In the last year there have been a record number of legislative efforts to block military actions, threatened or carried out by the Trump administration, that are seen as illegal or unconstitutional. This has included President Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran. Some of these efforts in Congress led to close votes in the House and Senate.
Now we have legislation introduced in the Senate to “direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Republic of Cuba that have not been authorized by Congress.” It was introduced March 12 by three Democratic senators, and the same legislation was introduced in the House March 24 by Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.).
The hostilities refer to the U.S. blockade that is currently keeping most oil away from Cuba, as the legislation explains. The main argument is that U.S. military participation in this blockade is unconstitutional unless it is approved by Congress. This is similar to the constitutional argument in other war powers resolutions. But the U.S. blockade of Cuba, combined with the sanctions that it is enforcing, raise additional issues that can be even more damning.
The U.S. government is directly engaged in collective punishment of the population of Cuba, which is well-documented. Collective punishment of civilians, when it takes place during armed conflict, is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It can be punishable as a war crime.
The Geneva Conventions are among the most widely accepted bodies of international law, adopted by all countries.
It is easy to see from recent events that the current economic sanctions against Cuba constitute collective punishment.
The U.S. cutoff of oil shipments to Cuba has had deadly consequences. More than 90% of Cuba’s electricity is normally dependent on oil-based fuel, and hospitals have been hit especially hard as blackouts have worsened. The New York Times interviewed doctors there and reported last week that “rapidly deteriorating conditions at hospitals and clinics across Cuba were causing deaths that would otherwise be preventable.” Fuel shortages are keeping doctors and nurses away from work and hospitals are canceling surgeries and delaying vaccines for children and life-saving treatments such as kidney dialysis and radiation therapy.
Over time the damage from sanctions shows up in national statistics. An article in a British pediatric journal earlier this year describes how the tightening of sanctions on Cuba since 2017 has led to more than a doubling of infant mortality over the last decade. The sanctions have caused shortages of medicines, equipment, fuel, food and electricity as well as outbreaks of diseases that were previously prevented.
The U.S. government is collectively punishing civilians in dozens of countries through its imposition of broad, unilateral economic sanctions. A study published by Lancet Global Health in August that I co-authored estimated that 564,000 people die annually as a result of these sanctions. They are mostly imposed by the United States. This is comparable to the annual deaths worldwide from armed conflict.
But these acts of collective punishment cannot generally be prosecuted as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, because the conventions apply only when there is armed conflict. U.N. experts have argued for many years that something designated as a crime when soldiers are shooting and bombing should also be a crime when they are not.
This is where the blockade of Cuba comes in. It is armed conflict, because the United States has been using military force to maintain the blockade. That means the current collective punishment of Cuban civilians legally constitutes a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the United States would allow a Russian tanker to deliver oil to Cuba this week, the nation’s first oil delivery since Jan. 9. It would take some weeks to be refined and distributed and could last a few weeks once it is in use.
But this does not appear to be a step toward ending the U.S. sanctions, or blockade, against Cuba. And Trump continues to threaten an escalated military intervention to implement the regime change that has been sought for more than 60 years by the U.S. government. On Friday he said of the military: “Sometimes you have to use it. And Cuba is next, by the way.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is inflicting collective punishment on some of the dozens of countries that rely on Cuba’s international medical missions. For decades, Havana has been sending doctors and other health professionals to other countries to provide medical care and training. In 2016, the program had more than 50,000 health professionals in 67 countries. There are many articles in medical and academic publications that have praised this program’s success, for example in bringing healthcare to “unserved and underserved communities” and to places “where local doctors will not work” including remote rural areas.
Now Trump has been threatening these countries to force them to withdraw from the Cuban programs, thus leaving many thousands or more people without healthcare. It is a strikingly callous disregard for their lives, and all just to punish Cuba, a nation that poses no security threat to the United States.
Broad economic sanctions are barbaric, like medieval sieges starving a population to force surrender. Instead of iron and fire, today’s deadly weapons are computers deployed throughout the international financial system, which is dominated by the United States and its currency.
These sanctions take the lives of babies and children disproportionately. An estimated 51% of the deaths from sanctions in the Lancet Global Health study were children younger than 5.
Sanctions have become what the U.S. Treasury calls “the tool of first resort” for issues of “national security.” This could be because the economic violence that targets civilians is less conspicuous than the violence of armed conflict.
Very few Americans know that unilateral economic sanctions — the vast majority of which are imposed by the United States — take so many hundreds of thousands of innocent lives every year. They do not know that these sanctions target the civilian population; their government tells them that sanctions punish “the bad guys.” Although U.S. officials have also repeatedly said the quiet part out loud, about how sanctions can cause suffering and discontent that brings people into the streets to fight for the regime change that Washington seeks.
To invoke the Geneva Conventions and prosecute American officials for use of sanctions is a possibility in the future, whether in a national court, an international forum or some other venue with jurisdiction. But most immediately, as more people in the United States, including members of Congress — as well as other countries — understand this lethal economic violence and collective punishment as a war crime, it will become more difficult for the U.S. government to commit these crimes. A similar process has already been advancing with the war powers resolutions of the last year, and since 2018.
Trump has generally acted as though he can ignore the law and the Constitution, but this is not sustainable. The Supreme Court decision of Feb. 20 took away a large part of his power to use tariffs as sanctions and punishment. Among other acts of extortion, this was an important weapon that he was using to enforce the blockade against Cuba. Bringing the Geneva Conventions and their prohibition of war crimes into the fight against lethal economic sanctions can raise the legal and political cost of enforcing them. It will also put perpetrators on notice that they could be held accountable.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy.”