Ín a world without nukes they would be bombed too right now, because wars have a tendency of doing that regardless of who fights.
Anything less let's Putin get away once again. And right now every country in Europe, and their citizens, are sick of Putin getting away every single time.
I do have a personal stake in this. We're the only western neighbour of Russia that is not in NATO and has not been attacked by them after the fall of Soviet Union. We're basically next, and it wouldn't be the first time Russia would "defend" itself by driving tanks here. I heard enough stories from my grandparents who had to flee due to them. I thought that it's a thing of the past, but it very clearly is not.
That would be too easy - there needs to be war reparations paid to Ukraine too - although nothing will bring back the lost lives.
So what about - yes, sanctions lifted, and the 300 billion Russian state stashed away is given to Ukraine.
Moldova?
Finland is the only land border sharing non nato country left.
It's very influential book in Russia that has influenced their policy goals. It was written in 1997. A lot of it feels rather prescient considering the current world situation, which is likely not a surprise.
What they considered for US was that they should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics"
UK was to be cut off from European politics and Germany should be the new lead of central Europe. Well, UK did distance itself. And up to few weeks ago Germany was the one most against united front against Russia.
There is plenty of other stuff there. Annexation of Ukraine is just one of them (alongside annexation of Belarus which they have de facto achieved). Annexation of Finland is one of the goals too. Hence I have no doubts that it would happen at some point.
i think it’s unlikely, too, but if the past few weeks have taught us anything, it’s that russia likes to repeat its past conquests
Since the US is also directly funding the Russian’s ability to wage war in Ukraine, would you advocate for the US and other Western countries who continue to buy Russian Oil to sanction themselves?
In essence it is to maintain some leverage, on top of the usual practical and selfish reasons.
In addition Americans are notoriously sensitive to the price of gas (in a similar vein the joke goes that Russia has had two price spikes in Vodka, first in 1917 and second in 1991, maybe we'll get third one soon). If it rises too much they might start to oppose the whole being uppity to Russians thing going on now, which would be bad.
At the same time you excuse rich countries such as the US or Germany who actively choose to continue to buy oil from authoritarian regimes even as they invade our allies - simply because buying oil elsewhere would be expensive and politically inconvenient.
I don’t understand your logic.
Remember, the sanctions against average Russians will absolutely result in shortages of food, medicine and other essential supplies. Many everyday Russians will likely starve or die from these sanctions. This isn’t about how quickly they can replace their old iPhones.
You are completely wrong here. The sanctions are against Russia to cripple their war machine, not the Russian people.
And Russia, with its immense natural resources, could easily afford to care and feed its citizens regardless of the relationship with the west, if only their oligarchs hadn't dilapidated the country's wealth for their personal gain. So it's hardly the west's fault that the Russian government steals from its own people (literally) and spends whatever wealth it has left bombing innocent people in Ukraine instead of spending it caring for its people.
Russia is not the victim here, and Russian people starving is not the west's fault but it's Russia's own fault and their leaders' fault. Period.
Oligarchs and authoritarians in Russia have options and resources to weather the storm. Many everyday Russians live close to hand to mouth and they will suffer. I don’t accept the decision to dehumanize an entire nation’s citizens for the acts of their authoritarian elite.
The Russian kings and knights and rooks and bishops will be fine. It is the pawns or plebs who will suffer the most.
They are innocent in my eyes, having only committed the crime of being born within the wrong arbitrary political boundaries.
It's not though. The west doesn't come to Russia and shove their grubby hands into the bank accounts of ordinary Russians to steal their money, resources and taxes, and starve them to death. Russia does that to their citizens and bares the sole responsibility of these actions, not the west. Like come on, Russia can choose to stop the wear at any time and the sanctions would be lifted but they're not doing that.
>I don’t accept the decision to dehumanize an entire nation’s citizens for the acts of their authoritarian elite.
So we should just let Russia invade whatever country it wants and kill their way through Europe because otherwise ordinary Russian citizens might suffer? What about Ukrainian citizens and their suffering? What about the poor pensioners in Eastern Europe who won't be able to afford the increased energy bills due to the war and might die because instead of buying medicine, now have to pay insane energy bills? What about the European taxpayers who will now have to pay increased costs to house and care for millions of displaced Ukrainian refugees? So Russia and Russians are not the only ones paying the price for Putin's actions, all of Europe is.
