regime, in a different part of the world, suffered a similar fate. Ferdinand Marcos, legally elected President of the Philippines, a democracy, found it inconvenient to leave office after his constitutional term ended. He became a kleptocratic dictator and utilized brutally harsh methods to sustain his dictatorship. Despite the widespread use of violence to enforce his rule, his government fell ignominiously to People Power, as the nation just simply no longer would put up with his dictatorial perversion of one of Asia’s once strong democracies. Marcos fled, unfortunately to the United States, with his family and untold billions of looted dollars. Such examples demonstrate that even brutal dictatorships, totalitarian in nature, cannot survive for long if they are opposed by the majority of their people. You may reasonably ask why the Hitler regime lasted as long as it did and isn’t it true that it took World War II to defeat him and his Nazi followers? The answer is that the Hitler regime, regrettably, had massive popular support from its rise to power in 1933 until things started going badly after the fall of 1941 in its war against the USSR. As long as Nazi Germany was winning and providing the spoils of war to Germans, popular support remained there. The rise of Communism in the USSR followed the overthrow of the authoritarian failed regime of Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty. Czarist Russia could not survive, despite its Okhrana Secret Police and the Siberian camps that it exiled opponents to as widespread corruption, incompetence and defeat during World War I made its overthrow by a popular revolt inevitable.

Sanctions are in the headlines today as it is the principal weapon currently being used against Imperial Russia, a semi-dictatorship masquerading as a democracy. Since the downfall of the USSR in Dec. 1991, it is fashionable to style one’s country as a democracy but semantic distortion of that word is the rule rather than the exception. The United States and NATO have applied severe economic, political and cultural sanctions against Imperial Russia for its criminal behavior, war crimes and murder of Ukrainian civilians in their current war. American academics have protested, particularly against cultural sanctions as harming innocent people. However, Poles, Filipinos and many other nationalities have shown that they can oust tyrants. The persistent rule of Putin and his clique is with the approval and acquiescence of the ordinary Russian in the street. In fact, there is widespread opposition to Putin and he has utilized censorship and police brutality to enforce his rule. The European Union and United States, by providing entry to Russian dissidents is actually providing Putin with a safety valve. Opponents of his regime, instead of opposing and overthrowing him, are allowed to leave and settle in other countries where they can do the regime little or no harm. The same applies to Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and many other nations which don’t make the news everyday. It is noteworthy that the Soviet Union played this game to perfection, or so it thought. It exiled Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Siniavsky and Yuli Daniel among others and at the same time exported high culture such as the Moisiyev Dance Group and the Kirov Ballet. The attempt to portray the Soviet Union as a reservoir of high culture failed. It utilized rigid and brutal control of its writers and artists. No less a figure as Vasily Grossman, Stalin’s favorite news columnist and a devoted Communist had his masterpiece Life and Fate banned from publication by culture czar Mikhail Suslov. The manuscript was smuggled out of the USSR and finally published in Paris years after Grossman’s and Stalin’s deaths. Exiled cultural figures such as Solzhenitsyn worked tireless to expose the Soviet regime for what it was in his published works such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago. Russian artists and others who claim to oppose Putin but don’t speak out against the regime are not the kind of figures who should escape sanctions. Let us be clear. The ultimate goal of sanctions is regime change, effected by the citizens of the despotic nation. It isn’t the job of American boys and girls who are serving in the American military. Professor Kevin Platt of the University of Pennsylvania, in a New York Times essay “The Profound Irony of Canceling Everything Russian” (April 22, 2022) wrote against the Putin regime but defended Russian artists against sanctions. He trivializes the historic Russification policy of the Czars and Soviets averring that most ethnic Russians living outside the Russian Federation and in former Soviet, now independent Republics, consider their new nations as their homeland. This certainly is subject to debate. Russians in the Baltic states probably would prefer to be under Russian rule and that has been well documented. Helene Carrere d’Encaussee, of the French Academy, has documented how inter-ethnic tensions, particularly in the Central Asian Muslim republics of the USSR but also in the Baltic States and Transcaucasian Republics ultimately led to violent confrontations and the dissolution of the USSR. These tensions, between ethnic Russians and the various non-Russian and non-Slavic citizens of the USSR were suppressed by Soviet censorship and are not as widely known as one would think. The Russian people, that is, those residing within the boundaries of the Russian Federation, have a unique charge, namely, to oppose their authoritarian despotic regime and take steps to establish a democratic regime in its place. That is, if they want to. If they don’t, they should not rely on the West to do it for them. Freedom has a price.

The idea of regime change has been a fashionable idea in recent decades. President George W, Bush espoused regime change in the American war against Saddam Hussein and the Baathist regime in Iraq. Regime change may be a desirable goal but it is not the job of one country to impose it upon another. Regime change can only be effected by the citizens of the country wanting such change. In this sense, severe sanctions can only promote change, as we know that the more people are uncomfortable, the more people will react sooner and effect true regime change.

American and/or European boots on the ground change nothing. Robespierre noted over two hundred years ago that “armed missionaries are not desired”. They perform such activities which ultimately are despised by the nationals of the country to be ‘liberated” who instead worry about their country’s sovereignty. Hearts and minds are not won by soldiers who by definition are trained for war. The desired regime change can be effected by severe sanctions, which don’t cause physical harm as war does. The responsibility thus falls on the citizens to take matters into their own hands. When will they revolt? When conditions are so bad, so intolerable that they can no longer bear it. Truly, the straw must break the camels back. Only then, can we say good-by to the Iranian Mullahs, the Communists of Cuba and Venezuela and the kleptocratic regime of Russia. The end of these regimes will provide plenty of thought to rulers of other nations which must follow their own paths to salvation, hope and ultimately freedom and democracy. The burden is not on the United States. It is the burden on the victims of totalitarianism and sanctions which ultimately, will spur them to action. Sanctions are a legitimate tool of statecraft, and serve, when applied properly, a useful and ultimately beneficial function in making a better, more peaceful and more democratic world.

Garry S. Sklar

Laughlin, NV

May 17, 2022