Guerrilla History - Sanctions As War w/ Immanuel Ness & Stuart Davis

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

This episode of Guerrilla History is the introduction to a mini-series we are running for the next couple of months.  The topic is Sanctions As War, based off of the book of the same name edited by Professors Immanuel Ness and Stuart Davis.  Subsequent episodes will be focused on case studies of countries that have faced sanctions, and this intro will lay some of the theoretical groundwork necessary for us to build a narrative around!  And who better to get us underway in this series than Manny and Stuart themselves?  The book should be available for preorder from Haymarket very soon! Immanuel Ness is a Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and Visiting Professor of Sociology at University of Johannesburg.  He is a multiple-time returning guest on Guerrilla History (so be sure to check out his previous appearances), and he can be found on Twitter @ImmanuelNess. Stuart Davis is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College, the City University of New York he focuses on digital media advocacy, protest politics, and digital media and public health, particularly in the Latin American context. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory  We also have a new (free!) newsletter you can sign up for!

You remember den, Ben, boo? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm your host, Henry Huckmacki. Unfortunately, only joined by one of my regular co-hosts today as Brett O'Shea host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast is a little bit under the weather today, but he will be back very soon. Do not worry listeners. I am, however, joined by my other regular co-host,

Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. It's wonderful to be with you and really looking forward to this conversation today. Absolutely. So, listeners, this is the beginning of a mini series of sorts, a mini series of intelligence briefings that we will be doing over the course of the next two months or so, two and a half months perhaps, that are all going to be focused on the same book, on the same topic, but looking at different angles within this book.

The book is Sanctions as War, which is already out from Brill, but will be released at a much more affordable rate from Haymarket in, I believe, December. So listeners, we're letting you know about this book now because we really do think that it's a critically important intervention with critically important topics inside of it. So for this introductory episode, which is going to be laying out the topic of sanctions as war and also introducing the book to you, listeners, we have, The two editors of the book, returning fan favorite, Emmanuel Ness, or as we call him, Manny. Hello, Manny.

How are you doing today? It's nice to have you back on the show. It's a pleasure to be with you guys, and thank you. I'm doing well. And we're also joined for the first time by Stuart Davis. Hello, Stuart. I know that you're a longtime listener of the show, but first time being on the show. I am a longtime listener of this show and Rev. Left Radio and Red Minnis, so I'm just sort of fan and out radio.

I'm unhappy to be with you with you guys. Yeah, it's a shame that Brett won't be here today because I know that he was really looking forward to the conversation. And I know that Stuart, you would have liked to meet him too. So that's a, you know, a shame on both sides. But in way of quick introduction, Emmanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College. He's the author of many books, including one that we've previously looked at on our show, organizing insurgency workers movements in the global south. And Stewart is a professor of communication studies at Baruch College at CUNY.

So let's just jump right into this conversation today. We have this book Sanctions as War and we have the topic of sanctions as war. The way that I would like to open up is with a really broad question that the listeners are probably going to think is very rudimentary, what are sanctions and what are sanctions regimes? Because these are slightly different, but perhaps getting familiar with the terminology would be a useful starting point. I guess this is Stuart. I can start there. Part of the difficulty in answering that question, Henry, is that sanctions can mean a lot of things historically.

And the way that we're using sanctions in this book is in sort of a more precise manner than they're often used in press or even in academic circles. So sanctions can be defined. Actually, I was doing a little bit of looking around like the Office of Foreign Asset Control. and other places that officially define sanctions. Sanctions, as they're defined kind of by the international community, can mean everything ranging from travel restrictions to freezes, put on the abilities of individuals to access bank accounts. So you would put a certain minister in a certain country could get sanctioned.

It could also mean on the other end of the spectrum, spectrum, a basic blockade against trade for an entire country, which is sort of where we begin our book, our edited collection. So that would be the far extreme where you'd see sort of widespread comprehensive, what they call comprehensive sanctions against not just individuals within a certain country, but entire industries within that country. And in the case of places like Iraq, during the 1990s, all business in that country, right? So that leads to the second part of your question,

which is sanction regimes. We kind of rely on the term sanction regimes to orient our collection because that term really refers to the, that's the kind of term du jour from the State Department and it refers to the application of a wide array of sanctions in conjunction with each other aimed at a certain country.

So broad-based sanctions on all kinds of things would make up a sanctions regime. So, yes, sanctions could mean a lot of things, and the terms often use really loosely. But sanctions regime is a much more specific and much more, I think, useful term because it gets at the way that particularly the U.S. government and sometimes partners in multilateral organizations really exercise economic pressure in a comprehensive fashion using all the resources they can muster, right? So that's how I would define. I don't know if many wants to add to that. I agree completely.

I would also like to add the point that sanction regimes are meant to punish and to harm people. and that's a very important component of the book and also the idea of sanctions. So that's what I'd like to add to it. Yeah, and just so that we're clear on sanctions themselves, in terms of who is enforcing sanctions, I think that it's important to understand that the vast majority, I mean, nearly all of these sanctions are being carried out by the United States and operatives working in conjunction with the United States.

States. As you point out in the introduction of your book, essentially since 1945, the U.S. has had complete global economic, political, cultural, and military hegemony up through, particularly in the period immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, although this is starting to be challenged now. But the United States is carrying out just massive numbers of sanctions. This is not something that is being carried out on a large scale by other countries. This really is the United States as well as groups such as the United Nations that often are working in conjunction with the whims of American foreign policy.

And you list a bunch of countries, which is not exhaustive, as you point out, that have had unilaterally imposed sanctions on them, everything from Belarus to Burundi, Central African Republic, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Ben. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Russia, et cetera. And of course, I'm recording this from Russia, which right now is the site of some of the most crippling sanctions anywhere in the world. But I think that it's worth just mentioning a little bit that this really is maybe not uniquely American, but it is vastly carried out by the American state.

Yeah, and one more point to note, and maybe we can talk about this in the series more and also maybe at the end of our conversation today. But this really differentiates, I think, and I think Manny would agree, between the kinds of sanctions, regimes that you were referring to, Henry, that we discuss in the book, and things like BDS. Whereas BDS, even though it has kind of sanction in the title, it really is referring to a kind of grassroots campaign, or what we saw in South Africa, a grassroots campaign to influence public opinion. it doesn't have the weight of the dollar or the weight of the U.S. military or the weight of U.S. history behind it, right? So I think really thinking about it through the perspective of the United States is integral to our work. And also helps us differentiate between, you know, movements that we might be more supportive of. Well, maybe in the service of helping to distinguish within the word sanctions, you know, what the phenomenon you're really precise.

