Newsweek Discovers Sanctions Have Consequences, Two Decades Late
Newsweek's exclusive on Donald Trump's Venezuela strategy 'risking backfiring' is a masterclass in historical amnesia. The piece frames US interventionism as a novel 'gamble,' rather than a bipartisan tradition of destabilizing sovereign nations for geopolitical gain. One might wonder where this 'concern' was when the US backed a coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002, or imposed crippling sanctions
that have directly caused economic collapse and humanitarian crises (Reuters, 2019 data shows sanctions cut Venezuela's oil production by 700,000 barrels per day). Instead of addressing the documented impacts of these policies – like the Lancet report in 2019 linking U.S. sanctions to over 40,000 deaths in Venezuela – Newsweek prefers to speculate on the 'risk' of a strategy that has consistently
impoverished populations while failing to install desired leaders. It's almost as if the 'backfiring' isn't a risk, but the predictable, tragic outcome of a consistent foreign policy.