US Sanctions: A Brutal But Failed Weapon of War (WIRN Webinar)

The largest number of sanctioned countries are in Africa, deliberately disrupting development. Throughout West Asia strangling U.S. economic sanctions in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen go hand and hand with U.S. / Israeli bombing.

But US sanctions, along with Trump’s tariffs and wars, have failed to reverse the decline of the US Empire. They are accelerating a unified global resistance and movement towards multipolarity, as can be seen in the growing influence of BRICS and regional trade alliances. The failure of sanctions inevitably pushes the US into military and covert actions attempting to overthrow governments that will not capitulate or compromise their sovereignty.

This webinar will discuss the deadly effects of US sanctions as a weapon of war and explain how nations are building new forms of resistance and survival.

Speaker : Sara Flounders is a political writer, activist and anti-war organizer since the 1960s. She helps coordinate the International Action Center (IAC), United National Antiwar Coalition(UNAC) and the SanctionsKill Campaign. She is a Contributing Editor of Workers World – Workers.org a daily on-line Marxist news source. Flounders has co-authored and edited ten books on such subjects as the duplicity of military recruiters, the injustice of U.S. wars and sanctions and the immorality of America’s use of weaponry containing depleted uranium.

Flounders has traveled to and organized delegations to a number of sanctioned countries, including Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and China, for the express purpose of building solidarity with targeted countries and defending the right of oppressed and targeted people to all forms of resistance.
Her work focuses on organizing demonstrations, direct actions, picket lines, community forums, speak-outs, war-crimes tribunals. She consistently links U.S. wars and sanctions for corporate profit to the growing repression and racism at home.
“My goal is to build confidence in the potential of powerful grassroots movements for change within the U.S.”The US Empire is now sanctioning 40 countries, most visibly Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. These sanctions, a violation of international law, are explicitly aimed destabilizing and overturning countries that defy US hegemony. Sanctions are a devastating weapon of choice, deliberately causing widespread starvation, disease, and poverty in the targeted countries. In every case, the poorest and the weakest – infants, children, the chronically ill and the elderly – suffer the worst impact of sanctions.