Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist and professor, pointed out during his speech this Thursday at the international videoconference Unilateral coercive measures: disrespect for international law and serious human consequences that unilateral coercive measures are very powerful, do not generate cost and do not need to mobilize armies.
In this sense, he explained that these measures generate as much damage as a war, because through bureaucratic maneuvers bank accounts are closed or banks that do business with the victim countries are threatened. “It is a horrendous weapon that violates laws; and it’s done for really stupid reasons”.
The economist highlighted that 98% of the coercive measures imposed on Venezuela have to do with Donald Trump’s “crazy idea” that it was an essential element to win the elections in Florida in 2020. “He was not an ardent opponent of Nobody, Maduro did not care; but he wanted to win over Florida and Marco Rubio decided that he had to either launch a war or crush Venezuela”.
He specified that the consequences of these measures are enormous, even when they are not politically efficient, “because they do not translate into political consequences, they are not even effective from a foreign policy point of view. But they are highly destructive”.
He explained that these attacks have meant a 80% drop in the Gross Domestic Product of the Bolivarian nation, “the economy of Venezuela went from $7,000 in 2016 to $4,400 in 2021 (…) There is no doubt that the reason for this, are the sanctions, this is not a bad management of the economy, it is a crushing of the economy”.
He condemned that the countries of the world do not speak out against these measures, “most countries should be horrified by what is happening and reject this attitude of the United States”.
He stressed the need to stop these unilateral “sanctions”, as well as to continue to urge the United Nations (UN) to reject these measures. At the same time, he called on Venezuela’s neighboring countries to raise their voices against these illegal actions.
“This madness must be stopped. We must increase awareness of the arbitrary nature and illegality, the damage it causes and its inefficiency (…) We have so many crises in this world today, between COVID-19, climate change and other natural disasters, that if we do not work together to solve these problems we are doomed”, he sentenced.