Discussion post: Using Economic Sanctions to Fight Terrorism in Us
They are a different form of economic sanctions which includes imports and exports restrictions, trade embargoes, foreign assistance denials, and prohibition of the economic transaction as well as the freezing of foreign assets (McLean et al., 2018). United State defence has recently embarked on the use of economic sanction to fight terrorism. Application of economic sanction to fight terrorism in use is a coercive approach to eradicate the group (McLean et al., 2018). It is a method of weakening the terrorist groups without the use of physical force. The approach is used to minimize the impact on innocent individuals within a given state. The best economic sanction tool capable of fighting terrorism by the US federal government is freezing of foreign assists. The aim is to pressure the terrorist group in all means. Freezing their assets would destabilize the group as they would be financially weak; hence they cannot extend their territory (McLean et al., 2018).
Further, by freezing their accounts, they will lack support to fund terrorist acts. They will not be able to perform experiments in their effort to come up with new strategies of attacking people. Weakening them financially will result in the restructuring of groups in that they will lack funding to support their motives and hence losing focus (McLean et al., 2018). This will allow the federal state government time to easily attack their stronghold and therefore minimize their hostility to the society. Further, it will mitigate the terrorist’s group economic welfare which will disorient their framework. Reducing the financial power of any group or state supporting terrorism will highly minimize cases of terrorist attack throughout the world. This is in consideration that all their activities require funding to go through and to achieve their evil missions. Use of foreign asset freezing economic sanction tool will, therefore, help the US to fight terrorist activities.
Reference
McLean, E. V., Hinkkainen, K. H., De la Calle, L., & Bapat, N. A. (2018). Economic sanctions
and the dynamics of terrorist campaigns. Conflict management and peace science, 35(4), 378-401.