with the way that economic sanctions predictably kill people, they should be viewed as weapons of war, like indiscriminate bombing campaigns. they're usually less dramatic on the news than bombs and special forces raids, making them easier to ignore, but they don't destroy lives and stop society functioning normally any less for that
when your country is cut off from trade, banking, and its own foreign reserves, its currency usually collapses. prices go up fast but wages don’t. food, utilities, rent, and medicine all become more expensive at the same time. if you're already living close to the edge, you end up skipping meals, delaying medical care, and choosing between heating and eating
healthcare is another major place you're going to get screwed over. even when sanctions technically allow medical goods through, hospitals often still struggle to get what they need. banks and payment processors refuse to put payments through, shipping companies don't want to deliver to your ports, and now there's much less money available to buy supplies. so spare parts never arrive. clinics run out of basic medicines. machines break and can’t be repaired. your chronic illness that's normally manageable becomes life threatening or much more disabling, and emergency care becomes less reliable. so more people die from conditions that, in other circumstances, wouldn't have been fatal
sanctions also damage the systems around healthcare that people don’t always think about. power cuts affect hospitals and refrigeration for medicines. when you can't import treatment chemicals or replacement parts, clean water systems fail. transport problems make it harder for you to reach care at all, especially for people in rural areas. all these things add up to kill people prematurely, and the people who suffer and die the most are the ones in the most precarious positions
a paper in the Lancet estimates that sanctions kill 564,000 people every year. it's like the US and its imperial core allies nuke a mid sized city in the developing world each year, and yet sanctions are often framed as peaceful alternatives to war. economic sanctions are weapons of war
