Sanctions effectiveness is John Kiriakou’s critique of how the United States has come to use economic sanctions. He argues sanctions have been imposed against so many disfavored countries that nations like China have simply built workarounds — noting that in China he found it difficult to pay with a Visa card because merchants preferred a domestic “Octopus” card; a shopkeeper explained that the Visa card has to route through New York, while the Octopus card routes through Shanghai, insulating users from U.S. sanctions entirely.[1] He says the overuse of sanctions has let disfavored countries “finally work out a way” to evade them, weakening U.S. leverage in the process.
Kiriakou’s view is that sanctions should be reserved for the worst actors and imposed in concert with other countries — pointing to sanctions on apartheid South Africa as the model example of sanctions actually helping to bring down a government.[2] By contrast, he argues sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela have the opposite effect: they strengthen nationalism and let a country’s leader blame the U.S. rather than face domestic blame, creating an “us against him” narrative that shores up the targeted government instead of weakening it.[3]