ICC Judge Guillou loses all US IT accounts after MAGA sanctions [FR]

As much as I approve of sanctions in the general case as a tool for projecting political pressure, general sanctions against citizens of an ally are a definite indication (if more were needed) that the sanctioning country is at best an unreliable ally.

Targeted sanctions against an allied state can be good: they're a tool for a state to say that as as friends we won't help you with a specific thing (often an ill-advised military action). General sanctions against a non-ally can be good too, and extending the sanctions to politically-important figures makes sense (for example, Russia and oligarchs).

General sanctions against individuals where their country isn't sanctioned? That's bullying. The ICC derives its authority from its members, and if the US doesn't like that then it should take that up with the member states, not the individuals.

International politics is fuzzy enough (and the current public face of the USA is unstable enough) that it's definitely not a good idea -- but I'm tempted to say that we (as in: the UK) should draw a line and tell the US that if they want to play silly games then they're going to win silly prizes. And that if they want to sanction ICC officials (or, indeed, officials of other organisations that we participate in as a country) then they'll need to sanction the whole of the UK. It's probably a good thing I'm not a politician.

> As much as I approve of sanctions in the general case as a tool for projecting political pressure

Can I ask you why you approve of them? The only people they hurt are the average everyday citizens, the working poor in the target country. And while the naive expectation might be that the economic hardship would lead to them turning on their government and pressuring them to correct the behaviour that lead to sanctions, in turns out in practice it actually boosts support for their government as they come to see the sanctioning countries as their enemies.

It should be abundantly clear how much of a failure sanctions are from how easily Russia ignores them while continuing to invade Ukraine for three years and counting. North Korea has been subject to a virtually global embargo since 1950, a full 75 years at this point. It has not affected the position of their government in any way at all, nor did it prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons, but has rendered the people utterly desolate to the point of mostly not even having electricity. See also Cuba, Iran. I would really like to know what people see in this policy that seems to only exist to inflict undue suffering.