The Crowd Is Not Powerless

Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. Chauvin's murderous act presents an image that is difficult to forget: a man pinned helplessly to the pavement, a uniformed officer maintaining the pressure that was killing him, other uniformed officers assisting or preventing interference, and a crowd watching in horror.

That scene suggests an analogy to the international situation considered here. In the analogy, the United States occupies the position of the actor applying overwhelming coercive pressure to Iran and Cuba; Congress and the judiciary are among the institutions enabling that pressure; and the other nations of the world occupy the position of the crowd — watching what is happening, perhaps objecting to it, but thus far failing to act, either individually or collectively, to stop it.

The analogy is imperfect, as analogies necessarily are. Nations are not human beings. Economic sanctions are not a knee on a neck. Governments have choices and resources that a handcuffed prisoner does not. And the conduct of the United States toward Iran and Cuba involves disputed questions of national security, international law, human rights, and foreign policy.

But one feature of the analogy deserves attention precisely because of the difference between the two situations.

The Crowd on the Street

The people watching George Floyd die had very limited power. An attempt physically to remove Derek Chauvin could have resulted in arrest, prosecution, serious injury, or worse. An armed police officer stood between them and Floyd. Their failure to intervene physically is therefore understandable even while the scene remains agonizing to watch.

The nations watching powerful states employ economic and military coercion are in a very different position.

They are not an unarmed crowd standing a few feet from armed police officers. They are sovereign governments. Collectively they possess enormous economic resources, diplomatic influence, markets, banking systems, industrial capacity, and international institutions.

The United Nations Charter begins from the principle of the sovereign equality of states. It requires members to settle international disputes by peaceful means and to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state.

Yet international opposition to coercion by a dominant power can resemble the Floyd crowd in one important respect: everyone may object, while each waits for someone else to act.

The Price of Acting Alone

That hesitation is understandable. The United States possesses an extraordinarily powerful economy and financial system. A government that openly resists American policy may face tariffs, loss of access to American markets, financial restrictions, diplomatic pressure, or sanctions affecting its banks and businesses.

Those possibilities are not theoretical. In 2026, United States measures concerning Cuba authorized sanctions affecting foreign financial institutions dealing with designated Cuban interests and established a mechanism under which additional tariffs may be imposed upon goods from countries that supply oil to Cuba. United States measures directed at Iran have likewise reached foreign intermediaries, financial institutions, and other entities accused of assisting Iran in avoiding American sanctions.

These are real risks. It would therefore overstate the case to say that countries resisting American policy risk nothing more than a momentary inconvenience. Economic retaliation can be painful. It can disrupt trade, damage particular industries, complicate access to financial markets, and impose political costs upon governments at home.

But that fact also reveals a weakness inherent in the system.

Economic coercion works best when its targets can be isolated.

A small nation confronting the United States alone may have little bargaining power. A bank forced to choose between one sanctioned customer and access to the American financial system will predictably take the threat seriously. A government threatened with losing important American trade may conclude that principle has become too expensive.

The calculation changes when the response becomes collective.

What If the Crowd Acted Together?

It is one thing to retaliate economically against a single government. It is another to retaliate simultaneously against dozens of significant trading partners representing a substantial portion of world commerce. The larger the coalition, the more the cost of retaliation falls not merely upon those being punished but upon the country attempting to punish them.

That is why the meaningful question for the rest of the world is not:

“Which nation is willing to confront the United States?”

It is:

“What happens if enough nations refuse to confront it separately?”

There is precedent for the principle. The European Union maintains what it calls its “blocking statute,” originally adopted in response to the extraterritorial effects of measures imposed by the United States concerning Cuba, Iran, and Libya. The regulation is intended to protect European businesses from specified foreign laws and, among other things, prevents certain foreign judgments based upon those laws from taking effect within the European Union.

That example suggests a much broader range of possibilities short of military confrontation.

Countries can coordinate diplomatic opposition rather than issuing isolated protests. They can make greater use of international institutions. They can establish financial arrangements that reduce vulnerability to unilateral financial restrictions. They can adopt common legal protections against extraterritorial sanctions. They can preserve lawful trade and humanitarian commerce where their own laws permit it. They can collectively challenge measures they regard as inconsistent with international law. And they can make clear that retaliation against one participating nation will be treated as pressure upon the group rather than as a dispute between Washington and a single vulnerable government.

This Is Not a Defense of Iran or Cuba

None of this requires hostility toward the American people. Nor does it require acceptance of the governments of Iran or Cuba, much less approval of everything those governments do.

A country can condemn political repression in Cuba, Iranian support for armed groups, violations of human rights, or other conduct it finds objectionable while simultaneously rejecting the proposition that the United States therefore acquires unlimited authority to determine how other sovereign nations may trade with them.

Indeed, that distinction is essential.

The principle at stake is larger than Iran. It is larger than Cuba. It is even larger than the United States.

Any international system in which one sufficiently powerful country may dictate the permissible economic relationships of other sovereign states contains a structural danger. A government may approve of the coercion when the target is a regime it dislikes. It has no assurance that the same machinery will not someday be directed against itself or against a country with which it has important relations.

Therein lies the self-interest behind collective resistance.

A nation need not defend Cuba because it admires the Cuban government. It need not defend Iran because it admires the Iranian government. It can defend instead the principle that relationships among sovereign countries should not routinely be determined by the economic threats of whichever state currently possesses the greatest capacity to make those threats effective.

The issue therefore is not charity toward Iran or Cuba. It is preservation of room for independent national decision-making.

A Crowd With Power

And here the analogy to George Floyd requires an important modification.

Those witnesses were individuals confronting armed police officers at arm's length. Governments possess embassies, legislatures, courts, banks, markets, alliances, treaty organizations, and international institutions. Their principal exposure from coordinated nonmilitary resistance would be economic and diplomatic retaliation.

Such retaliation could certainly be painful and should not be trivialized. But economic measures can be reversed. Trade can be redirected. Financial arrangements can change. And, most importantly, the burden becomes progressively harder to impose as the number and economic importance of participating countries increase.

So alter the Floyd analogy.

Imagine that the crowd surrounding George Floyd was not physically powerless. Imagine that it greatly outnumbered the officers, that its members possessed means of intervention that did not expose them to serious physical danger, and that Chauvin's ability to continue depended in significant part upon their continued cooperation.

Imagine further that each member of the crowd hesitated because he feared that, if he acted alone, the police might retaliate against him.

Then imagine that the crowd realized that it did not have to act alone.

At that point, remaining spectators would become much harder to explain.

That is closer to the position of the international community.

The Power of Refusing to Stand Alone

No single country may be able to prevent the United States from exercising its economic power. But the world economy does not belong to the United States alone. American economic influence depends in part upon other countries continuing to conduct commerce, finance, diplomacy, and international relations through systems in which American economic pressure is effective.

Collective action changes that equation.

The object need not be to injure the United States, humiliate it, or replace one form of coercion with another. The object can be much narrower: to make unilateral coercion ineffective enough that negotiation again becomes preferable to compulsion.

That is not an argument for anti-Americanism. It is an argument against acquiescence in unchecked power, including American power.

The lesson of the crowd, then, should not be that someone ought heroically to rush forward and accept punishment. Heroism is unnecessary when cooperation can accomplish what individual defiance cannot.

The lesson is simpler.

When many nations act in concert to oppose what the most powerful participant is doing, their individual weakness diminishes, and that most powerful participant may discover that its own power depends, to a considerable extent, upon the cooperation and good will of the many.