A new paper published in The Lancet — one of the world’s most respected health journals — finds that sanctions imposed by the West on developing countries have caused 38 million deaths since 1971.
Honestly, these types of methodology sections go over my head. How do they distinguish between “deaths caused by sanctions” and “deaths caused by sanctioned regimes?”
I skimmed the paper; it doesn’t look like they did.
Further, it doesn’t look like they studied changes in mortality when sanctions were lifted, nor in neighboring unsanctioned regions. They jumped right from correlation to causation. This seems to be “post hoc, the paper”.
Now count how many deaths were prevented.
Also, fun fact, but according to his own public statements Osama Bin Laden was radicalized by the Reagan’s sanctions and their effects on Iraq. (ie, mass starvation)
In other words, Reaganomics contributed to Islamic terrorism.
Or, to make it clickbaity-ish, “caused”.
We should also be critical of the term ‘terrorism’: it is often a buzzword used to shut down criticism of protest groups. In this case it does hold up, though.