By your logic, you would have let Hitler exterminate an entire continent because fighting Germany would have been tough on the innocent people of Germany for the acts of their leader (not that it wasn't, but Hitler had to be defeated and that was the price). Except that now, to defeat Putin, instead of going to war with Russia and have millions of people needlessly die on both sides, we can bankrupt Russia and cripple it from the inside, and have minimal casualties on both sides (Europeans will also suffer from the war and these sanctions but the important thing is we save Ukraine and as many Ukrainians as we can, as I doubt Putin will ever see a trial in the Hague for his war crimes).
- A few weeks ago it was Canada freezing bank accounts of their political opponents.
- The US still allows for civil forfeiture of arbitrary assets with no presumption of innocence or conventional due process.
- A little while back Cyprus arbitrarily stole private funds from innocent civilians who had committed no crime - just because the gov said they needed it to bail out their bankers
- The EU has had negative nominal interest rates for some time stealing money from savers for the benefit of central bank policy
- Nearly all western governments have had negative real interest rates on savings for some time. This is a conscious policy to inflate their currencies through money printing in order to more easily manage their national debts.
I didn’t read that from OP’s post and I don’t understand what exactly you are claiming here.
Do Russian oligarchs steal from the bank accounts of ordinary Russians or is there another mechanism of theft?
Any time West puts sanctions on oligarchs Putin makes a law so they can pay less taxes, meaning ordinary people keep paying taxes for them
If I recall correctly the government took trillions from ordinary citizens to pay out the banking elite as a thank you for the bankers and rating agencies committing rampant fraud in MBS and CDOs - all while none of them were ever charged with crimes and none went to jail. Many bankers even received massive bonuses from taxpayer-funded bailout funds as well.
For example the city of Montreal is notorious for similar corruption in their road construction industry. Other cities are known to operate with similar collusion, though it isn’t as widely reported.
If Nancy Pelosi was Russian we would certainly call her an Oligarch as it is widely known she has a net worth of $200 million+ on a salary of a few hundred thousand per year.
She gained her enormous wealth by feeding insider information, which she gained from her privileged position, to her husband, so he could insider trade and front-run the American people stealing from their 401ks and other investment accounts.
Insider trading is only a crime for regular Americans, not congress or senators. It is perfectly legal for them to insider trade all day long. Guess who wrote those laws?
Also, Pelosi isn’t the only American politician who abuses their power by insider trading - only the most successful.
No, absolutely not but that is a false dichotomy and I think you also know that. This isn’t a simple binary choice between doing nothing and imposing broad-stroke sanctions on every single citizen of Russia.
One simple first step could be for the US and Germany and the rest of Western Europe to simply stop buying oil from Russia and thereby cut off further direct funding for Putin’s war. We know that sanctions on regular citizens hurt regular citizens while cutting off oil purchases directly impedes the Russian state’s ability to wage war. Which do you think would be more effective?
As for increasing energy costs on Europeans and also Ukrainians who I understand are paying up to half their take-home wages to heat their homes, I think the easiest course of action would be for Western governments to directly subsidize energy prices in the short term while simultaneously cutting fuel and carbon taxes on those affected.
I don’t agree with your assessment of my logic that I would let Hitler exterminate anyone and I would appreciate it if we could keep the discussion civil.
I am not your enemy. I want this war to end ASAP as much as you do. We are simply advocating different strategies to achieve the same goal - peace.
Again, the west is not attacking Russian citizens, but the Russian government. We can't change the fact that ordinary Russians are subject to the Russian government and therefore will also suffer to a degree no matter how you try to slice the sanctions. Especially when Russia would rather destroy European food rather than give it to its starving people.[1] So if Russia is actively harming its own people how can we expect to protected them if their own government won't?
You can't just keep repeating the trope that the west is actively harming the Russians citizens when its their own government doing it. Yeah, living in a corrupt country with shitty leaders is bad for the people living there but it's not the west's responsibility to improve it for them. Ultimately, it's up to the Russian people to revolt against their government and fight for a better future, same how other countries did it. The price of freedom is always high.
That doesn’t mean I advocate arbitrarily punishing innocent civilians for the actions of their rulers - especially when those rulers are proven to be authoritarians who can and will ruthlessly crush dissent from their populace.
If you read my other comments on this thread you will see I shared some ideas that I believe would both be more targeted towards Russia’s elite, while also bringing more direct pain to defund Putin’s ability to wage war.
Namely the west should cut off Russia’s supply of money by banning the purchase of Russian oil.
I realize this action will hurt regular Ukrainians and other Innocent Europeans which is why I also advocate for direct subsidies to reduce the cost of energy for these affected populations, paid for by western governments.
TL;DR: One strategy we might try to make it harder for the elites to wage war would be to stop giving them money to wage war while at the same time temporarily subsidizing energy costs for populations affected by the oil sanctions.
