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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">When sanctions fail, power turns to seizure: The unraveling of the western coercive order</h1><p class="gmail-">As Washington's sanctions model collapses, its desperate measures reveal not strength but a system in decline.</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><i></i><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/peiman-salehi" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">Peiman Salehi </a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span style="color:rgb(84,88,94)">DEC 22, 2025 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/when-sanctions-fail-power-turns-to-seizure-the-unraveling-of-the-western-coercive-order">https://thecradle.co/articles/when-sanctions-fail-power-turns-to-seizure-the-unraveling-of-the-western-coercive-order</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="https://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/876eb116-df48-11f0-99a0-00163e02c055.jpeg" alt="" width="408" height="193" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>Photo Credit: The Cradle</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span class="gmail-article-body"><p style="text-align:justify">The recent escalation in <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/venezuela-charges-washington-with-theft-piracy-after-seizure-of-oil-tanker">US\u2013Venezuela tensions</a> is often framed narrowly in tactical terms: the seizure of a Venezuelan <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-preparing-seize-more-tankers-off-venezuelas-coast-after-first-ship-taken-2025-12-11/">oil tanker</a>, new sanctions targeting Venezuelan <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/12/us-slaps-sanctions-on-maduro-family-venezuelan-tankers-what-we-know">President Nicolas Maduro</a>\u2019s inner circle, and a publicized diplomatic exchange with <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/putin-doubles-down-backing-maduro-amid-mounting-us-pressure-venezuela">Moscow</a>.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Individually,
these developments appear episodic. Together, they signal the decay of a
coercive model that no longer delivers, one that is mutating into forms
of pressure more <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/gunboats-follow-sanctions-in-us-strategy-on-venezuela">overtly securitized</a> and legally precarious.</p><p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Sanctions as doctrine, now unraveling</strong></p><p style="text-align:justify">For decades, the US treated sanctions as a tool of choice: an <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/sanctions-as-deadly-as-war-lancet-study-finds-us-led-sanctions-kill-over-500000-people-annually">economic weapon</a> designed to force political compliance without military engagement. </p><p style="text-align:justify">Washington\u2019s broader ambitions in Venezuela are rooted in a deeper strategic drive to control the world\u2019s <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/empire-repurposed-washingtons-final-frontier-is-venezuela">largest proven oil reserves</a>. Years of financial isolation, asset freezes, and trade blockades were intended to <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34294">destabilize</a> and dismantle the Bolivarian state.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Instead,
the Venezuelan state adapted. Oil exports were rerouted to alternative
markets, payment channels shifted away from US-dominated financial
systems, and strategic partnerships with Russia, <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/iran-and-venezuela-bypass-us-sanctions-with-ship-to-ship-oil-transfers-report">Iran</a>,
and China deepened. What was intended as economic suffocation became a
catalyst for diversification and geopolitical realignment beyond
Washington\u2019s reach.</p><p style="text-align:justify">The recent tanker
seizure must be understood in this context. When sanctions fail to
deliver the desired political outcomes, pressure does not disappear; it
transmutes. Economic coercion gives way to measures that increasingly
blur the line between financial pressure and overtly securitized action.
Asset seizures, secondary sanctions, and public legal measures are
often presented as enforcement, but they signal diminishing leverage
rather than strategic confidence.</p><p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Europe\u2019s hesitation reveals structural fragility</strong></p><p style="text-align:justify">This
mutation is not confined to US policy toward sanctioned states in the
Global South; it is increasingly visible at the core of the western
financial system itself.</p><p style="text-align:justify">That same pattern of coercive fatigue is mirrored in Europe. The EU, despite immobilizing over $300 billion in <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/russias-frozen-assets-everything-you-need-to-know/a-75180873">Russian central bank assets</a>
since the Ukraine war, has failed to move from freeze to outright
seizure. The hesitation is not a matter of will, but of structural fear.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Full
seizure would set a precedent that undermines the legal foundations of
western financial systems, raising fears of capital flight, reciprocal
retaliation, and the erosion of trust in European jurisdictions as
neutral custodians of global wealth. </p><p style="text-align:justify">As
a result, European policymakers have resorted to half-measures, such as
redirecting interest generated by the assets while leaving the
principal untouched. This paralysis is itself revealing. It illustrates
that when sanctions lose their coercive effect, escalation does not
automatically restore leverage. </p><p style="text-align:justify">Instead,
it exposes the limits of a system that depends on legal legitimacy to
exercise power. The inability to move from freeze to seizure reflects a
deeper crisis: the sanctions regime can immobilize assets, but it cannot
safely convert economic pressure into strategic resolution without
destabilizing the very order it was designed to protect.</p><p style="text-align:justify">As economist Francisco Rodriguez, who has studied sanctions efficacy extensively, <a href="https://www.securityincontext.com/posts/the-human-consequences-of-economic-sanctions-a-conversation-with-francisco-rodriguez?">notes</a>:
\u201cIf sanctions fail, as the empirical evidence tells you that most of
the time they do, they do not reach their intended ends.\u201d Venezuela, in
this regard, is not an exception but a particularly glaring example.</p><p style="text-align:justify">The