discussing, even before we talk about the conceptual dimensions of it, is to talk a little bit, perhaps, by way of introduction of what the mechanisms of sanctions are. So you've told us what sanctions broadly are and the difference between sanctions regimes, but how they work might help us appreciate these fundamental differences between acts of solidarity, you know, to raise the issues of human rights and because you also point out that the human rights discourse is also being used by the sorts of sanctions you're talking about. So perhaps first let's, you know, find out a little bit more about what are the mechanisms? What is this Department of Treasury list? What happens when various kinds of sanctions are being applied upon a state

in the, you know, the last couple of decades in particular when we've seen the rise of an increase in sanctions regimes being imposed. I guess I could take that question. That's a really good question. And that's a really important question in the sense of kind of really getting at the mechanics. So yeah, thank you, Adnan. And again, part of this is tricky because sanctions,

it's used in a lot of ways, even by the State Department. But in a broad, we're in a specific sense, it means that if the U.S. imposes sanctions on a state, that means that they don't have access. access to doing business, transacting with American firms. That means that if you're an American company, if Henry has a company, he wants to do business in Manny's country, Manny's sanctioned, Henry couldn't do business there. But it also can be applied more broadly in the sense that it could also mean that you

can't do business with other companies also can't do business in the sanctioned country if sanctions moved to a certain level. Those are called secondary sanctions. So in a very specific sense, a sanction means that when the U.S. government applies it, that businesses from the United States cannot do business in that country. However, it often kind of snowballs from there when other, creating a situation where companies from other countries also can't do business in that state. And it can even be more kind of broadly enforced.

through things like the SWIFT currency system, which is technically a consortium out of Switzerland, but it's kind of de facto ruled by the United States because the dollar's been the primary tool of currency of exchange for this SWIFT system. So that's not necessarily something that's done by the State Department, but the U.S. often pressures the SWIFT system to cut these countries off.

So it means basically using both official tools like barring trade and also putting pressure on multilateral organizations to also kind of make this country in economic pariah, which is kind of the point, right, to come up with both formal and formal ways to make a country a pariah. That's very helpful to know. So, you know, there are multiple levels initially direct sanctions are U.S. companies can't do business. but then there can be repercussions at a different level to sanction companies of other countries that do business. They won't be able to do business in the United States. And then the financial mechanisms and architecture of the global capitalist system can be leveraged also to suffocate and control currency exchanges. So this is useful for people to know that we're talking about the powers of the U.S. state and its dominant position in this financial architecture.

But, you know, very often I think there is this, the title of your book is Sanctions as War. Very often, and that's a great title because it dramatizes, I think, a fundamental misconception that I'd love to hear you discuss a little bit more, where often sanctions were hailed as a non-violent alternative to direct military conflict and so on.

So it was seen as reasonable or less severe or less confrontational militarily and in some ways perhaps co-opted some of the liberal intelligentsia that might have problems with military violence and killing through direct war. And so I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about the fiction that's involved in distinguishing sanctions as alternative to war. which is, I think, at the heart of your thesis, by naming it as war. In what ways is it war? I'm going to piggyback on this. And I'm just going to make this question absolutely huge. Because I'm going to look at it also from the opposite perspective. So Adnan very correctly mentioned that one of the justifications of using sanctions regimes is that it's basically

a more humane, coercive mechanism than military action. And this is something that's advocated for, as you've pointed out in the book, many members of the Quincy Institute, for example. who are non-militarists, but they don't go out of their way to call out sanctions regimes as a form of warfare itself. They see it as a more humane form. But I'm also going to take the opposite perspective, which is perhaps one of the major thrusts of the book, which is the anti-sanctions discussion as well. So we have the people that are in favor of sanctions because they think that it's more humane than outright warfare. But we also have people that are opposed to sanctions

regimes because they either see them as ineffective or because they see them as inhumane, harming regular people. And the book really does an excellent job of pointing out that this misses the fundamental question of what, and I'm going to quote the question here, what kind of geopolitical and economic logic does this kind, talking about sanctions regimes, this kind of logic aim to extend or maintain. It completely misses this question. So perhaps, Manny, we'll turn to you first with this one.

I mean, there are two different questions, but kind of related, depending on what way you look at it. Like, if you're pro-sanctions, you have this perspective of maybe it's a more humane form of a coercive mechanism. That's not, you know, outright militaristic war. But we also have this anti-sanctions groups that also kind of miss the point of why we should be against sanctions. Right. I think without question in my view, and I think we share this, that sanctions are equivalent to war, not only are they equivalent to war, but they are a component of war. So frequently when we have wars over the last 30, 40 years or so, and I say 40 years, because I think they started precisely, you know, around 1985 in real force, that sanctions accompany war and are used as a tool to essentially kill people. So for those people who are

and those peace groups, etc., who argue for sanctions as an alternative to war, I think our view is one that, in fact, they actually kill people. And secondly, they accompany. War. We all know the famous quotation from the late Madeline Albright when she spoke of sanctions with respect to Iraq during the period under the First Bush administration. And she said that she thought they were worth it in terms of killing 500,000 children. And so we're not just speaking of Speaking of people in the military who are being killed, but we're also speaking of children who do not have nutrition, do not have health care, do not have access to pharmaceuticals, and so forth and so on. So I think they're highly brutal, and they are, in fact, war itself. They accompany war.

Anything to add to work? Yeah, I guess to get to, well, to sort of follow up on. Mani's response to Adnan's question, I remember even being involved in anti-war activism, going back to like the sort of leading up to the second Iraq war. And there were people in the so-called peace movement at the time that were very, you know, there were, as Mani mentioned, and as you mentioned, Henry, like, in favor of sanctions. They thought, you know, sanctions, they could be applied precisely, which this is another myth of sanctions. They could be applied precisely to the bad guys, right?

and not hurt everybody else. And it was a way, you know, to minimize the impact and certainly minimize the cost of the United States in terms of human lives. But for peace groups, they were really kind of in favor of sanctions, you know, in some sectors. And I think part of that has to do with the fact that until really, I mean, I guess this is up for debate, but until the late 1990s, when people like Dennis Halliday, who is the UN's, humanitarian liaison for the oil for food program that was going on in Iraq, people didn't know in the United States or broadly the kind of damage that sanctions did, right? So people didn't know in the United States that if you had these comprehensive sanctions on Iraq, that it was literally causing mass malnutrition. And people still don't know. People still don't know that if

you have sent these sanctions like we have right now on Syria, that the The Red Cross can't do business in Syria. The Red Cross can't distribute medical supplies in Syria because the Red Cross can't get paid by anyone with an account, you know, a Syrian bank account. So my point is that really for a long time, even still, especially starting with what happened in Iraq, people just don't know because it's not visible the damage that sanctions cause. And that actually was part of the reason that Joy Gordon, who's kind of one of the most eloquent

ethicists writing about sanctions wrote her book on um she titled her book on the iraq sanctions invisible war because it was a war but we couldn't see it right um so i guess i would i would just corroborate nanny's point that uh because we don't have the same kind of media coverage because we don't have the coffins coming back home we think oh you know it's it's something that the technocrats are doing that is very precise and we trust their expertise and you know collateral damage, worst case scenario, as in the Maddoin Albright quote, you know, those are brown kids that are dying and they're dying in a way that we can control very precisely because of the economic expertise that's so-called that exercised by those imposing the

sanctions. I guess to your second question, Henry, about the kind of main argument of the book is certainly the main argument of the introduction. Those were the two main, thrusts of the literature on sanctions that we were interrogating with this book. The first, as you brought it up, Henry, is this international relations, IR kind of discourse around sanctions aren't effective, right? That sanctions are generally not effective in accomplishing the goals that those who design the sanctions want to accomplish, right? You're right, it's the gamification of like international relations theory. Yeah, and that's not our term.