I don't think that's sufficient. You mentioned the collapse of the ruble, this is an outcome that heavily effects Russians but also directly effects the ability for the war to be financed. In the end, you cannot separate the two, in order to apply enough pressure to one you must invariably harm the other.
I also think it is silly to argue that cutting Russia off from this direct subsidy from the west would be insufficient to have chilling effect on Putin’s war - especially when we haven’t even tried. How do you know it is insufficient?
I am bemoaning the fact that there IS at least one precision nuke that would single-handedly hit 30% of Russia’s GDP, cause direct pain to Russia’s oligarchs and elites, and immediate decimate Putin’s war machine - all while doing much less damage to ordinary Russians than broad indiscriminate economic sanctions.
I am bemoaning the fact that this tactical nuke we could drop on Russia’s oil & gas sector is clear and obvious to most everyone involved but would result in economic and political blowback for the west so everyone is burying their head in the sand and pretending the option to stop buying oil from authoritarians who attack our allies doesn’t exist.
I have yet to hear a good argument for why broad economic sanctions against an entire nation and its people are more targeted or more effective than just not buying oil or gas from Russia’s elites and stop directly subsidizing Putin’s war machine.
Perhaps someone here can enlighten me?
What is happening to the Russian people is tragic, but it pales in comparison to what the average Ukrainian is experiencing (shortages of food, medicine, water and basic shelter, psychological terror, maimings, deaths).
We have no other means to put pressure on Putin save arming Ukraine or attacking Russia.
We are going to feel a lot of pain anyway and more the longer that this goes on. Gas prices are already through the roof. Ukraine and Russia are both major grain exporters, meaning this war will have a devastating impact around the world this year. We should be doing everything we can to make sure it stops sooner rather than later even if it means more pain now.
If we cut off this market it would cripple Putin’s war in Ukraine much more effectively than arming Ukrainians on the ground.
Add in energy subsidies to affected customers in need of economic support to offset the inevitable increase in oil/gas prices in the short-term and we can blunt the worst of the pain on regular Europeans.
Why is this proposal not even worth considering? Broad economic sanctions are most definitely not the only option to pressure Putin.
Except, even without sanctions on oil & gas, no one is buying the oil.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/investing/russia-oil-sanction...
For example 6 days ago The NY Times reported that Shell had stopped buying oil from Russia [0] but that was also fake news.
Shell is now defending their decision to buy 100 metric tons of aural crude from Russia according to multiple reports in the past 24 hours. [1]
Nothing changed, It was all just PR spin to manipulate public opinion. It looks like it worked.
In war the first casualty is the truth.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/business/russia-oil-compa...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/shell-buys-r...
Like I mentioned in the previous post, the main reason is to keep some leverage. It's the biggest financial sanction that can be thrown at them. Essentially all other sanctions were taken, but the last one was kept unused. If Putin escalates against civilians this sanction would likely be used too.
I would like to believe our elected leaders are not so self-serving as to put their political interests above the needs of the Ukrainian people but I’ve seen enough geo—politics in my life that I simply can’t be so naiive.
With one simple decision - banning oil & gas imports - we could devestate Putin’s ability to wage war and it would impose less direct hardship on everyday Russians?
To protect civilians from higher energy costs in Ukraine and EU western governments could temporarily provide direct subsidies.
This seems like an idea worth trying. What am I missing?
If you still don’t get it, go buy DEFCON on Steam and play it a few times.
Sanctioning oil and gas would end a direct war subsidy to Putin. Broad sanctions against the people of Russia don’t do nearly as much to stop the war as simply not buying petroleum-chemicals to fund Putin’s war chest.
The Russian people are no more to blame here than Republicans who voted for George W Bush before he waged a war of aggression and killed 500k Iraqis based on a lie about WMD.
In fact, the Russian people are less responsible than those Republicans since the US is supposed to be a democracy and Americans still have fair elections to vote unpopular candidates out.
The only crime of the Russian people is the accident of being born inside her arbitrary borders.
We should stop dehumanizing and punishing an entire population for the unconscionable actions of their authoritarian leader.
>Yes your average Russian will get caught up in the sanctions. Yes it will be difficult and unpleasant for families.
The guy is mad and made a bad strategic move by starting an unpopular war. This is the opportunity
This looks like a circular argument.
Yeah, only because he's anti-Putin. People who follow internal deals more closely remember how he was marching with slogans "Russia for russians, Moscow for moscovians" and such. He always was very opportunistic in my opinion.
I respect him for what he's done regarding investigations but he's not a president material.
>Good people exist in Russia.
