his inability to act out of indifference

Churchill knew exactly what was going to happen, because it had happened before.

Under British colonial rule, roughly 25% of the Irish population got wiped out in the Great Famine. Ireland has to date not fully recovered from the effects.

When the Irish harvest got infested and failed multiple years in a row, the British not only didn't send support, but continued to extract food from Ireland to supply the British mainland. They blamed the victims as bringing it upon themselves by being too stupid to plant other crops. While the truth is that Britain bled Ireland dry and the farmers were too poor to afford any other crops than potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They worked under slave-like conditions. Pretty much everything they earned was taken away to pay "rent" to Englishmen for being "allowed" to work the soil they themselves were legally not allowed to own.

Even before the Great Famine, Cromwell had used burning of crops and starvation as a strategy during the conquest of Ireland, killing 600,000 people out of a population of 1,4 Million (40% of all Irish by the time).

If you have any doubts about the facts, just ask any Irish man or woman. There are thousands of abandoned houses, built by people who died in the Great famine or fled the country and countless stories describing this period.

Using starvation as a weapon and part of colonial strategy has been nothing new and is well documented across multiple centuries.