That comes from Gary Huffauer, who's one of the main kind of gurus of international relations theory on sanctions. Yeah, so really, like, it's a sort of perverse. I mean, it's an argument I think that we're probably, I'm not going to speak from Annie, but I think we're probably in agreement with that sanctions aren't effective at accomplishing the goals. But I think our answer would be that,

they're not effective because the goal generally tends to be regime change like at the end of the day right that's kind of the ultimate the ultimate goal of those sanctions man you want to jump in i see you it just real quickly i think uh the goal that they accomplish is um killing people creating havoc uh unraveling states uh especially states that are not large states and uh they they contribute to human suffering. And I wouldn't doubt that many American policymakers take pleasure in human suffering. You know, I just think of, you talk about gamification. You know, the war games that people play on their computers are apparently also applied to drones and so forth and so on. And, you know, people are hired who are good game players. So anyway, I was just saying that I think people like to

kill other people and don't see them as human beings. I think that that's true. I just also want to throw in something else that in the introduction as well as throughout the book, something that was brought up is that sanctions are essentially, you can view them as a form of siege warfare. I don't know if there's something that I think it fits in with this current conversation that we're having in terms of the effects and what perhaps the goals of people are. You know, Stuart, you said the goal perhaps is ultimately regime change, but as many

points out there also certainly is this other goal of collateral damage. They say it's collateral damage because it's not the intended impact of these sanctions. But I mean, does anybody that's taking a critical view of sanctions really believe that? And so I think that this analogy of siege warfare is perhaps interesting and perhaps worth spending a couple seconds on. Do you want to take that, Stuart? Sure. I guess the chapter in our book, really that goes into detail on this is kind of a theoretical chapter by Manu Karuka, who's an excellent, if I can say, anti-imperialist, theorist, activist, and kind of friend of our International Committee of the Union, out of which this book came. And he does a great job in that chapter of really looking at how

these medieval sieges aren't that, you know, he documents through looking at French military history in particular are not that different than what we see now, particularly in places like Venezuela, under, you know, Trump, Pompeo, John Bolton's maximum pressure, right? So I think really the siege is, if you peel away the layers of kind of technocratic rationalizations or justifications of collateral damage, the siege is really the way, I think the best way to think about sanctions. And that's part of the reason that we started the book on page one with the blockade against Cuba, right? Which really set the tone for U.S.-led sanctions, right? And that wasn't, you know, about like applying smart sanctions to certain sectors of the Cuban economy. That was about literally building a wall around Cuba in terms of trade and commerce. If I may just add, Stuart, and I think the point that Henry was making,

and Adnan as well, is very clear that when we think of sanctions, it's usually viewed as a means to ensure that the opponent complies with the demand that's made. And it could be a neoliberal demand. It could be a demand with respect to following a specific kind of democratic, bourgeois, democratic regime, etc. But I think it's really crucial to recognize that American policymakers, European policymakers, and beyond really get off on killing people. And I think that's a really crucial point to make that otherwise, what's the point? Because they don't work, essentially. They don't work in terms of changing governments.

I won't use the term regime in this context. They don't necessarily work at all in that in certain instances they do, but by and large, they don't. Yeah, I think that's very important to point out that there is that whole literature in international relations that debates the issue about sanctions, whether they work or not. But basically, the consensus seems to be is that there's very limited political effect of the stated objectives being accomplished. And usually, as you both pointed out, one of those stated goals seems to be usually regime change. And that's very hard to achieve by using this kind of maximum pressure, if we were to, you know, quote Donald Trump, attempt to achieve regime change. And so it raises, you raise, you know, the question of, well, what is it really for? and you've just alluded to, you know, enjoying, causing death.

Now, I want to turn this from, you know, kind of sentiment, which I know was just a shorthand, to talking a little bit more about the structural paradigm of how this system operates that you do go into as well. But just to begin with that you had a chilling quote from Achilleembe, a fantastic critical anti-colonial scholar, that identified, as you put it, the founding dream of American global power

in the following terms. Quote, the generalization of forms of power and modes of sovereignty whose key characteristic is to produce death on a large scale. And this leads you then to entering into your further kind of dialectical and systemic analysis

of what really are the goals of and effects and consequences of U.S. power hegemony by wielding sanctions regime. So I'm wondering if maybe we could unpack this a little bit more and talk about how imperialism is operating through these sanctions regimes and what the real effect and goal of it is if it's not just the targeted. I mean, similar to how we could also ask, you know, often there have been justifications of anti-torture, you know, kind of mobilizing to say, oh, but it doesn't work. So, you know,

as if, you know, if it did work, it would be allowable. And so the, but the humanitarian critique isn't the only end point of your analysis here. I mean, those who raise objections about the devastating consequences of human, on the societies, you feel that there's something further that needs to be understood about. So I want to give you the chance to really talk about that. I guess, yeah, the Mbimbe quote, I kind of imbibib can be useful in certain contexts. I feel like having kind of dealt with this work for a while,

not totally sold on his larger kind of politics. But I think in this context, I remember picking out that quote because it really speaks to the way that American imperialism is crafted with the total disregard for racialized others, right? That from the perspective of U.S. Empire sanctions totally make sense because there's a structural hierarchy, excuse me, in a kind of ontological sense,

that they, it just, it doesn't matter how many people they kill in a third world country, so to speak. So I think that really was what we were trying to get at. And I think that's kind of the dream that sanctions kind of encapsulates. And this is, I think, maybe what Manning was getting at in a really powerful way, that for the United States, sanctions show that they can do whatever they want to people in the global South and enforce any kind of suffering because that's, you know, that's their prerogative as a, structural hegemon, right, as the country on top of the global order.

And that's why imperialism is so important to keep in mind when we talk about sanctions, right? Because, again, being able to sanction, it's like a dream of the U.S. Empire, right? And another thing that we haven't talked about is that sanctions really depend on U.S. global hegemony because of things like dollar hegemony and things like U.S. you know, presence of bases to kind of back up the, the economic warfare enacted by sanctions. So really, being able to sanction at will is kind of a dream of U.S. Empire, I would say. And that's kind of what we're kind of getting out with that quote, if I remember correctly,

from Mbimbe, particularly related to the, again, the so-called third world. Yeah, I completely agree with you, Stuart, on that. I think the concept, and a notion of who the third world is, the Global South, et cetera, I think there is a racialization, as you were pointing out, of populations. Those populations may or may not be from the third world, but they're considered in some respects a racialized group that is subordinate to the Anglo-Saxon, Western American force. And Bembe really puts that forward really strongly with respect to Africa.

