Between 2010 and 2021, unilateral sanctions caused ~564,258 deaths each year – more than five times the number of people killed annually in direct armed combat. This warning comes from a new report published in The Lancet, which contextualizes decades of data on how sanctions affect mortality.
“From a rights-based perspective, evidence that sanctions lead to losses in lives should be sufficient reason to advocate for the suspension of their use,” the study’s authors argue. But that is far from reality. Over the same decade, nearly a quarter of all of the world’s countries were affected by sanctions, driven primarily by a sharp increase in unilateral economic measures imposed by the United States and its European allies.
While Western sanctions “have the claimed aim to end wars, protect human rights, or promote democracy,” the report shows they do the very opposite. By restricting a country’s ability to import essential goods like food, medicine, and medical supplies, and by slashing public budgets, sanctions systematically undermine healthcare systems and other vital services.
I don’t see why this is relevant to the question of whether one should commit crimes against humanity or not. There is no justification for denying food and medicine to people.
By seeking justifications for that, you end up becoming like the people you claim to fight against. They will tell you the exact same thing as to why their crimes would be justified.
There is no justification for denying food and medicine to people. No matter what they think. No matter what they did. It is a line you cannot cross without destroying your own humanity.
What a childish take. Russia is major exporter of grain, blocking all food exports to russia is not “denying food to people”.
Same with medicine, you’re acting as if russia has no internal production of medicine. Blocking all exports of medicine to a group where the overwhelming majority wish you harm is very much justified.
And you know that Russia is able to produce all necessary medicine? You know that Russia is producing all the food necessary?
Vice versa you say Russia is a major exporter of grain. Should that be prohibited then? What about the countries that buy that grain?
And again, by following this line, you give the justification for other countries to do the same. They will claim the same about “wishing you harm” and frankly if you say they shouldn’t receive any medicine, it is based in reality. Running this race to the bottom will only harm humanity and not just people in Ukraine and Russia.
Perfect example of performative “humanism”.
Making claims about starvation, yet too fucking lazy to make a simple web search (on a topic with extremely detailed statistics that are even often reported in mainstream business news).
See, for you the russians invading Ukraine, engaging in mass killings, rapes, castration of POWs, stealing children, sending people who speak Ukrainian to torture camps is not a big deal. You don’t consider it to be wrong.
I consider it to be wrong. When a society supports such actions (somewhere between a strong majority to an overwhelming majority as per the more conservative approach possible), ignoring that is de facto supporting their actions. Which is what you are doing.
So don’t even try to play the faux-humanism card. I am not buying it for a second.