Let’s talk about sanctions.

In 1996, asked about the horrific cost of the sanctions programme that starved some 500,000 Iraqi children, then-US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright gave a chilling response. "We think the price is worth it,” she said. A year later, she became US Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.

They may be invisible, but sanctions are a tool of war. They starve and weaken populations, always striking civilians hardest. In fact, that is often their express purpose. How do we know? Because their architects tell us — as in the 1960 US State Memorandum 499 in relation to Cuba:

The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship […] every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba […] a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

In a word: Sanctions kill.

For this week’s episode of The Internationalist, David Adler talks to Mick Wallace and Clare Daly about the use of sanctions, their impact on the populations they are designed to impoverish, and the planetary struggle against this weapon of war. The episode will follow an exciting announcement about our own work in this area.  

Mick Wallace and Clare Daly are members of the European Parliament, representing the Irish constituencies of the South and Dublin respectively. Mick and Clare are members of the Irish political party ‘Independents 4 Change’ and The Left in the European Parliament. They are both committed socialists and vehement internationalists.