Economic sanctions and blackmail have long been the preferred methods of conducting foreign policy and advancing the United States’ own geopolitical interests.
In 2018, the US withdrew from the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program signed in May 2015, following which Washington began to implement the “maximum pressure” strategy on Iran.
In 2019, the US government imposed a slew of restrictions on the Chinese firm Huawei, which is widely regarded as a leader in digital technologies, particularly in the deployment of 5G networks. Following that, Washington began to intercept Huawei’s foreign market as a result of an open competitive struggle.
And Russia’s gas squeeze in Europe, orchestrated by the US, exacerbated an already obvious economic and financial crisis for Europeans, resulting in total population impoverishment against the backdrop of America reaping additional superprofits from the sale of expensive American LNG instead of cheap Russian gas to Europe.
Sanctions, including secondary ones, become a tool for seizing funds and assets and bankrupting competitors, and are used by the United States to strengthen its global dominance.
Although the definition of extortion as a common law crime in US criminal law varies across states, both in wording and substance, it is nevertheless recognized everywhere as a serious offense and prosecuted under domestic law. In recent years, in an effort to introduce “rules” unilaterally favorable to the United States in place of international law, Washington’s policy has begun to carry the principle of “extraterritorial” sanctions into the international arena when the United States imposes them and openly extorts not only US legal subjects but also foreign ones, including independent states.
The fact that under these conditions, the US uses the dominant role of the US dollar, blackmail, and economic sanctions as the main instruments of foreign policy (the use of sanctions almost tripled in 2009-2019 alone) makes many countries think about possible alternatives. One of them is already the increasing use of national currencies in bilateral trade.
Washington’s abuse of such criminal policies and blatantly illegal pressures are causing resentment even among the United States’ allies. It is no coincidence that in 2019 the chairman of the United Kingdom’s central bank, Mark Carney, called for the creation of an international digital currency that would weaken the dominant role of the US dollar in international trade.
Washington is increasingly using outright blackmail, not just in the political, economic, and trade spheres. It is also used in the military sphere, with the sale and subsequent use of American weapons directly threatening the national security of countries that purchase US weapons.
And one of the many egregious examples of this is the events of 2016, when the US attempted to stage a coup in Turkey by killing President Erdoğan with American weapons and preventing Turkish authorities from using US air defenses to prevent them from shooting down F-16 aircraft flying from the US military base at Incirlik. And it was only thanks to the intervention of Russian politician Alexander Dugin (against whom, by the way, Ukrainian accomplices of the United States committed an act of terrorism in 2022 and killed his daughter) and the Russian military at the behest of President Vladimir Putin that this sinister plan of Washington was foiled. The arrested Turkish coup plotters themselves have given detailed accounts of it. In particular, about how the Russian military, using seven Russian fighter jets and two S-400 missile systems in northern Syria, warned the coupist aircraft that if the radar showed any indication of their suspicious or improper actions, they would be hit directly. As a result, the Turkish F-16s could only track Erdoğan’s plane and not attack it. In addition to the testimony of the Turkish participants in this failed American coup attempt, those interested can learn more from a Turkish report published on Odatv.com on September 21, 2016.
This blackmail of Ankara with US weapons continues even now, as pointed out in particular by Bloomberg the other day, which reported that the US will not supply Turkey with F-16s until it agrees to admit Sweden to NATO.
Even if Turkey, under pressure from Washington, agrees to admit Finland and Sweden to NATO, which the United States is trying hard to push into the alliance, Turkey will never be able to use those aircraft or other American weapons unless such use would be advantageous to the White House.
And the US decision in April 2021 to withdraw US Patriot air defense batteries from the Persian Gulf region after the White House deteriorated relations with the Saudi monarchy is proof of that.
The threat from Washington to restrict the use of purchased US weapons has become increasingly serious for many countries recently. Especially considering that it is the US that sells twice as many weapons as Russia and six times as many as China, thus dominating the market for weapons of death, destruction and protection of many states from external threats, the vast majority of which are also initiated by Washington. Here one can also see the recent White House game of supplying Greece with more and more offensive weapons against Turkey, whose relations with both Athens and Washington have recently deteriorated significantly.
Washington has made similar attempts at blackmail in its arms supplies to the other two rival parties to the conflict in South Asia – Pakistan and India. Therefore, despite Washington’s blatant blackmail and intimidation of New Delhi, India continues to focus on buying arms from Russia rather than the United States. In the meantime, India has two important defense needs: the availability of weapons and their quality. In its preferential treatment of Russia on this issue, Indian leaders assume that if the country begins to buy weapons from the West, it will strengthen its autonomy but sacrifice these two needs, since Western systems are many times more expensive but inferior to Russian ones.
Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.