Thread by @MaxBlumenthal

I just read @RichardMNephew's "The Art of Sanctions."

Nephew, ex-Obama State Dept sanctions coordinator, clinically & chillingly details how pain is the essence of the US global sanctions regime.

Unfortunately, he hasn't been honest about the contents of his own book. Thread:

Nephew claimed he never wrote that sanctions are designed to hurt ordinary people.

Yet here he describes sanctions against Iran that he personally designed and which wrecked the country's economy & currency, caused mass unemployment and inflation, as a "tremendous success"

Nephew pats himself & the Obama admin on the back for tripling the price of chicken "during important Iranian holiday periods" and preventing Iranians from repairing their cars.

At the same time, the US expanded imports of communications tech to Iran to foment social unrest.

Nephew claims oligarchs are the "main target" of US sanctions.

But he details here how the US deprived ordinary Iranians of purchasing power while choosing to not sanction luxury goods, insulating the wealthy "as a deliberate way of prying apart the regime and the people."

Nephew even acknowledges that the Obama administration sanctions he oversaw against Iran "directly contributed" to making medicine and medical devices unattainable for poor and working class Iranians.

This is what the Caesar sanctions are currently doing to ordinary Syrians.

Nephew laments that US sanctions on Russia have not caused adequate pain on its civilian population.

Here, he complains that food is plentiful in Moscow, and appears to wish more food items would become unavailable to ordinary Russians.

He says he wants to "increase pain."

Nephew's framework for US sanctions:

-Apply pain to target state's most vulnerable sectors
-Shatter the state's political & social resolve
-Force state to cede to US demands

This is a clinical & chilling description of current US policy toward at least 1/3 of the world.

Nephew appears so infected w/ American exceptionalism he truly believes sanctions exist to protect civilians, and not to enforce US global hegemony and the dominance of US financial capital.

Incidentally, his @ColumbiaUEnergy dept is sponsored by the oil industry & oligarchs.

While Nephew acknowledges US sanctions are focused on causing pain, like most Beltway FP types, he sees the policy as noble.

Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton has written extensively on how the most evil acts have been carried out by those convinced of their own transcendent good.

Finally, Nephew's views are firmly in line with the Beltway foreign policy consensus and will surely inform a future Biden State Department (likely led by Susan Rice). His book is notable only for its candor about the US sanctions regime and its pain-based framework.