Between America’s direct military actions, clandestine activities, and prolific weapons sales, it has been obvious for a long time that the US is an agent of chaos and merchant of death with the blood of millions on its hands. Its illegal invasion of Vietnam, for example, killed between 1-3 million people. The US backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba set off a civil war in the Congo that killed millions more. American weapons have also been used to slaughter countless people in places as far flung as Indonesia, Bangladesh, and El Salvador.
Given this history, America’s brutality and hegemonic ambitions have been easy to see for anyone not blinded by tribal loyalties or brainwashed by the Western world’s powerful propaganda machine. These examples are enough, by themselves, to condemn the US as an evil empire. However, a new study recently revealed the full extent of its depravity by showing how the destructive impact of its quest for global domination extends far beyond the battlefield.
According to the Lancet Global Health, American economic and financial sanctions killed roughly 38 million between 1971-2021. These people weremurdered because America’s leaders used their control of the global financial system to prevent entire nations from purchasing food and medicine.
As the LA Times explained, sanctions are “the preferred weapon of the United States and some allies — not because they are less destructive than military action, but more likely because the toll is less visible. They can devastate food systems and hospitals and silently kill people without the gruesome videos of body parts in tent camps and cafes bombed from the air. They offer policymakers something that can deliver the deadly impact of war, even against civilians, without the political cost.”
Aside from highlighting the sadistic logic that guides American policymakers, this study also shows their deranged actions are not an anomaly. American leaders from both its major political parties, across multiple generations, enacted policies intentionally designed to deprive innocent people of food and medicine. These crimes cannot be blamed on a single madman. Their long duration and bi-partisan support shows they are the result of a systemic rot that transcends politics.
True to form, except for the LA Times, not one of America’s other major magazines, newspapers, or TV stations deemed intentionally denying millions of people the means to buy food and medicine newsworthy. The Washington Post was too busy describing Iran as an “outlaw regime” while foreignpolicy.com was trying, once again, to convince everyone China is a threat to world peace. Instead of causing the sort of introspection and outrage one would expect from a nation that just found out its leaders murdered 38 million people, the American people and their legacy media outlets completely ignored the study, just as they have ignored their government’s long list of war crimes over the years.
Their apathy is due to a variety of factors that largely boil down to racism and greed. The architects of these sanctions were mostly white men1 whereas their victims were mostly non-Europeans, a.k.a., “people of color,” residing in the Global South. This is the shorthand term used to refer to the nations of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania that were once violently conquered and colonized by Europeans. Unlike most of the indigenous populations of North America and Australia, the people of these regions survived the genocidal onslaught of their European conquerors and eventually freed themselves from direct Western control.
Despite attaining nominal independence, most have yet to fully recover from the impact of having their resources systemically looted for centuries. They are usually weak, impoverished and trapped by neocolonial shackles designed to allow various members of the Western coalition, and the predominantly white elites who rule them, to maintain control over their resources. As the Western bloc’s primary enforcer, America uses sanctions as a mechanism to reassert control over those who try to break free of these shackles. They are meant to punish wayward subjects who have forgotten their place in the Western world’s “rules based” order by fomenting instability and despair with the goal of installing pliant rulers who follow orders.
The sociopathic tendencies evidenced by this study have been on full display in Gaza the past two years; however, these findings show America’s willingness to help apartheid Israel starve and bomb Palestinians is just one part of a tale that spans decades and has claimed an unfathomable number of lives. It lays bare the full extent of America’s crimes, and unequivocally shows it is a violent and destructive force for evil throughout much of the world that has yet to fully exorcise the racist demons that have haunted its entire existence.
When the toll from its sanctions, weapons sales, and violent military actions are combined, the estimated number of people murdered by America since the Vietnam War soars past 52 million2. By comparison, the Nazis are justifiably reviled for initiating a holocaust against Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others they deemed “undesirable” that killed 11 million people. America’s holocaust has claimed nearly five times as many lives.
These findings shatter the myth America is a moral state acting to preserve an international system designed to allow all the world’s nations to thrive. Some might argue morals have no relevance to geopolitics. But they fail to realize America’s unique image as a moral state was one of the foundational cornerstones of its claim to power and contributed significantly to its allure and ability to garner international support for its policies. Without this illusion, it becomes clear America’s power is primarily maintained through the inherently self-defeating and unsustainable tools of force and coercion. By relying on such methods, America’s leaders are proving there is nothing exceptional about their empire, which means it is doomed to follow the same path as all those that have come before it. Its rapidly growing debt, obsession with war and hegemony, widening socio-economic inequalities, and dysfunctional political system suggest its end will come sooner rather than later.
The victims of these genocidal policies must use the reprieve created by America’s looming implosion to implement reforms designed to make sure they never fall prey to such crimes again. Though they followed very different paths to get there, Japan and China have both shown how. Each instituted drastic political and economic reforms to build the industrial and technological foundations needed to protect themselves. They also invested heavily in their public education systems to ensure their people could contribute to their technological advancement. By developing their indigenous capabilities, they ended their dependence on Western capital and technology and learned to build modern militaries, insulating themselves from Western control and punitive measures.
The elites who rule the Global South will need to enact similar reforms. They will also need to continue strengthening organizations like BRICS, Mercosur, the African Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) so they can work together to protect each other the same way Western nations work together to control and exploit them. Until they build trade networks that do not rely on the US dollar, they will remain vulnerable to the genocidal policies used by the West to control them. They can either follow the Japanese model by voluntarily implementing the necessary reforms, or they can follow the Chinese model, and wait for the marginalized masses they rule to sweep them away in the tumult of revolution. Either way, as the sanctions currently in place against Cuba, Iran, and many other places show, these crimes will never end until they take the steps needed to end them.
- The US Senate, for example, is currently comprised of 88 white men and is considered one of the most diverse in its history. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/21/119th-congress-brings-new-growth-in-racial-ethnic-diversity-to-capitol-hill/#:~:text=Congress remains far less racially,80% of the U.S. population.
- In addition to the 38 million people that prompted this piece, the invasion of Vietnam killed 1-3 million and set off a civil war in Cambodia that killed another 1.5-3 million. Arms sales and support for death squads in El Salvador killed 75k and another 200k in Guatemala. The civil war in Congo killed 5.4 million people. The War on Terror killed 4.5 million. Support for Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen killed 377k. The massacres in Bangladesh and Indonesia killed 1-3 million and 500k-1 million, respectively. Added together, this partial list shows the toll of America’s crimes exceeds 52 million.