Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former Press Attaché to Malaysia
Former MD, SRBC | Michigan, USA
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton’s enduring maxim finds devastating confirmation in a major study published in The Lancet Global Health, which estimated that unilateral economic sanctions were associated with approximately 38 million excess deaths worldwide between 1971 and 2021. This staggering human toll exposes the contradiction at the heart of the Western-led international order: nations that proclaim themselves guardians of human rights, champions of democracy and defenders of human dignity have employed economic coercion associated with the deaths of millions of innocent people. The self-appointed protectors of humanity have become instruments of extraordinary human suffering.
The contradiction is staggering. Countries that lecture the world on morality, international law and humanitarian responsibility frequently reserve for themselves the privilege of violating those very principles. Their economic dominance becomes an instrument of punishment, their military superiority a license for destruction, and their political influence a shield against accountability. The victims are overwhelmingly ordinary people who have neither declared war nor formulated the policies for which they are punished.
The instruments of coercion are principally two: military aggression and economic strangulation. The first destroys cities, infrastructure, hospitals, schools and livelihoods through bombs and missiles. The second accomplishes comparable devastation more slowly, through financial blockades, trade restrictions, frozen assets, banking prohibitions and the systematic deprivation of essential economic resources.
One kills through explosions; the other through hunger, disease, poverty and the collapse of public services. Both can devastate entire generations.
The cruelty of economic warfare becomes particularly apparent when its architects openly celebrate the suffering it produces. In remarks attributed to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the devastating impact of sanctions and economic restrictions on Iran was presented as pressure that compounds with time. The argument was that economic deprivation would eventually undermine the government’s ability to sustain its institutions, compensate its personnel and maintain political control.
Such reasoning exposes the disturbing logic underlying economic strangulation. When workers cannot receive wages, families cannot afford food, hospitals struggle to obtain medicines and inflation destroys purchasing power, civilian suffering becomes an instrument of geopolitical pressure. Human deprivation is no longer treated merely as an unfortunate consequence; it becomes part of the mechanism through which political objectives are pursued.
The scientific evidence behind this indictment is particularly disturbing. The study, titled Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis, examined 152 countries over five decades. Its researchers estimated an average annual mortality burden of approximately 564,258 deaths associated with unilateral sanctions in recent years.
These were not primarily battlefield casualties. They represented the consequences of deteriorating economic conditions, restricted access to essential goods, weakened healthcare systems and the broader deprivation associated with sanctions.
Most horrifying was the disproportionate suffering of children. According to the research estimates, children younger than five accounted for approximately 51 percent of sanction-associated deaths. Children and older people together represented an overwhelming proportion of the estimated mortality burden.
These findings expose the enormous distance between the declared objectives of economic sanctions and their actual humanitarian consequences. Measures supposedly directed against political leaders, military organizations and governing elites fall most heavily upon infants, patients, workers, pensioners and families struggling to survive.
The political leadership that sanctions are designed to weaken frequently retains privileged access to resources. Security institutions continue functioning, influential elites exploit alternative commercial networks, and politically connected businesses benefit from scarcity. Meanwhile, independent enterprises collapse, ordinary employees lose their livelihoods, and the middle class gradually disappears.
Economic punishment can therefore strengthen the very structures it claims to dismantle. Governments consolidate control over scarce resources, black markets flourish, and populations become increasingly dependent upon political authorities for survival.
The historical record provides compelling illustrations. Cuba has endured decades of American economic restrictions without the political transformation Washington originally sought. North Korea developed nuclear weapons despite extensive international sanctions. Iran survived successive campaigns of maximum pressure while expanding alternative economic relationships. Venezuela experienced devastating economic hardship without the immediate political collapse anticipated by proponents of sanctions.
Iraq suffered catastrophic economic and humanitarian deterioration during the sanctions imposed throughout the 1990s. Yet Saddam Hussein remained in power until the American-led military invasion of 2003. The civilian population paid an enormous price for policies that failed to achieve their central political objective through economic pressure alone.
Iran now stands at the center of another confrontation between geopolitical ambition and humanitarian consequences. American restrictions on banking, oil exports, financial transactions and international commerce have imposed severe economic difficulties. Currency depreciation, inflation, weakened purchasing power and obstacles to essential imports have placed immense pressure upon ordinary Iranian households.
The people suffering these consequences are not necessarily participants in government decisions. They are teachers, doctors, laborers, students, shopkeepers, children and elderly citizens whose fundamental aspiration is to live with dignity.
The same contradiction extends to Israel’s military conduct across the Middle East. Gaza has suffered immense civilian casualties, widespread displacement and the destruction of essential infrastructure. Israeli settlement expansion and occupation in the West Bank continue to deprive Palestinians of land, security and political rights. Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Syria have further intensified regional instability.
Israel’s military capabilities are sustained substantially by American assistance, weapons supplies and diplomatic protection. Washington’s professed commitment to civilian protection consequently stands in sharp contrast to its continued support for military operations that have produced catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
This is not merely a question of contradictory foreign policy. It concerns the concentration of international power in the hands of governments that claim universal moral authority while resisting equivalent scrutiny of their own conduct.
International human rights cannot remain credible when their application depends upon the identity of the perpetrator. The right to food, healthcare, livelihood and human dignity cannot be defended selectively. Nor can the suffering of children become acceptable because their governments refuse to submit to external political demands.
The most disturbing revelation of the Lancet research is that economic warfare can produce a human toll comparable in magnitude to armed conflict without attracting equivalent international outrage. Its victims die quietly, in hospitals without supplies, homes without adequate food and communities whose economic foundations have been systematically undermined.
A world order that condemns violence while normalizing mass civilian deprivation has surrendered its moral legitimacy. When powerful nations can devastate populations through bombs or blockades and still present themselves as champions of humanity, Lord Acton’s warning becomes more than a historical observation.
Absolute power has not merely corrupted the guardians of human rights; it has enabled them to transform human suffering into an instrument of policy while demanding that the world applaud their moral leadership.