difference now is that Washington is operating in an international
environment where escalation carries higher systemic risk and with fewer
mechanisms guaranteed to maintain influence.</p><p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Institutions under pressure, not just states</strong></p><p style="text-align:justify">As
state-level sanctions stall, the coercive net is widening to ensnare
institutions. The International Criminal Court (ICC) became a target
after pursuing investigations that could implicate US or allied
personnel in war crimes. Earlier this year, Washington <a href="https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/08/imposing-further-sanctions-in-response-to-the-iccs-ongoing-threat-to-americans-and-israelis">imposed sanctions</a> on ICC officials, including French judge Nicolas Guillou, who <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/nicolas-guillou-french-icc-judge-sanctioned-by-the-us-you-are-effectively-blacklisted-by-much-of-the-world-s-banking-system_6747628_4.html?">described</a> the outcome as being \u201ceffectively blacklisted by much of the world\u2019s banking system.\u201d</p><p style="text-align:justify">But
such tactics are losing bite. A growing bloc of Global South nations
now rallies behind targeted institutions, offering financial workarounds
and political solidarity. The sanctions regime is encountering not only
diminishing returns but also active defiance.</p><p style="text-align:justify"><strong>From sanctions to speech suppression</strong></p><p style="text-align:justify">As
economic coercion loses traction, the impulse to suppress dissent has
entered the digital sphere. Sanctions logic now extends to information
ecosystems: <a href="https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-874946">account suspensions</a>,
deplatforming, and opaque moderation policies are being deployed
against analysts, academics, and commentators critical of US-aligned
militarism \u2013 especially in contexts like the genocide in Gaza.</p><p style="text-align:justify">These
are not formal sanctions, but they function similarly. They aim not to
persuade, but to exclude \u2013 limiting access to audiences, resources, and
professional networks.</p><p style="text-align:justify">What
distinguishes western intervention is not dissent itself, but dissent
that challenges the moral legitimacy of powerful institutions or allied
states \u2013 and it is this that often triggers economic or informational
pressure.</p><p style="text-align:justify">But as with financial repression, these methods are producing countercurrents. Just as <a href="https://www.ilo.org/about-ilo/ilo-and-multilateral-system/ilo-and-brics#:~:text=The%20BRICS%20is%20a%20forum,South%20Africa%2C%20United%20Arab%20Emirates.">BRICS</a> and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (<a href="https://eng.sectsco.org/">SCO</a>)
emerged from the ruins of sanctions, decentralized platforms and
alternative media are rising to challenge western monopoly over digital
discourse.</p><p style="text-align:justify">When power relies on
silencing rather than engagement, it signals not strength but
constraint. The attempt to suppress dissenting voices mirrors the
broader exhaustion of coercive authority in a world no longer organized
around a single hegemonic center.</p><p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Venezuela and the counter-coercion pivot</strong></p><p style="text-align:justify">The
human cost of sanctions has also been repeatedly documented by
international observers. In an official visit to Venezuela, the UN
special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive
measures found that sectoral sanctions and asset freezes had a <strong>\u201c</strong><a href="https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/48/59/Add.2">devastating impact on the entire population</a>,<strong>\u201d</strong> exacerbating economic collapse and undermining access to basic services.</p><p style="text-align:justify">This
assessment is not unique to Venezuela. It captures the core
contradiction of the sanctions order: vast human suffering without
corresponding political transformation. Sanctions do not merely impose
costs on elites. They ripple through societies, intensifying social
hardship without guaranteeing compliance.</p><p style="text-align:justify">For
much of the Global South, this reality is neither abstract nor new.
Decades of exposure to economic coercion have produced adaptation rather
than submission. Financial sovereignty, energy diversification, and
strategic nonalignment have become necessities rather than ideological
choices. States that once relied on western systems have increasingly
cultivated alternatives through regional partnerships and non-western
economic networks.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Venezuela today
reflects this broader shift. Rather than isolation, it has pursued
alternative integration. Rather than political collapse, it has
reinforced strategic partnerships with those who share similar
experiences of coercion. The outcome is not fragmentation but
consolidation outside western frameworks.</p><p style="text-align:justify">This pattern is mirrored in other contexts, such as <a href="https://www.sundialpress.co/2025/09/03/rising-parallel-economies-in-iran-a-threat-to-the-power-of-sanctions/">Iran</a> and <a href="https://jamestown.org/russian-sanction-evasion-drives-development-of-alternative-international-economic-system/">Russia,</a> where
sanctions intended to isolate have instead accelerated the development
of parallel economic and diplomatic structures. Energy routes, payment
mechanisms, and financial linkages once considered peripheral are now
central to global economic flows.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Washington\u2019s
response to these developments has been to intensify pressure even as
returns diminish. But coercion without legitimacy is difficult to
sustain. Each new round of sanctions exposes structural limits rather
than reinforcing authority.</p><p style="text-align:justify">The
collapse of the sanctions order will not be linear. It will be uneven
and contested. But its direction is clear. Instruments built for a
unipolar era no longer function in a multipolar world, where targeted
states share support networks, distribute risk, and build autonomy.</p><p style="text-align:justify">What
is unfolding there is not a localized dispute but part of a broader
transition away from economic coercion as the organizing principle of
global power. Once a strategy, it has become theater \u2013 and the curtain
is already starting to fall.</p></span></div></div></div></div>
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