Some authoritarians and dictators intentionally use starvation

In the darkest moments of human conflict, when armies march and the heavens themselves seem to tremble under the weight of war, there emerges a weapon more sinister than swords and spears. It is the silent weapon of starvation, a weapon that strikes not with the roar of battle but with the quiet, gnawing pain of hunger. This weapon, though invisible to the eye, is no less deadly. Some authoritarians and dictators, as Linda Thomas-Greenfield so poignantly reminds us, deliberately turn the privation of food into a tool of war. They withhold nourishment from the innocent, turning hunger into a means to break the will of the people, to subjugate them without the need for direct confrontation.

Starvation as a weapon is not new to the pages of history. It has been wielded by tyrants in times of old, just as it is today. The siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD, where the Romans starved the city’s inhabitants into submission, is a haunting tale. The people of Jerusalem were cut off from the world, their provisions dwindling until their hunger grew unbearable. It is said that mothers, in their despair, were driven to the unthinkable—eating the flesh of their own children. The Roman Empire, with its imperial might, had turned hunger into a tool of conquest, not for military glory alone, but for the sheer power to control and crush a people’s spirit. This cruel strategy was not an accident but a deliberate tactic used by those in power to force submission.

In our modern world, the echoes of such tactics still resound. In the 20th century, Stalin employed similar measures during the Holodomor in Ukraine, where millions perished under the weight of an engineered famine. The Ukrainian people, once proud and independent, found themselves caught in a struggle of survival. Stalin’s government seized grain, livestock, and resources, leaving the people to starve in a man-made catastrophe. This was not a natural disaster—it was the cold hand of dictatorship manipulating the forces of nature, using hunger as a means to break the will of an entire nation. The victims of such tactics were not soldiers in the battlefield but the elderly, the children, the mothers—innocents caught in the web of power’s cruelty.

War, as we have come to understand it, is not always fought with bullets and bombs. Some battles are fought with hunger, with deprivation, and with the slow erosion of hope. There are those who understand that the heart of a people can be broken not only by the loss of land or wealth but by the loss of sustenance. When a ruler can make a nation go without the very food that sustains life, they can strip a people of their will to fight, of their will to resist. They can force them into submission, not through military might, but by pushing them to the edge of desperation. This is the heart of the cruelty that authoritarians use to bend entire populations to their will.

It is not a mere act of war—it is an act of profound cruelty, the act of one who would see the suffering of others as a means to an end, a tactic to weaken a people until they are broken. And though the physical effects of starvation are devastating—wasting bodies, weakening bones, and extinguishing life—the deeper tragedy lies in the spirit that is crushed. For in the heart of every human being is the desire for dignity, for freedom, and for life. When dictators use starvation as a weapon, they seek not only to control the body but to annihilate the soul of the people, leaving them hollow, without hope, without defiance.

From this, we learn a terrible lesson. Power, when placed in the wrong hands, can become a force of unimaginable cruelty. But we must also learn that compassion, humanity, and solidarity are the antidotes to this tyranny. When the world stands united against such acts, when nations rise to condemn these evils, when we support those who suffer under such oppression, we can break the cycle of hunger and tyranny. It is not enough to turn a blind eye or to assume that such acts are far removed from our own lives. We are all bound by the same humanity, and we must act in the name of justice and compassion.

As we reflect on these truths, let us remember that each of us carries a duty to stand against oppression in all its forms. We must not allow the suffering of others to become just a distant story—it is a call to action, to feed not just the bodies of those in need but the very soul of humankind. In our communities, in our nations, we must speak out against the use of starvation as a weapon, for to ignore it is to allow it to persist. And let us seek, in all things, to nourish those in need—not just with food, but with our compassion, our strength, and our unwavering belief that no one should ever be forced to choose between life and death due to the cruelty of the powerful.