And so that, you know, I credit you with that quote. But I think it's a great quote. I also think that, you know, there is a history that goes back to the 1930s where populations were racialized. And they were racialized within a pecking order of nationalism. So, you know, in a certain respect, when we look at, you know, Yugoslav sanctions, there is a sort of racialization of the populations that exist within the former Yugoslavia and a characterization of which groups are at the top, you know, Slovenia and Croatia, for instance, and the other countries could go to hell,

so to speak, that have broken up from the Yugoslav state. I would like to turn our attention just briefly to the book as a, as a work right now before we get a little bit deeper into this topic. So again, listeners, just to remind you, we're talking about the book Sanctions as War, which is edited by Emmanuel Ness and Stuart Davis. And I will just briefly introduce. This book is broken into three parts,

which I find to be very interesting. And I also find the way that this is categorized very interesting as well. Part one is theorizing and situating economic sanctions and international political economy. Part two are profiles of sanctioned nation states. There's 11 profiles in there, case studies really of sanctions regimes that were put forth against various countries. And listeners, that is what we are going to be focusing on in this mini series of sanctions as war. We're bringing on these experts that wrote about the sanctioned regimes case studies of these different countries.

And each episode will be devoted to a different case study within this series. That way we get to dive a little bit deeper into exactly how it worked within each national context. And then part three is also very interesting, resistance to economic sanctions and economic sanctions as resistance. This is where we mentioned BDS in South African apartheid. This is where this fits into this conversation. So listen, it's very interesting how this book is structured. These three sections really create a nice flow from the beginning to the end of this book. But what I want to ask you both now is why did you decide to make this book and what are the major thrusts that you were hoping

to get out with this book. And then we can dive a little bit deeper into Sanctions as a conception. I just want to make sure that we do understand why you're coming to this work. So, Manny, perhaps we can start with you. Why did you decide to go ahead with sanctions this war? And what are the major things that you were trying to get across with this work? I'd have to mention the International Committee of Our Union as being crucial in this effort. I remember sitting in the apartment of one of our comrades

and we were trying to set the agenda for the year and I remember discussing the issue of sanctions as being crucial as sanctions were increasingly being applied to China specifically. So this is before the current war that's going on in Europe or military operation, however you want to put it, And with respect to China, there seemed to be a increase in sanctions that were being applied there. Also, another factor that was, in my mind, anyway, is the way sanctions were applied in an undemocratic manner. manner. And by that, I was referring to actually Russia in the post-Soviet era, especially in the

Putin years between 2010 and 2020 and so forth. There was a growth of sanctions, in particular the Magnitsky Act that was applied on specious grounds. And it's all but proven. that the individual, Matt Magnitsky, was not, in fact, a whistleblower, but he was an accessory to a crime that took place where hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen by an American oligarch by the name of Browder, Bill Browder, specifically. And so the U.S. Congress voted to sanction Russia. the European Commission voted to sanction Russia. And, you know, when we think about democracy or the bourgeois form of democracy,

we'd say to ourselves, well, how can they sanction a country when, in fact, it's not even proven. In fact, the evidence is opposed to it. So it demonstrates the ideological notion that is backing up sanctions. So, you know, you start from a political theory, theoretical perspective about how sanctioned, are extremely deleterious toward a society, but they're necessary in the context of breaches of human rights with respect to the rules-based law-based order that the United States created after 1989

in circumvention to the United Nations. And people start buying into this concept of rules-based orders, the humanitarianism and so forth. And, you know, with respect to Russia, it's not just Russia, it's the fact that the United States government, and this is for all those people who still believe that the United States is a effective democracy, I think most people don't at this point, that, in fact, the Congress and the president voted for a law based on specious grounds. That's what I have to say very briefly. Stuart, same question. Yeah, I guess I would just add to the, well, again, support Manny's assertion that this was something that was really a collective effort of the International Committee of our union. It's about 30 people active.

And we did quite a bit of consciousness raising around sanctions, political education within our union in the years 2018 through 2020. So it originally started as an attempt to have speakers talk about what was happening in Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and it kind of sort of morphed into this idea of a book, which originally, at least in many might remember differently than I do, but originally the idea was to have the case studies were really the lynchpin of the book because there really hadn't been anything comprehensive in any fact. written about kind of a collection of the different countries that were sanctioned, I guess I would say. There's been quite a bit written about sanctions on Iraq, very good work. There's been some very bad work written about sanctions on Iran. I'm thinking particularly of this book, The Art of Sanctions, by Richard Nephew, who's some State Department ghoul, who I think we cite in the introduction. but there hadn't been any kind of systemic or even, you know, attempted a systemic endeavor to put Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Yugoslavia in conversation with each other. So that was kind of the initial idea for the book was to use our kind of pool of collective resources we had.

You know, Mani's got a lot of connections, as you guys know. a lot of our members of this committee of the union were specialists in different parts of different international contexts. So really to kind of see if we could get people together to write chapters around the question of sanctions from a anti-imperialist perspective, which is kind of our other sort of goal in the book, to not just have like profiles in a kind of empirical sense, but to have an anti-imperialist perspective. I think we kind of accomplished. There are some chapters that go back quite a bit further. Like, for example, the Iran case study goes quite a bit back farther. But really, the idea was to have a collection of case studies based on the work our union had been doing, kind of pioneering in terms of political education around sanctions from an anti-imperialist perspective.

So that was the idea, really, to have like a, where you could just open it up and kind of get some attention. Now I just, sorry, and now I'm remembering, I'm recalling the fact that we were against sanctions against Venezuela, Cuba, and a growing number of countries in Latin America and beyond poor countries, as well as the Middle East. And we were also concerned with the sanctions against China and how they could contribute to war and conflict. And so as a body within our union, a very left body, I should say, we felt that our work should contribute to policy in some respects within the American Federation of Teachers and the AFLCAO, which are amongst the most reactionary stooges of the State Department. So I think that we've made some progress with respect to a resolution against war with China, against the new Cold War with China, which included some resolves, I believe, or at least one, on sanctions and how bad they are. That's right. So anyway, that's sorry about taking up so much time with it there. No, please take more time.

