BEIRUT/LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - When governments impose economic sanctions, like the “economic D-Day” U.S. President Donald Trump is now imposing on Iran, they portray them as a precision instrument — a scalpel rather than a sword — capable of pressuring ruling elites while sparing ordinary citizens.That narrative has been used to justify some of the most sweeping acts of economic coercion in modern history. The only problem is that the central premise is untrue.The case against sanctions is not merely strategic — that they rarely achieve their stated foreign-policy objectives — but also moral. Sanctions, particularly financial ones, do not fall equally on a population. They fall hardest on those least able to bear them: low-income, wage-dependent and publicly employed people. Thus, anyone who claims to care about the ethics of coercive statecraft must confront its distributional realities with the same rigor applied to questions of military tactics.

BEIRUT/LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - When governments impose economic sanctions, like the “economic D-Day” U.S. President Donald Trump is now imposing on Iran, they portray them as a precision instrument — a scalpel rather than a sword — capable of pressuring ruling elites while sparing ordinary citizens.That narrative has been used to justify some of the most sweeping acts of economic coercion in modern history. The only problem is that the central premise is untrue.The case against sanctions is not merely strategic — that they rarely achieve their stated foreign-policy objectives — but also moral. Sanctions, particularly financial ones, do not fall equally on a population. They fall hardest on those least able to bear them: low-income, wage-dependent and publicly employed people. Thus, anyone who claims to care about the ethics of coercive statecraft must confront its distributional realities with the same rigor applied to questions of military tactics.

BEIRUT/LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - When governments impose economic sanctions, like the “economic D-Day” U.S. President Donald Trump is now imposing on Iran, they portray them as a precision instrument — a scalpel rather than a sword — capable of pressuring ruling elites while sparing ordinary citizens.That narrative has been used to justify some of the most sweeping acts of economic coercion in modern history. The only problem is that the central premise is untrue.The case against sanctions is not merely strategic — that they rarely achieve their stated foreign-policy objectives — but also moral. Sanctions, particularly financial ones, do not fall equally on a population. They fall hardest on those least able to bear them: low-income, wage-dependent and publicly employed people. Thus, anyone who claims to care about the ethics of coercive statecraft must confront its distributional realities with the same rigor applied to questions of military tactics.

BEIRUT/LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - When governments impose economic sanctions, like the “economic D-Day” U.S. President Donald Trump is now imposing on Iran, they portray them as a precision instrument — a scalpel rather than a sword — capable of pressuring ruling elites while sparing ordinary citizens.That narrative has been used to justify some of the most sweeping acts of economic coercion in modern history. The only problem is that the central premise is untrue.The case against sanctions is not merely strategic — that they rarely achieve their stated foreign-policy objectives — but also moral. Sanctions, particularly financial ones, do not fall equally on a population. They fall hardest on those least able to bear them: low-income, wage-dependent and publicly employed people. Thus, anyone who claims to care about the ethics of coercive statecraft must confront its distributional realities with the same rigor applied to questions of military tactics.