America has lost the proxy war in Syria and is now looking at punishing ordinary Syrians for the actions of the Syrian government. The so called ‘Caesar Act’, officially known as the Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act, aims to cut off multilateral or direct commerce with Syria’s ruling Baath party, effectively inducing record inflation, poverty and market exclusion.
Rebuilding the country after ten years of fighting would be near impossible if external contractors cannot be engaged without American economic retribution. That is effectively what the Caesar Act is designed to do, target the rebuilding of infrastructure, energy and state services. That means schools, hospitals and electricity plants.
Neighbouring Lebanon, which is facing its own economic collapse, would benefit from the rebuilding of Syria as one of its main trading partners, as such many Lebanese see America’s actions as also targeting their livelihoods. In the past few months American dollars have been withdrawn from Lebanese banks at record rates, which has led to the collapse of the Lebanese lira. Both Syria and Lebanon are now struggling to get access to the US dollar making it extremely difficult to trade internationally and access commodities.
The leverage America has with the US dollar being the reserve global currency forms part of its economic sanctions regime which has been in place since at least the Cuban missile crisis. Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and Iraq, to name a few, have all and continue to be targeted by economic sanctions, often unilaterally by the US. As of 2019 America has almost 8000 sanctions in place globally. In Iraq alone US sanctions in the 1990s caused the death of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi kids. Madelaine Albright, US ambassador to the UN at the time, said the price was worth it.
Sanctions rarely accomplish the desired effect of changing a government’s political stance or their actions. One only needs to look at countries like Cuba, which have been under embargo for more than 50 years, to realise that their effectiveness is dubious and their consequences to ordinary people severe. In the age of the COVID-19 for example, sanctions on Iran meant that people and health professionals could not access essential medical supplies and medicines. In a paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, it was estimated that US sanctions in 1995 cost the American economy $15 to $19 billion in lost export revenue which translated to a loss of