The economic sanctions rightfully denounced by former Virginia State Senator Richard Black at the Schiller Institute’s recent conference as “the most cruel and barbaric type of warfare that we can wage” against nations, has become so central to today’s imperial geopolitical system that being a “sanction specialist” has become a career choice. Such specialists founded their own “professional” institution in 2018, the “Association of Certified Sanctions Specialists,” to help its more than 1,000 current members in 40-50 countries “to network and grow as a sanctions professional,” in a field where “career opportunities abound.”
The ACSS website (https://sanctionsassociation.org/about-us/) defines sanctions as the “deliberate, government-inspired withdrawal, or threat of withdrawal, of customary trade and financial relations with a target country in an effort to change that country’s policies,” a definition taken from Gary Hufbauer & Barbara Oegg’s August 2001 “A Short Survey of Economic Sanctions,” published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which appears to revel in publishing studies on how to use sanctions.
