US Foreign Policy Since 1945

Data Sources

Events compiled from William Blum (Killing Hope, 2003), Lindsey O'Rourke (Covert Regime Change, 2018), Costs of War Project (Brown University), Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Airwars, Church Committee Reports (1975), and declassified CIA records.

Death Toll Estimates

All death tolls are shown as ranges (low estimate - high estimate), reflecting genuine uncertainty in conflict mortality data.

Low estimates typically come from documented/confirmed deaths (e.g., Iraq Body Count). High estimates include indirect deaths from infrastructure destruction, displacement, and disease. The Costs of War project estimates indirect deaths outnumber direct deaths ~4:1 in post-9/11 war zones.

Estimates flagged as contested indicate either the death toll is disputed among scholars or the degree of US responsibility is debated.

Presidential Attribution

Intervention count is attributed to the president who initiated it. Death toll is distributed evenly across the years of the identified killing period, then attributed to the sitting president each year.

Why even distribution? Year-by-year casualty data rarely exists. Even distribution is the least subjective approach. Readers should treat presidential figures as approximate, not precise.

A president who continues a war started by a predecessor is attributed deaths that occur during their term.

Scope

Direct US military action, CIA covert operations, proxy wars, bombing campaigns, drone campaigns, invasions, coups, and assassinations since 1945. Excludes sanctions (separate map) and passive support for authoritarian allies (separate map).

Limitations

• Death tolls are inherently uncertain. Numbers represent orders of magnitude, not precise counts.
• Attribution is complex. "US responsibility" ranges from direct (bombing) to indirect (enabling a proxy war).
• This dataset aims for exhaustiveness but some events are inevitably missing.
• A brief event card cannot capture the full context of a decades-long conflict.

Data Sources

Sanctions regimes compiled from the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB, Drexel University), Congressional Research Service reports, and academic literature.

The landmark study by Rodriguez, Rendon & Weisbrot in Lancet Global Health (2025) provides the first cross-national causal estimates of sanctions mortality. Their replication data is available at Harvard Dataverse.

Death Toll Estimates

The Lancet study estimates 564,258 deaths per year (95% CI: 367,838-760,677) from unilateral sanctions globally. This is similar in magnitude to the annual death toll of all armed conflicts worldwide. Children under 5 account for 51% of deaths.

This is a global aggregate estimate, not broken down by country. Country-level mortality estimates exist only for a handful of regimes:

• Iraq (1990-2003): Garfield (1999): 227K-350K excess child deaths; UNICEF: 500K (contested by later surveys)
• Venezuela (2017-2018): Weisbrot & Sachs, CEPR (2019): 40K+ excess deaths
• Haiti (1991-1994): Gibbons & Garfield (1999): ~20K excess child deaths
• North Korea (1990s): 500K-2.5M famine deaths (sanctions a contributing but not primary cause)
• Afghanistan (2021+): 13K+ newborn deaths; WHO warned 1M children at risk

For most sanctioned countries, the humanitarian impact is documented qualitatively but not quantified as excess deaths.

Presidential Attribution

Sanctions count is attributed to the president who imposed them. Death toll is distributed evenly across the years of each sanctions regime and attributed to the sitting president.

A president who maintains sanctions initiated by a predecessor is attributed deaths that occur during their term.

Key Finding

The Lancet study found that US unilateral sanctions drive the mortality effect. EU unilateral sanctions showed no significant effect. UN multilateral sanctions showed no significant effect.

Limitations

• Attributing deaths specifically to sanctions (vs. other factors like conflict, misgovernment, or pre-existing poverty) is methodologically challenging.
• The Lancet global estimate is contested; one author has affiliations with Venezuelan advocacy organizations.
• Country-level estimates for Iraq (UNICEF 500K figure) have been challenged by later surveys.
• North Korea's famine was primarily caused by economic mismanagement, not sanctions alone.

Data Sources

Compiled from truth commission reports (Guatemala CEH, El Salvador, Chile Rettig/Valech, Argentina CONADEP, East Timor CAVR), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Congressional Research Service, and academic sources cited per event.

Death Toll Estimates

All death tolls are shown as ranges (low estimate - high estimate). Deaths counted are those committed by the US-backed regime during the period of US support — not deaths caused directly by US forces (those are on the Interventions map).

The causal relationship between US support and the regime's violence varies: in some cases (Indonesia 1965, Guatemala, El Salvador), US support was directly enabling. In others (Egypt, Tunisia), the connection is more indirect.

Presidential Attribution

Support is attributed to the president in office when US backing began. Death toll is distributed evenly across the years of the killing period and attributed to the sitting president each year.

A president who maintains support for a repressive regime is attributed deaths that occur during their term.

Scope

Significant US military aid, arms sales, intelligence cooperation, financial support, or diplomatic cover provided to governments that committed systematic human rights abuses during the period of US support.

Limitations

• Death tolls are inherently uncertain, especially for long-running dictatorships.
• The degree of US responsibility varies from direct enablement to passive acquiescence.
• Some entries are marked "contested" where the nature or extent of US support is debated.
• This is not comprehensive. Many US-backed regimes are omitted where deaths were not reliably documented.

Methodology

US actions since 1945 that would constitute crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Rome Statute

The Rome Statute, adopted in 1998 and entering into force in 2002, established the ICC and defines four core international crimes:

• Art. 6 Genocide: acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
• Art. 7 Crimes against humanity: widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population
• Art. 8 War crimes: grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions
• Art. 8 bis Crime of aggression: use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State

US Opposition to the ICC

The US has never ratified the Rome Statute. In 2002, Congress passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act (nicknamed "The Hague Invasion Act"), authorizing the president to use military force to free any US personnel held by the ICC.

Classification

Each event is classified under the most applicable Rome Statute article. Many events could be classified under multiple articles; the primary classification reflects the most serious applicable charge. Events marked with an amber dot involve genuine legal or factual dispute about the characterization.

Death Tolls

Death tolls are expressed as ranges with source attribution. Where deaths occurred over a multi-year period, the running counter distributes deaths evenly across the years of that period.

Temporal Scope

While the Rome Statute entered into force in 2002, the legal principles it codifies were already established in customary international law and the Nuremberg Principles. Events before 2002 are included because the Nuremberg Tribunal was applying these same principles as early as 1945.

Other Violated Frameworks

• UN Charter — Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force against any state.
• Geneva Conventions (1949) — Prohibit collective punishment, targeting civilian infrastructure, starvation as a weapon.
• Convention Against Torture (1984) — US ratified 1994. Abu Ghraib, CIA black sites, and extraordinary rendition all violate this.
• Genocide Convention (1948) — Supplying weapons to a state committing plausible genocide may constitute complicity.
• Nuremberg Principles (1950) — Established by the US itself. "Waging of a war of aggression" is a crime.