It's actually very fascinating that this work of a kind of comprehensive. conceptual and case study analysis of the recent history of sanctions comes out of, you know, labor organizing about questions of solidarity, about what is an appropriate anti-war policy and position to take when sanctions are often sold to us as, you know, an alternative to war and a way to express values of support for human rights by authorizing sanctions against various regimes that allegedly are violating human rights. So I think this is of concern to everybody in our workplaces,

in our communities, that municipalities, we're struggling with exactly these questions. And I think the approach of actually putting all of the case studies side by side is actually very impressive because what it suggests to people who hear about a particular response to a particular crisis or issue at a certain time, and they think that's appropriate in this context or that context, when you see how extensive the number of countries who are subject to this, you get a much better appreciation for how this is part of a larger agenda,

a larger process that is imposing a new way of organizing. politics and economy on a global scale. And I guess it's no, as a consequence of this, it's no surprise that you see that so many of the countries that are being subjected to this, and you see the list in the chapter titles, the listeners, when you get a hold of a copy, you can see the number of countries,

is that so many of these participated in the Friends of the UN Charter, for example, is because they are actually having to relate to one another against an increasingly authoritarian and organized system for their marginalization and suffocation. So, I mean, I think this is very important that this is coming out. I guess the other side of it, so there's a lot to talk about there, and we can always come back to that. But one thing that it made me think of is where we started with part of the conversation, which is about solidarity and these questions that come up about how to distinguish opposition to these militaristic sanctions regimes, sanctions as war and sanction as solidarity, because I know in many

unions people are asked to support BDS. So perhaps we could come to there and elaborate a little bit more now that we've had at least this part of the discussion, what really distinguishes? How do you see the differentiation for people to understand why we have to be in solidarity with workers, with people who are suffering occupation and so on by using something that was developed in the anti-apartheid movement and now in the BDS compared to taking a stand against, you know, sanctions that are helping promote a Cold War with China, for example. I guess I can I can start to take that I think in a simple way it has to do with the locus of initiation at least for me in the sense that when it comes to something like the anti-apartheid and then sanctions movement around the apartheid regime in South Africa these were grassroots initiatives that largely started out as local boycott campaigns and then kind of globalized and with the sanctions regimes that we discuss in the book, these aren't responses to go to grassroots

calls for solidarity, right? These are enacted by the State Department, I think pretty much without, without exception. So I think that would be one really simple answer that has to do with who, how do these sanctions bubble up? And that's part of the reason why I've seen some leftists, who I'm not going to name, put things on social media, that we as leftists, know, Marxist, socialist, whatever you want to call us, progressives, should support U.S. sanctions against Nicaragua because they represent, you know, there's an autocratic government in Nicaragua and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not even going to go into it.

But really, and the justification is, well, you're already supporting BDS, and that has the word sanctions in it. And the response to that is, number one, as Manny has said, usually sanctions lead. to some kind of kinetic engagement already. So they are part of war. And two, if it's a State Department enacted sanction, that's not kind of a grassroots call for social solidarity or democracy or something like that. Social welfare.

These are decisions made based on economic and security interests of the United States. So again, I think it's locus of initiation. And we should use that question. to respond to any time we see sanctions, and we should not support State Department OFAC sanctions against Nicaragua. Danny, do you want to? I hope this addresses the point a little. I think in most instances,

I mean, I guess I'm just trying to drive this point home with respect to Nicaragua, for instance, those calls or sanctions are based on fabrications. And I think we have to say that over and over again, or think about it, because I think when we think about the sanctions regime, it is rooted in fabrications, contriving various arguments about groups of people, which have maybe an element of truth, a country does and it's not good, and therefore they should be sanctioned. And I think that, you know, for those people who are actually interested, and this would probably be most liberals,

but also myself, were interested in a form of democracy, me certainly a different type of democracy than bourgeois Democrats, you know, would like to hear the truth about a matter. And so I think, you know, with respect to sanctions against the Israelis for their occupation of the Palestinian lands, here is an example, very clear. clearly of a people who have been engaged, I guess, pushed into a system of apartheid that is very difficult to, to fathom. And that we, there were a lot of bona fide that supported sanctions around around the world that were equivalent to the South African anti-apartheid movement. And these sanctions were supposedly directed against Israeli companies that were doing

business on the West Bank of occupied lands. And it got a tremendous amount of pushback. And I guess in this context, I'm a bit pessimistic about the chances because we saw what happen in Britain. We saw the way in which Jeremy Corbin was crucified as a consequence of supporting sanctions and so forth, or at least supporting the Palestinian people at the very least. So we really have a great obstacle that we have to fight for. And I think that we have to continue despite the setbacks that have taken place. And, you know, we see the British Labor Party today in shambles with the right-wing

leader, Starrmer, and I think it all has to do with this sort of hoax about anti-Semitism. You know, of course, I'm very concerned with the issue of anti-Semitism. It's a very, it exists throughout the world, yet at the same time, you know, if one calls on anti-Semitism on, you know, grounds that are fabrications, I think that's really wrong. So I would make those, both those arguments. Let me serve up an absolute softball for both of you. And I know, yeah, Adnan, I know wants to ask something about the same topic. So perhaps he'll add a little English to it.

But for me, it's going to be like absolute meatball right down the middle of the pipe. Because I know that this is something that you've both done work on. So, Stuart, you mentioned locus of initiation being a key point to consider, but, and whether or not that's grassroots oriented or whether that's directed by the state, in our case, the American state, particularly. But I know that at the beginning of Manny's chapter, chapter six of the book in the introduction, the first sentence of it, over the past 20 years, non-governmental organizations, NGOs, have been ubiquitous in demanding economic sanctions on nations and their leaders for alleged abuses

of human rights activists. So I know both of you have done work analyzing NGOs and their way that they integrate themselves within sanctions, within the U.S. sanctions regimes on various countries. What can we say about NGOs within this realm of sanctions? How do you view this from a locus of initiation standpoint, as well as the impact of NGOs on people, within these countries as well as the ends to which they are aiming, again, pulling out that quote, what kind of geopolitical and economic logic does this kind of logic aim to extend or maintain? Adnan, anything that you want to add to that question, or should we just turn it over to them?

Oh, well, no, just to say that is exactly what my thought went to is about the locus of initiation, is that there's a lot of obfuscation by enlisting NGOs to create, along with, you know, media to fabricate and exaggerate in the public sphere the way this is a demand coming, you know, to make it seem as if it's a demand coming from grassroots on the ground, and, you know, to create that sense of, you know, consent, basically, to manufacture that sort of sense of consent by using NGO. So some further analytical, you know, sense of the role, you know, how to distinguish. between what's a real and what's, you know, kind of fabricated attempt is, I think, very important politically here. So I look forward to hearing what they have to say about that.

Right. Like they're acting essentially as an intermediate locus of initiation here, which I think is interesting. I'm going to pass to Manny, since Manny wrote the chapter on that. Well, I think, Stuart, you could probably answer the question as well as, or if not better, than I can. You know, I would consider NGOs a form of outsourcing and privatization. The CIA, the State Department, has been outsourced to the NED, to NGOs, civil society organizations. I'm not saying they're all bad, but in the case of the question of sanctions, I think they are pernicious. And, you know, by doing so, they create organizations on the ground. You can name the country and they're there.