Sure, but being a "good person" does not qualify you as president. No to mention that "good" is subjective. Many people see Putin as a good person.
War, including economic war, commonly involves massive harm to civilians. That includes civilians who oppose the war and are powerless to stop it. If the western powers and their allies could surgically snuff out Putin’s war machine without harm to innocent Russians then they would. Unfortunately that option is not available. So we accept that innocent Russians will suffer as we drain the financial blood from Putin’s war machine.
Instead they chose broad indiscriminate sanctions that, while politically convenient are absolutely devastating to everyday Russian plebs. The Ruble has collapsed leading to hyperinflation on everyday goods the people need to survive.
Many innocent Russians will die directly because of the actions of the west. Their blood will be on our hands.
They will die because of the actions of their own government.
The only crime committed by regular Russians is being born inside an authoritarian regime that pretended to be a democracy for a time. The genie is out of the bottle and Russians know that protesting their government could land them in the Gulag or worse.
Stop playing with people’s lives! Yo have obviously never lived under an authoritarian government. People rising up in a new Arab Spring may sound romantic but it is more likely to end up in many more deaths than overthrowing this givernment.
Elsewhere I advocated for the west banning the purchase of oil along with subsidizing energy prices for affected populations.
You repeatedly ignore my proposal or even explain what is wrong with the idea of de-funding the Russian war machine by no longer giving the Russian government millions of dollars/Euros.
Why won’t you address my core point instead of deflecting and blaming an entire nation’s citizens?
1) Stop buying oil & gas from oligarchs and Russian elites.
The oils stays in Russia and Russians stay warm in winter.
Putin loses billions in foreign currency which he was using to wage war in Ukraine - crippling his war machine virtually overnight.
The elites and government lose 30% of their GDP and this was money that never trickled down to the plebs. It hurts the oligarchs and givernment who receive the revenue and taxes directly.
2) Broad economic sanctions mean everyday Russians can no longer buy food, medicine, clothing, batteries, electronics, shoes, or anything else from abroad.
It hurts the middle-class and working class more than elites.
Did you know for example that the sanctions against Russia include a carve-out protecting Italy’s ability to sell ultra high-end luxury and designer goods?
Do you still think this is about targeting Russian elites?
At this point I don’t blame anyone for sanctioning first then Reviewing later. What is happening in Ukraine is obscene. If there is the smallest possibility that any sanction makes any Russian more likely to protest or question putin it’s worth a go. We can check again in 6 months and see if all are still needed ir likely to be effective.
If the options on the table are a) do nothing, b) launch a military counter-offensive which could lead to use of nuclear weapons and/or a cyber-war with as-yet unknown (but certainly devastating) consequences, or c) use economic measures to deprive Putin of the tax base he needs to fund his war, I choose option C.
I’m willing to consider other options if they are presented.
D) stop directly subsidizing Putin’s war machine by buying Russia’s oil & gas.
That said, even if you believe your suggestion is separate from mine, there's nothing to preclude choosing both C and D.
If solely focusing on Russia's oil exports isn't enough to get the job done, we need to apply economic sanctions across a broader section of Russia's economy, if we're going to act at all.
Clearly the latter is more focused on the Russian government, ends a direct subsidy of our money paying for this war, and has much less direct impact on poor and struggling everyday Russians?
And that's why the broad sanctions. Russian government can always milk population for money, as long as the population has the money. They did it quite a few times in the 20-th century, e.g. rouble was denominated by an order of magnitude in 1961, and by 3 orders of magnitude in 1997. For this reason, focused sanctions not gonna work.
Let’s say that were true. Why then should the west not apply broad sanctions AND include sanctions on Oil & Gas exports as well?
It seems to me that this policy would shut down Putin’s war machine faster than either measure alone.
I suspect the real reason the west chose to exclude oil & gas from other sanctions is the same reason the sanctions include a carve-out for selling Italian luxury goods to Russian elites.
Namely that the west is equally willing to impose pain on the Russian people as it is on Russia’s elites but they are unwilling to take more effective action since it would be politically risky and may impede their chances of re-election - even though it would effectively end the war in Ukraine immediately.
That's exactly what we're doing.
If we ban Russian oil & gas overnight, the markets will freak out and the damage to our economy will be too large. The negotiations to re-route oil & gas across the planet take time. I hope they already made some progress with Iran and Venezuela.
At the very least, that's one of many possibilities of what happened.
For those who say beat the war drums, punish them all, just so we can make it harder on the authoritarians and oligarchs - are you ready to enlist in the Ukraine militia or is that too much to ask?
It seems a little too facile to be willing to put others lives on the line when you are not willing to risk your own.