When It Comes to U.S. Trade Policy, Some Territories Are More Disputed Than Others

The retail giant Amazon recently agreed to pay a fine to the Treasury Department for doing business in Russian-occupied Crimea in violation of American sanctions. While the decision—and the regulations behind it—is undoubtedly just, to Brenda Shaffer and Jonathan Schanzer it highlights the inconsistencies of U.S. law when it comes to doing business in occupied territories:

In addition to Crimea, Russia illegally occupies four other territories: Donbas in Ukraine, Transnistria in Moldova, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. Remarkably, there is no explicit U.S. prohibition on trade with these regions, even though their status under U.S. and international law is identical to Crimea’s.

U.S. trade policy on other disputed territories is a similar mishmash. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued explicit guidelines requiring that goods produced in the West Bank be explicitly marked as such. The labels cannot contain the words “Israel,” “Made in Israel,” “Occupied Territories-Israel,” or words of similar meaning. In 2016, CBP issued additional guidance reaffirming this rule: “Goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”

But the laser focus on Israel was curious given that goods produced in Armenian settlements in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan enter the United States unhindered. Despite U.S. recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh, [which it seized from its neighbor following the breakup of the USSR], and the surrounding regions as the legal territory of Azerbaijan, CBP has not clarified that goods from these territories should be labeled as such. It would appear, then, that some disputed territories are more disputable than others. But the U.S. government has never bothered to explain why.

Moreover, while the legal status of the West Bank is at worst highly ambiguous, the status of the other abovementioned territories is clear-cut. Such inconsistencies not only ignore the serious threats to international law, human rights, and U.S. interests on the part of Russian and Armenia, but give comfort to the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS).

Read more at FDD

More about: Azerbaijan, BDS, Crimea, Russia, U.S. Foreign policy, War in Ukraine, West Bank

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF