Link to article: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-intensify-pressure-nicaraguas-ortega-following-sunday-election-official-2021-11-05/
Nicaraguan president and former-Marxist Guerilla, Daniel Ortega, is strongly favored to win his fourth presidential term. Ortega as president abolished presidential term limits, expanded his own families business, threatened independent news companies, and imprisoned opposition politicians, businessmen, protesters, and journalists.
In response to these dictatorial actions, the US State Department and Biden administrations is planning on increasing already pre-existing sanctions on the Central American state. According to State Department officials, a re-election of the longest-serving president in the Americas would be, “ushering in a dictatorship”. The US government hopes to put pressure on the Ortega regime by using international sanctions. The US wants the European Union, Canada, the Organization of American States, and international monetary organizations to sanction and/or strongly condemn the Nicaraguan government.
The US is put into a difficult situation because they do not want to absolutely cripple the Nicaraguan economy, but they also want to send the message to have Ortega removed from office or stop some of his practices. If the US imposes extremely brutal sanctions, there would likely be a humanitarian crisis in Nicaragua and a mass influx of Nicaraguan migrants north to the US-Mexico border. The United States already is facing a border crisis with immigration being a hot-button issue in recent elections, and with the Biden administration already facing criticism and low approval ratings, it simply can not have an even worse border crisis. Secondly, the US has already imposed sanctions on Nicaragua and other Latin American countries like Cuba and Venezuela. In all these cases, the sanctions did virtually nothing to usher in a regime change or new style of governing. Therefore, these sanctions will likely end in an even further crippled economy, worse conditions for Nicaraguans, and an Ortega regime that can use hatred towards the US to unify its base.
This highlights the use of power from a Realist perspective of International Relations. Since the United States is the most powerful country in terms of economic power, military power, cultural power, technological power, and rational persuasion, they can do what they want. The United States uses this power to maintain order in global anarchy and secure power for itself. This is why the United States is putting sanctions on Nicaragua. To maintain control, the United States wants governments in power who either have similar goals and will do their bidding by free will, like the United Kingdom, or countries who are more or less forced to do the United States bidding to align themselves with the United States. Since Nicaragua does neither of these, leaving less access for the US to Central America, the United States wants a change to gain that power.