The U.S. Is At War With The World
Thanks to Caitlin Johnstone for pointing out that sanctions are the modern day equivalent of siege warfare. The comparisons are obvious once you think about it. Both sanctions and sieges are means of one group of people attempting to achieve their objectives through force over another group of people. When the use of armies might become too costly, sanctions and sieges are both ways of killing the enemy through starvation and disease without having your own people being killed as well. For this reason as well as others, sieges and sanctions can be more inhuman than the outright butchery of war. UN estimates for the death toll from sanctions on Iraq in the 1990’s range from a half a million to one and a half million. Most of those who died were children. The UN also warns that a million children may die in Afghanistan in the next several months, again because of U.S. sanctions. If there was a war, Americans at home might notice friends and relatives being shipped back home in a coffin and become outraged. But they never see the little coffins of children overseas who die from starvation or disease.
It is difficult to assess exactly how many countries are currently being sanctioned by the United States, as many sanctions relate to terrorism or drug trafficking and may apply to multiple countries. Other sanctions may apply to individuals or particular businesses yet are still applied in a broad manner that affects many ordinary citizens. Those countries being subjected to siege-like sanctions (extreme sanctions) are currently at 19, Venezuela being one of them. Estimates from Center for Economic and Policy Research state that as many as 40,000 Venezuelans have died as the result of U.S. sanctions. The entire country has felt the impacts of them for the better part of a decade.
It is impossible to tell exactly how many countries are being affected by more targeted sanctions. Economic sanctions are easier to hide than an outright siege. Modern warfare allows for more stealthy tactics. The United States is currently in undeclared wars against dozens of countries.
The sanctions imposed upon Russia began in earnest in 2012, years before the conflict in Ukraine began. The Magnitsky act was not simply the U.S. refusing to engage in certain kinds of trade with Russia but the U.S. imposing this ban on other countries as well, under the threat of imposing sanctions on nations that attempted to engage in business as usual with Russia. Sanctions are not a form of boycott but act as any siege would, one country forbidding other countries to trade or provide aid to a country that is in the first country’s crosshairs. It is the economic equivalent of blowing up a pipeline that moves natural gas from one country to another.
Relief efforts to Syria following the terrible earthquake that hit that country have been seriously impeded by sanctions the U.S. put in place a decade ago. Neighboring countries are unable to help suffering people in Syria because the U.S. will not permit them to.
If sanctions are viewed as being comparable to siege warfare — and it is hard to deny that in light of the suffering both cause and the fact that the nation instituting the siege/sanctions impose them on third parties as well — then it is safe to say the U.S. and Russia have been at war since at least 2012. If this is the case, then it is easy to compare Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an attempted breakout from a siege.
It’s quite easy to imagine what a siege of a castle looks like, an army encircling its enemy in order to prevent anyone coming in or going out. This is the same effect sanctions have, yes, but sanctions do not have the same visual impact. Imagine, then, Russia as the castle, and U.S. military bases as surrounding encampments. A U.S. dominated military alliance currently rings Russia’s border from the Mediterranean Sea to the Baltic, the one disputed point being Ukraine.
I have mentioned that a significant portion of the planet is currently being subjected to siege-like conditions by the United States. A report put out last week from Center for Economic and Policy Research says that 27 percent of the world’s countries are subject to sanctions. It is a safe bet to say that none of these sanctions would be in place if it were not the will of the United States of America.
But what of the rest of the world, that majority of nations not currently subjected to U.S. sanctions? Let us now speak of them.
Prior to their fight for independence, the U.S. was colonized by Great Britain. There is no disputing this fact, the U.S. was divided up into 13 colonies. The most obvious fact that they were mere colonized states under the rule of Great Britain was the presence of British troops in the colonies. The most obvious evidence that the United States had gained its freedom was that foreign troops were no longer in the territory. Thus, colonies became states. A wonderful moment for the United States, an achievement of independence which we’ve always claimed we want to spread throughout the world.
Instead of spreading independence around the world, we have spread military bases. 750, at a conservative estimate. They are on every single continent. They are in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Columbia and Peru, the UK, Spain and Italy. The U.S. military entered Japan and Germany in 1945 and never left. Entered Korea in 1950 and are still there today. We bombed Serbia to help Kosovo, then turned Kosovo into a U.S. military base. The U.S. today is occupying a third of Syria, the third with the most oil and the best farmland.
South American Defense Council. Africom. SEATO. If you are not aligned with the U.S. you are most likely sanctioned by us. Accept our troops inside your borders or they will be stationed right outside your borders. There is no third option. In fact, try to point to a place on the map where you find a country that is both unaligned with and unsanctioned by The United States. I’d be curious to see what you come up with.
P.S. I had problems providing links on this article. If anyone is troubled by the lack of backing evidence for anything I’ve said here, let me know and I will do the necessary work of sharing my sources. I apologize but this is not my full-time job.