In the medieval era, deprivation was the deadliest wartime weapon. Dramatic battle scenes like the ones you see in Hollywood films, where hundreds of soldiers storm the walls of a castle, were more the exception than the norm—too dangerous, and too costly. Instead, armies preferred to encircle their enemies and starve them out. They’d build walls of their own, in a practice called circumvallation, to keep supplies from reaching the besieged fortress. They’d dig trenches and divert streams to cut off the water supply. One of the longest recorded sieges of this period, at Kenilworth Castle in England, lasted a full six months. But that was on a trivially small scale compared to the nationwide siege warfare the Trump administration is now waging against Cuba.

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