At the last Eurasian Security Conference in Minsk, I had the formidable honor of moderating the panel on sanctions, in the presence of representatives of the world's most reviled, and therefore most sanctioned, countries. To get an idea of the situation, I did a little research on ChaptGPT, Google and other popular search engines to see what people thought.
The results were edifying, to say the least. Take a look
The most punitive country on the planet is, unsurprisingly, the United States. In second place on the podium is the European Union, followed by the United Kingdom, then Canada, Australia and, in sixth place only, the United Nations Security Council. This means, on the one hand, that the vast majority of sanctions are imposed by a handful of Anglo-Saxon countries - slavishly accompanied by their European poodles - and, on the other, that these sanctions are unilateral, i.e. outside international law, since in international law only sanctions decided by the Security Council have the force of law. Switzerland, which claims to respect international law, should be alarmed by this.
On the other hand, we find the most heavily sanctioned countries. The rankings generally put Iran in the lead, followed by Russia, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Myanmar, and finally Belarus, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
No surprises here either. The two tables provide an excellent summary of the war waged by the Anglo-Saxon world against its supposed enemies, the dozen or so countries that resist its supremacism and its claims to world domination.
China is not on the list: due to its size and the close interweaving of its economy with Anglo-Saxon globalization, it escapes sanctions. Or rather, they are applied in a roundabout way, in the form of tariff wars imposed on its products and boycotts of its companies under the pretext of espionage.
Since Russia's military intervention in Ukraine in 2022, the sanctions business has literally exploded. The Castellum.AI website has compiled a list. Out of the 19,535 anti-Russian sanctions imposed to date (the site is updated daily), 2,753 have been imposed by Switzerland (USA 4,869, Canada 3,176), i.e. 30% more than the European Union (2,130), France (2,071) or even the United Kingdom (1,842), which is by far the most vociferous Western country against Russia. Australia and Japan close the gap with less than 1,400 sanctions each.
The championship of the most sanctioned countries is unquestionably won by Russia, with almost 22,000 sanctions on its roll, if we include those imposed before 2022. Iran just exceeds 5,000, while modest Syria wins the bronze medal with 2,867 sanctions. North Korea misses out on the podium by a mere 660 sanctions, with Belarus, Venezuela and Myanmar rounding out the top three with over a thousand sanctions.
It is amusing - or rather distressing - to note that Switzerland, which constantly repeats that it is aligning itself with Europe, is in fact doing much worse, and is instead mimicking the United States, no doubt to please its true master and protect its financial center from the harassment that would inevitably befall it at the slightest incongruity. This overzealousness, this obsequiousness, this shameful cowardice are revolting from a country that claims to be independent.
All the more so when our country forgets itself when it comes to applying sanctions or inflicting punishment on other countries guilty of crimes against democracy and human rights. Our ministers take offence when Putin is suspected of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia, but find nothing to say when a so-called democratic country - Israel in this case - massacres over 18,000 women and children in Gaza and Lebanon. It's true that he said nothing either when half a million children died as a result of American sanctions in Iraq in the 1990s. Did you say banality of evil?
By Guy Mettan
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