The story of modern-day sanctions starts—as with many of our modern American experiences—with the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Title III of the act—concerned with money laundering used for the financing of terrorist organizations—gave the Treasury Department a swath of options to dig into the links between domestic and international financial institutions. Borne out of this new mandate, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), got its first win by severing BDA Bank—a Macau-based bank that was suspected of facilitating North Korean money laundering operations—from the global financial market. The office was able to destroy the bank’s operations with a simple notice of incoming sanctions.

Today, the list of sanctioned nations includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, Balkans, Belarus, Myanmar, Central African Republic, the DRC, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Venezuela, and Yemen among others.

While some are targeted against specific entities or persons, many sanctions indiscriminately target broad sectors of a nation’s economy. Such is the case in Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Similarly, while some sanctions target heads of states and specific government individuals, others like the ones imposed on Syria target any and all government ministers regardless of complicity in any given crime.