And they foment what I refer to as color revolutions. This took place in a host of countries. I believe Ukraine was one of the first in 2004 to have a color revolution. And it metastasized throughout the former Soviet Union and the East. Eastern Block. And, you know, if you take a look at the information from the NED that their financial statements and so forth, you have a whole host of organizations that are made up of, you know, educated young people who create a organization that is opposed to the government on the basis of, you know, grounds that may not actually be.

the case. You know, they, you know, argue, for instance, that they're authoritarian. Well, you know, which government is not authoritarian in some respects? And the real purpose of this, in my view, is to bring about neoliberal change, which is the dominant form of, you know, economic activity that the United States and its allies want to promote. and have promoted over the last 30 years, that the impetus for sanctions is to apply neoliberal capitalism throughout the world. And many countries continue to have state-run enterprises and so forth

or actually putting a new state-run enterprises. And there is a tremendous amount of pushback from the United States to the reversion to state control. I'll just stop there for a moment and here, Stuart. Yeah, I guess I mean, I agree with your sort of summation of sanctions and maybe to add to my previous point because I really take, I appreciate the connection, Henry and Adnan,

you made between this call for kind of looking at the grassroots with the ways that the grassroots can often be kind of codified, or interpreted as NGOs, who, you know, kind of by definition, or at least historically, have been representatives of the grassroots, right, as the kind of paragons of civil society. So maybe building off of the answer that Manny just gave, kind of looking at organizations like the NED, some sort of like anti-imperialist literacy combined.

So looking at grassroots calls, but also through the lens of larger power conflicts and ideological conflicts. So that would get back to this point that Manny just made about the ways that sanctions often serve to legitimize or promote neoliberal ideology, right? Neoliberal economic reforms, neoliberal less important, but also, I guess, part of it is sort of bourgeois social relations, bourgeois versions of civil society. So, yeah, I think that organizations, non-governmental organizations that work, whose mission seems to overlap a lot coincidentally, or as Manny maybe raised not coincidentally, with the State Department, should also be kind of thought about a little critically through our anti-imperialist lens, right? So, like, Human Rights Watch, I think, is one of the groups that Manning talks about a lot in his chapter. And it's like, you know, they haven't seen a regime change conflict they didn't love. Human Rights Watch, right?

So shit, you know, it's like, yeah, maybe being kind of looking, I would say, so I'm not going to back down from, you know, my comment about Locus of initiation, because I think it really is crucial for our book to understand that we're really aiming at sanctions regimes started by the, and. promoted by the United States. But when it comes to NGOs is kind of, again, the sort of often, who often depict themselves as the voice of the voiceless in a sense, being very critical about what are the politics of these NGOs, what are the kind of larger positions they've made on things? With that in mind, and not to complicate things too much,

there are some situations where NGOs that generally, one could say support the same vision of neoliberal hegemony that the U.S. Empire promotes sometimes go against it, right? And I'm thinking specifically about the Amnesty International report last year having to do with the situation in Palestine, right? So as I'm sure you're both familiar with, there was this report that AMC International put out. And everybody was kind of surprised, at least I was surprised, I'm not going to say everybody. that Amnesty International will be taking such a hard stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the stance that really kind of questioned the legitimacy of Israel's role in Palestine.

And within our same union, International Committee, we had Norman Fingleston come, who is a colleague of Manny's at Brooklyn College, and he was even surprised that organizations like Amnesty International would take such a you know, a position that was so critical of kind of Israeli dominance. So NGOs, I don't know, Manny, if you want to add to that as well, but NGOs can be really, sometimes can confound our expectations, but in general, especially with human rights watch, which is the one that, I think the main one, many that you discuss in that chapter, like, they're doing some water carrying for U.S. imperialism.

Yeah, I also want to point out that, you know, with respect to neoliberal, I think it's correct to say that the United States achieved victory even before the Soviet Union dissolved by expanding its influence through Eastern Europe and throughout the world, and that the Soviet Union's dissolution was just a part of that process. And Stuart and I were talking a bit about this with respect to the Iranian Revolution, where in fact there were, you know, high level of progressives, radicals, Marxists, who believed in transforming

the society into a more egalitarian society and actually made important achievements. You know, this takes place about 10 years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we were also talking about Burkina Faso with respect to Thomas Sankara,

who was also castigated by NGOs as well, who was taken down, not by peaceful means, but by violent means, by actually being assassinated. So I don't believe that NGOs are in any way not accomplices to actually engaging in violence themselves and promoting violence. And that chapter actually points out the ways in which NGOs promote violence. violence and war in many different contexts. Yeah, I think that one of the key things that we have to keep in mind here. And, Stuart, I do like, I wasn't trying to push back against your analytics of the locus of

initiation. I think that that's a very good framework to operate under, I would say that NGOs, and I believe that Adnan, you were the one that used this specific word, but they're the obfuscation of the locus of initiation. I think that that's very true. You know, they portray themselves as being indicators. or representatives of the grassroots when in large part they're being directed by the state itself, if not, you know, explicitly then, you know, under the cover of darkness.

But I think that that is a good way of saying NGOs are the obfuscation of the locus of initiation. It doesn't invalidate your point, steward. I think that that, if anything, you know, reiterates that. But speaking of obfuscation, I'd like to turn here to perhaps, the most important factor for obfuscation within the topic of sanctions, which is the media. The media is always the obfuscators within, particularly within imperialist countries, but I mean, basically within any country, the media that's their job is to obfuscate in favor of the regime that's in power. And this is no different with regard to sanctions than it is for anything else.

So just briefly, if I could have each of your say on the role of the media within sanctions regimes, how they're carried out, how they're portrayed to the public, how the public perceives sanctions. I think that this is something that's very important. And as we'll see when we cover each of the case studies, the media portrayal of those sanctions regimes is not indicative of what's actually happening. it's it's constructed in a very intentional way to obfuscate what's really happening. I guess I can start with that. I, yeah, I mean, in the book we have a chapter, we have a couple chapters that kind of look at media, but the one that kind of gets to what you're describing, Henry, and I agree with you completely, is a very expansive case study by actually a colleague of mine from graduate school.

Saif Shaheen and one of his graduate students when he was teaching at American University. And they do something that it's pretty common in media studies research. And you even see it in books like Herman and McChesney's Manufacturing Consent. But what they did in this chapter is they did a kind of large-scale quantitative content analysis of the ways that sanctions are framed in major American, I think British newspapers, right, daily. So like the New York Times, the WAP, Washington Post, et cetera. And, yeah, they basically found that what you're describing Henry is completely accurate, that the damage of sanctions is minimized, if ever mentioned. The human cost is just not there.

Sanctions, the decision to use sanctions is, by and large, lauded by editorials in mainstream news. And the countries that are being sanctioned, regardless of their kind of ideological bent, whether it's DPRK or Cuba or Venezuela, the leaders of these countries are vilified and, you know, words like anti-democratic, authoritarian are used to describe them. So it seems without many exceptions, what our authors found in this chapter was that mainstream media completely. fall in line with kind of dominant narrative within the United States military and State Department about sanctions. Yeah. So it's really difficult to find the line that distinguishes between the official position

and also the media position. And you even see this with what's happening now with an Afghanistan, right, with the sanctions on the Taliban. like you don't see that at all in mainstream media you don't see the i mean you saw a lot leading up to the every day and kind of like the evening news leading up to the u.s pullout you saw i remember like the people trying to run to get on the plane you heard about um you know all the steps backward that were going to be taken once the u.s occupying force left but now the u.s still has complete economic control over a lot of the financial um assets of the Afghani state and you don't hear

about that at all in the news right so um yeah i would it would say that in this chapter which again looked at major daily newspapers and and my interpretation sanctions are really um based on my own experience as a media consumer sanctions are really they're not questioned and And they're not talked about. I'd say more than not questions. They're just not really talked about. And none of the kind of whistleblowing type work that you see groups, even going back to the 1990s, engaging in, like, voices in the wilderness, which is a group that really got me kind of, that I first learned about the sanctions in Iraq through this group. They don't get, even then they were not given a platform.

