[omxfpcof] Economic sanctions

Compare the damages inflicted by economic sanctions versus nuclear weapons: years of potential life lost; value of lost economic production.

Of course, economic sanctions are much more politically palatable than dropping bombs because the deaths are invisible; there's seemingly no blood on your hands.  However, is the harm any less?  Economic sanctions are often applied for decades.  If the damages are comparable or even greater, should a country being subjected to economic sanctions be permitted to retaliate with nuclear weapons, under the same reasoning that it is generally considered permissible to retaliate against a nuclear strike with one's own nuclear strike?

If all economic sanctions were lifted, how much would the world's GDP increase?

How effective are economic sanctions?  Assuming successful, we need a way to put a value on the political gain achieved to compare against the economic loss.  Are economic sanctions cost effective compared to nuclear strike?

Even though both may be considered mass murder, economic sanctions seem preferable to nuclear strike because effective economic sanctions requires the cooperation of many countries -- many countries willing to commit mass murder -- rather than just one nuclear power willing to commit mass murder.  It requires more international consensus that the target country deserves to be mass murdered.  Furthermore, if you choose to trade rather than mass murder, you will make more profit than usual because of supply and demand, so the justification needs to be very strong.  However, is this logic valid?  What is the political process by which many countries agree to cooperate in mass murder?  I suspect it is often one powerful country (e.g., USA) strong-arming the rest into cooperating, making it no different than a nuclear strike.  The military blockade of the West Bank is of course being perpetrated by only one nuclear-armed country, though others are likely cooperating by letting it happen.