US intimidation won’t succeed in bringing nations to their knees

The Donald Trump administration reimposed a first batch of economic sanctions on Iran this week while continuing to wage trade wars against the rest of the world. What the sanctions and punitive tariffs have in common is the belief that the United States, given its economic and military might, can bring other nations to their knees through coercion and bullying.

History, however, has proven that such tactics fail most of the time. The US has imposed an embargo on its small island neighbor Cuba for 60 years, yet the embargo, called a blockade by Cubans, has not crumbled the Cuban government.

The same is true for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea which has also been heavily sanctioned by the US government over many years. The joke in Washington among some Korean Peninsula experts is that many US politicians think the regime in Pyongyang will have collapsed when they wake up the next morning. That has proven wrong day after day and year after year.

Iran, too, has survived decades of brutal US sanctions.

I have not yet been to Iran and the DPRK but I have visited Cuba three times. What the US sanctions have achieved there is impoverishing the Cuban people, especially women and children.

It is disappointing that US pundits, while criticizing Trump’s trade wars and reimposing economic sanctions on Iran, have not used words like coercion, intimidation, blackmailing and bullying to describe his behavior.