Waiting in Darkness: The U.S. fuel blockade against Cuba (Joy Gordon, April 27, 2026, Commonweal)
Violence is easily recognized when it takes the form of bullets or bombs. The causality is indisputable, the human impact immediately visible. But economic violence works very differently. Deprivation does not kill or maim directly. Rather, it creates the conditions that bring suffering and hardship. When these are severe, infant and child mortality rates increase, illnesses and injuries are more likely to be fatal, and life expectancy decreases. We know that sanctions may have all those results. Unilateral sanctions, which the United States has imposed on numerous countries and thousands of individuals, have a massive impact on mortality, causing more than five hundred thousand deaths every year.
Folks don’t care to acknowledge that W ended the Iraq War, rather than starting it. Regime change makes ending sanctions acceptable.