While much of the country was watching the testimony of Michael Cohen on Wednesday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was questioning former Secretary of State Madeline Albright in a separate, largely vacant hearing room about sanctions and the pitfalls of past U.S. military interventions.
“Some scholars and practitioners of foreign policy have questioned whether sanctions are effective in changing the behavior of certain governments,” Omar said, pointing out that economic sanctions can have dire effects on the innocent populations of targeted countries.
Albright, who once infamously told 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children due to sanctions were “worth it” to get rid of then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said sanctions still have a role to play in American foreign policy.
Sanctions should be understood as a foreign policy tactic between diplomacy and force, explained Albright.
“We have learned a lot about sanctions,” said Albright. “We learned that comprehensive sanctions, which we did in Iraq, hurt the people, and we began to look at targeted or smart sanctions.”
Omar and Albright’s exchange came during a hearing (pdf) in the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday entitled “The Trump Administration’s Foreign Policy: A Mid-Term Assessment.” Albright was on hand to discuss the administration’s priorities and didn’t hold back in her assessment of the first two years of the Trump doctrine.
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