Congress should give the Office of Foreign Assets Control the resources necessary for an expanded mission.
Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from an op-ed which originally appeared on The Hill. It was written by Akshaya Kumar, Enough Project Sudan and South Sudan Policy Analyst, and Ken Sofer, a Policy Analyst with the National Security and International Policy team at the Center for American Progress.
Pundits and policymakers alike increasingly push the narrative that America’s influence is waning and that it lacks the leadership to get anything done internationally. Despite the rhetoric plastered across editorial columns, a quiet, but ruthlessly effective effort is targeting and punishing international criminal actors and regimes on America’s newest front lines: the international financial system.
The little-known Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC – housed within the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence – has grown from a policy afterthought to one of the most valuable tools in America’s national security toolbox in under a decade. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, OFAC’s ability to trace assets, freeze bank accounts, and disrupt financial transactions has advanced U.S. interests in situations where we otherwise have limited leverage…