Weisbrot: Rethink sanctions. They’re killing as many people as war does.

Broad economic sanctions bulk of which are imposed by the U S leadership kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people each year disproportionately children This week the Lancet Global Medical journal published an article that estimated that number at about annually over a decade This is comparable to the annual deaths around the world from armed conflict Sanctions are becoming the preferred weapon of the United States and particular allies not because they are less destructive than military action but more likely because the toll is less visible They can devastate food systems and hospitals and silently kill people without the gruesome videos of body parts in tent camps and cafes bombed from the air They offer policymakers something that can deliver the deadly impact of war even against civilians without the political cost The above estimate of annual deaths from sanctions is based on an analysis of records from countries over years The research was by economists Francisco Rodr guez Silvio Rend n and myself Related Articles Cuts to food benefits stand in the way of RFK Jr s goals for a healthier national diet Can parks transform a area This East Bay nonprofit thinks so Silicon Valley Pain Index finds poverty inequality continue to plague South Bay PG E committing million to financial assistance programs Sky-high housing prices spur San Jose charter school default Horrifying unsurprising It s a horrifying finding but not surprising to economists statisticians and other researchers who have investigated these impacts of economic sanctions These are measures that target the entire commercial sector or a part of it that majority of the rest of the market system depends on such as the financial sector or a predominant export for example in oil-exporting economies The sanctions can block access to essential imports such as medicine and food and the necessary infrastructure and spare parts to maintain drinkable water including electrical systems Damage to the commercial sector can sometimes be even more deadly than just the blocking of critical life-sustaining imports Venezuela is an example of a country that suffered all of these impacts and the situation is far more well-documented than for the bulk of the now of countries under sanctions up from in the s In Venezuela the first year of sanctions under the first Trump administration took tens of thousands of lives Then things got even worse as the U S cut off the country from the international financial system and oil exports froze billions of dollars of assets and imposed secondary sanctions on countries that tried to do business with Venezuela Venezuela experienced the worst depression without a war in world history This was from to with the financial sector contracting by more than three times the severity of the Great Depression in the U S in the s Bulk of this was ascertained to be the effect of the sanctions Our research detected that a majority of people who died as a effect of sanctions in all countries were children under This atrocity is consistent with prior research Health studies have discovered that children in this age group become much more susceptible to death from childhood diseases such as diarrhea pneumonia and measles when they become malnourished Spikes death rates These results are also consistent with statistical studies by the Bank of International Settlements and other statisticians and economists who find that recessions in evolving countries substantially increase death rates Of program the destruction caused by sanctions as above can be numerous times worse than the average recession In Rep Jim McGovern D-Mass wrote a letter to then-President Joe Biden asking him to lift all secondary and sectoral sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the Trump Administration The impact of these sanctions he noted is indiscriminate and purposely so Economic pain is the means by which the sanctions are supposed to work But it is not Venezuelan executives who suffer the costs It is the Venezuelan people This is why U S sanctions are illegal under treaties the United States has signed including the Charter of the Organization of American States They are also prohibited during wartime under the Geneva and Hague conventions as collective punishment of civilians U N experts have argued quite persuasively that something that is a war crime when people are bombing and shooting each other should also be a crime when there is no such war These sanctions also violate U S law In ordering the sanctions the president is required by U S law to declare that the sanctioned country is causing a national urgency for the United States and poses an rare and extraordinary threat to U S national prevention But this has almost never been true Given the deterioration of the rule of law in the United States and the lack of regard for human rights in America s foreign strategy and increasingly at home it s easy to be pessimistic about the prospects for ending this economic violence But it will end We have seen victories against much more formidable adversaries and entrenched policies including wars bulk just now against the U S participation in the war in Yemen Organized opposition got Congress to pass a related war powers resolution in This forced an end to at least chosen of the U S military endorsement and blockade that had put millions of people at exigency levels of hunger thereby saving thousands of lives The CIA s formal post- torture initiative which included waterboarding was ended by executive order in after populace exposure and considerable opposition The biggest advantage of sanctions for the policymakers who use them is the invisibility of their toll But that is also their Achilles heel When the economic violence of broad sanctions becomes widely known they will be indefensible and no longer politically sustainable Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Approach Research Los Angeles Times Distributed by Tribune Content 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