So depressing, but. Well, it's even worse. It's even worse in some ways is that whistleblowers and the people who do the individual. investigative work to actually document and show the harms and the complicity of NGOs and so on are themselves being attacked, you know, journalists who are doing that sort of brave work are being smeared and de-platformed and suppressed. So, I mean, it's very difficult in this environment, indeed. You know, I was just interested, you know, you wrote this book and there's a lot of historical case studies and many of the chapters deal with current on an ongoing sanctions regimes.

But of course, you wrote this and published this before the Ukraine situation and the new level of sanctions. You were just talking about that, Manny. And so I'm just wondering if you reflect now, you know, what's your analysis about the place of sanctions in this neoliberal order and the attempts to continue to enforce and expand the neoliberal order? It seems that there is perhaps some kind of backlash or pushback or more organized resistance perhaps starting to take place and take shape that challenges U.S. vision of the world order as a hegemon. Is that weakening? I mean, if we look at it through the sanctions lens, we see that the vast majority of the world's populations were represented at the UN. Their UN representatives didn't actually endorse the sanctions. You know, they took a position of neutrality, as it were, not necessarily supporting, voting against the resolution, but abstaining from it.

We've seen a lot of recent reports talking about the successful way in which, at least for the short term, the Russian economy seems to be capitalizing on sales of oil and is very healthy in its profits, and that there have been some voices and concerns about inflation, about the economic harms and damage on the global scale. of this, both in the global south, but also in, you know, the first world, Europe and North America suffering consequences of gas prices and so on. So I'm wondering, you know, especially since there has been attempts to blame potential food crises on Russian blockade of Ukrainian food, you know, that there seems to be some contestation going on here about the consequences. consequences, the effects, and the legitimacy of imposing these, this, this massive sanctions regime. You know, what's your perspective on it? Do you see this as a weakening, you might say, of the U.S. sanctions regime in this kind of emerging, maybe slightly more multipolar sort of world? What's your analysis of it? I think that's a great question, Adnan. And one that we probably can't answer today, but

I think it reflects so many different crises that are taking place around the world, and it's not just a question about the conflict that's going on in Ukraine, but it extends to the global South, as you were pointing out, that countries representing the majority of the world's population remain, and are engaging in trade with Russia. I think it's the big hot potato in the United States and the West that anyone who has a contrary opinion or at least even wants to intellectualize

why this conflict emerged and why it's taking place will be shunned and castigated as some kind of supporter of a dictator or something of that, even worse. So I want to say that because I think that's very important to contextualize it. You know, we've seen this in the left, especially the Trotskyist and social democratic left, which has been equating the war that the Ukrainians are engaged in and fighting as viciously as the Russians are, I'm sure, as equivalent to the Vietnamese War, which I find highly, you know, kind of offensive, but this comes out of the left.

I think, you know, so more concretely, I would say that we see Western Europe and Southern Europe, Southeast, Southwestern Europe, being very concerned about the food crisis, not so much because people are going to die of starvation or have nutritional issues. but because they may migrate to Western Europe and Southwestern Europe and pose a population, I hate to use the term crisis, but a population challenge to these countries because of their need for food. Now, of course, the question of whether sanctions or the blockade are the cause of the fact that food is not being shipped to Africa and parts of Southwest Asia are complex. You know, it's warfare.

You know, on the one hand, you have one country being sanctioned, unable to sell potash and other agricultural products to the world. And then you have that same country saying, well, you know, if we can't sell our stuff, you can't sell your stuff. And I think actually it's even more complex than that, you know, from what I've read. But, you know, I think whenever you're in the midst of a conflict, it's very difficult to make immediate judgments about things. But I think we could make a judgment in terms of war and diplomacy and, you know, the Klausowitz point that war is a continuation of diplomacy.

And I think we're seeing that with respect to this particular issue. So in my view, I think that it's highly disturbing to see that the main reason why the West is so concerned and getting together, you know, the major leaders and are all going to Ukraine to come to some kind of agreement together. I'm referring to the Italian leader, the Germans, and the French, Macron, Draghi, and Schultz, is that his name? Yeah. So they're going to be going to Ukraine within the next few days. And, you know, I think the major reason is that they don't want to see a major flow of migrants coming into Europe. And, you know, that might be actually a reason why the war might end sooner than later.

anyway, that's my initial take, but it's also one that requires a lot more thinking because we cannot judge things as they're taking place until, you know, I think we need time. Stuart, any quick notes that you want to make on that? Yeah, I guess to the other, another part of an announcement I think was related to this idea of blowback and the sanctions on Russia seemed to be having a, a pretty noticeable impact on things like cost of oil in the United States. And I think that really, well, first of all, the other little element of the last part of the book, besides looking at sanctions as resistance, looks at the ways that changes in global economics

sort of weaken the strength of U.S. sanctions. So I think this is a pretty clear example of the way that things maybe, well, maybe on the one hand, you could say that sanctioning Russia is a lot, you know, it's a lot more, it's a lot bigger target than Iraq, right, in the 1990s. But we can also see that really, it doesn't seem to me like a very good endorsement of U.S. hegemony that the sanctions on Russia, and particularly on the oil. oil industry, once they were finally kind of agreed upon with people from the European Union, other collaborators, they've had a clear impact on the United States. So this seems like the U.S. might be getting weaker in terms of, well, I don't know. It seems like these sanctions are certainly not like many of the sanctions that we document in the book to the degree that they really are you know, pretty catastrophic for American citizens. And ironically, one of the main themes of the book

that we've been kind of tying together through our contributors is the ways that sanctions at the end of the day are about maximizing pain to the civilian population of a state, right? That's what sanctions do. That's economic warfare. And we see that happening to those of us in the who live in the United States right now right like the way that sanctions on Venezuela make life impossible for everyday Venezuelans we're getting a little taste of that in the United States right now right so I think that is worth noting and again as Nanny said it's kind of hard to to kind of speak from the eye of the hurricane but I think that that's certainly not that we're getting a taste

of oral in medicine but this is something that at least in my And my understanding hasn't happened really in the past, this direct blowback of sanctions. Right. It's not possible to have a final historical assessment, as you point out. But it does remind me a little bit about fears and concerns, many of which perhaps were born out during, say, the Iraq War, where the military venture, you know, was seen as imperial military overreach. In this case, I was just wondering, and we'll have to wait and see whether you can say this is neo-imperial sanctions overreach, you know, that it has had consequent effects that may not have been, you know, absolutely understood and that represent a kind of weakening of U.S.'s ability to really impose successfully. Usually, it's been on much smaller, you know, weak and isolated countries, and in this case, that has been countered. And, of course, we also see the same sort of dynamic, very risky and dangerous in that very hostile approach towards China to use economic kind of mechanisms to, you know, to isolate China.

