Sanctions sound like bureaucratic tools. In reality, US and EU sanctions have killed an estimated 38 million people since the 1970s, according to The Lancet Global Health. Sanctions are not peaceful alternatives to war—they are weapons, often deadlier than bullets.
» Over the past decade, we estimate that unilateral sanctions caused around 560,000 annual deaths worldwide.
It is hard to think of other policy interventions with such adverse effects on human life that continue to be pervasively used. «
Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot, August 2025.
Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot, August 2025.
By the 1990s and 2000s, Western sanctions hit more than 60 countries. Iraq’s economy and water systems were destroyed, leaving hundreds of thousands of children to die from preventable disease. Venezuela in 2017–2018 lost 40,000 lives in one year due to food and medicine shortages. Cuba in the 1960s faced similar tactics, with a US State Department Memo advocating for “hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of the government.”
Annual deaths caused by different sanctions by age range, 2012–21.
“The Food Weapon is mightier than missiles.” On December 10, 1974, the US National Security
Council, under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, completed the National Security Study
Memorandum 200: “Control the food supply, and you control the people.”
Half a
million deaths every year—not from bombs, but from hunger, poverty, and
preventable disease caused by sanctions. Victims are not politicians or elites—they are women,
children, and the elderly. Sanctions kill quietly, targeting the most
vulnerable. They are enforced through control of currencies, SWIFT, and
critical technology. Yet cracks are emerging: Russia has adapted, China has built alternatives, and the global south is strengthening trade, finance, and technology networks independent of the West.