Less "adversary" as evaluated by a specific entity, more "bad actor" as evaluated by the collective. Which is the intent. Of course nobody issuing sanctions specifically intends them to be criminal penalties for local (target) residents, it's nonsensical anyway as the issuer(s) generally don't have any kind of criminal authority in the relevant jurisdictions.
Suffragettes, civil rights activists and Vietnam war protesters would’ve all been considered “bad actors” by their democratic governments at stages of their journey.
Yeah, but we course-corrected on those mistakes. That's how civil society works. We (necessarily) delegate trust and authority to higher-order abstract entities (i.e. the state) and make sure we have ways to influence how they behave (i.e. elections).
Eventually we course corrected, but illiberal government oppression of legitimate viewpoints delayed it. See the British government’s crackdowns on Trade Unions in the nineteenth century, for instance.
They're only a net good if you think the government of the biggest economy is always morally right. Because only sanctions by the biggest economies have any impact. Most of the people in the world who aren't Americans view America's foreign policy as overwhelmingly a net negative, so for most of the world those sanctions are a net bad.