That's obviously just not going to happen. So that was the drift of the question. I really appreciate your analysis on it. So thanks so much. But let me turn it over to Henry. Yeah. And I think that we've been going for just over an hour. And like I said, listeners, this is just the introduction to this mini series.

But I do want to turn to one point that we mentioned is that, you know, the U.S. is starting to feel the impacts of the sanctions that it is leading the charge towards. This is something that was brought up in Tim Beale's section, which is the chapter immediately after the introduction in part one of this book, which is that up until now, pretty much when the U.S. wanted to implement sanctions, it would not feel the result of those sanctions itself. It would be able to put the sanctions in place, impact the country. We've already talked about what the goals of this would be, but the U.S. never had to face any sort of repercussions itself from imposing sanctions on another country. But as Beale points out within his chapter

of the book, the modern era is a little bit different than it has been in decades previous, when we're talking about China's ability to retaliate being something that is not, that has not been seen previously. There haven't been other sanctioned countries in the past that would have had any sort of way to impact the United States in a retaliatory way. We're seeing it right now as a result of the sanctions that are being placed on Russia in terms of the sanctions being placed on Russia having a ripple effect throughout the world system, both in terms of European allies of the United States as well as the United States itself and all other countries. We've talked about the impact of how these sanctions are going to change food supplies to the

global south, for example. This is not something that we've seen in the past with sanctioned regimes, but we are going to increasingly see if, as we were just talking about, we are seeing a little bit more of a multipolar world or at least the end of American hegemony in whatever form that is. So I think that that's a really good way to tie a bow on that is to look at that section on Beal, that Beal put together. And I highly recommend the listeners to pick up the book. So listeners, again, we've been talking about sanctions as for Stuart Manny. I'm going to give you each the opportunity to say whatever final word you want, as this is the wrap up of the introductory segment. Listeners, stay tuned.

We'll be coming back with installments of this miniseries that will be focused on the case studies within this book. But, Stuart, why don't we start with you? What are your closing words on this work? Why do you think the listener should pick it up? I highly recommend all of them to do so. And then final thing, you know, what are you working on now and how can the listeners find what you're working on? Okay.

I guess I'll just start by saying thank you both so much. And not just for having us on, but for really reading the book in depth and giving our contributors the opportunity to speak to their case studies. To plug the book to listeners, I guess for me, the single kind of cardinal contribution of this text is the way that it tries to thread multiple geographical context and historical moments into one, maybe not one coherent, though sometimes not direct thread, which is that sanctions the application, of sanctions regimes has been something that's been going on kind of almost behind our backs or something we know about but don't think about for um at least the last 30 years and this book really tries to bring to the surface through case studies um and analyses by individuals often who either are active in these countries or um have knowledge about

about them that really try to bring to the surface the way that these sanctions have damaged civil society, damaged social movements, damaged social reproduction in their context. So this is the only book that I know of that really kind of brings together in a coherent fashion, these really well-documented cases of the way that U.S. foreign policy has caused just unmeasurable havoc for civil society within various contexts. As to me personally, I'm working on a book that looks at the sort of co-optation of protest movements in Brazil. Brazil has kind of been my actual research focus through graduate school and into the present. So I'm looking at kind of the way that right-wing activists were successfully able to co-opt protests in Brazil and kind of in the larger

conversation of the kind of decline of the pink tide in the mid-2010s and making an overall kind of critique of the ways that people in my field, and I think much more broadly, really fetishize these kind of octophanous protest movements that happen on digital media. So that's kind of my own research focus. And thank you, again, both of you so much. Excellent. And I hope that we can bring you back on to talk about that topic when that book is going to be coming out.

I see you rubbing your hands together. Listeners stay tuned. Yes. Manny, as for you, what are your final thoughts? Why should, why do you think the listener should pick up the book? What are you working on and how can the listeners, you know, follow up with you? Well, I think people should get a copy of the book however they can. So I think that's the main point and look forward to it coming out with Haymarket.

And so at the same time, I think the question that we are addressing in this book is crucial and weighs heavily on the future of the planet precisely because of its contribution to not just regional wars but global wars that are, we're seeing today. and we're seeing that sanctions are being combined with, you know, actual use of artillery and military troops and so forth. So I think we are addressing a very important matter. I also want to point out that in the book, we primarily deal with countries that are smaller, relatively speaking, under 50 million people. I think there's a possibility for certain states that are larger to be able to have the capacity to become more autarkic, independent, and it may actually have a positive effect in the sense that it reduces a certain class of people.

So, you know, one might return to socialism as a consequence of the destruction of a neoliberal economy or oligarchic economy. I mean, those are some of the thoughts that come to mind. I think that we really have to take into consideration the question of how Westerners, Americans are lied to. It's kind of interesting that most of the other world recognize the, you know, the kind of fallacies of the war that's going on right now and that most Americans have a very kind of a view that is constructed by the media and one that is unable to be shifted in any way whatsoever. And this includes the left, and it's a very, very serious issue. The left has all but abandoned any anti-war perspective. There hasn't been the capacity to create a solid and lasting anti-war movement, although there are many groups around the United States, Western Europe,

and throughout the world who oppose war. So I think that, you know, let's hope for the best with respect to the war that's now going on. It includes sanctions and it includes the military activity that is being engaged in, and we should oppose war in all its forms. As far as what I'm working on, actually, I'm working on a book called – migration as economic imperialism. And that book should come out early next year. And I address the question of why the neoliberal model for migration and how it benefits

poor countries is a fallacy. And in fact, it hurts countries that are in the global South. And this challenges the perspective of the major development agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF, even the UN, as well as the banks and financial system. And hopefully it will contribute to an appreciation for the importance of human beings crossing borders and open up borders, but at the same time allow people to live in their own countries. And, Mani, can I get you on the hook to come back on the show when that book is ready? Sure. Great. It's going to be published by Pauldi next year.

Excellent. Looking forward to that conversation, as I see, Adnan also looks very excited for it. Now, just reminder listeners, that the forthcoming installments of this series will be dropping every couple weeks from now. And you will see each of these case studies coming out in this series. If you want to follow Adnan listeners, which you should, you should find him on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain. That's A-D-N-A-N-A-H-U-S-A-I-N. You should definitely check out Adnan's other podcasts, which is the Mudgellis, not the radio-free Central Asia one, but the good Muddlis podcast. No CIA cut-out organizations here.

So you can find that by going to any podcast player that you want to, and that you should definitely check it out if you're interested in Islamic World Muslim Diaspora topics. Very interesting. You can find our co-host, Brett O'Shea, who was not able to find us today by going to Revolutionary Left Radio.com. You can find all three of the shows

that Brett does, including this one, on that website. And listeners, you can find me by going on Twitter at Huck-1995. Follow guerrilla history on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-S-Pod. And you can help support the show on Patreon, patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history again,

G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And that will help us keep the show on the air, so to say. Keep the lights on for us. So all of those contributions are highly appreciated. So until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.