Not buying Russian oil and gas is not an act of war. Any nation has a right to decide if they want to buy a product, how much, by whom, and at what price they are willing to accept (tariffs and import tax, up to infinitive).

Calling sanctions war is like calling boycotts theft. Vegetarians are not stealing money from beef producers.

What boycotts and sanctions can be is passive aggressiveness. It harms people on a social level, and since humans are social creatures, it feel like violence. The problem of comparing violence with social violence is that not being invited to a party hurt, but it hurts in a different way from getting knifed. Our brain interpret social pain as physical phantom pain, but we must be able to distinguish between real and non-real pain. Society depend on it.

The reason blocking a port is a act of war is that the nation blocking that port is also blocking it for other nations who might be willing to trade. That is like a vegetarian going out during the night and killing off the beef productions herd of cows.

Sanctions are not independent country decisions for "not buying X". In real life they work by throwing a huge economy's and diplomatic power's might against lesser countries they don't like, and in pressuring satellite countries and global organizations a side controls to stop trading, sending supplies, even food and health kits, to other countries.

People are not exclusively operating on an independent basis. They form societies, like countries, and abide to democratic elections. People who work together occasionally achieves more than what each independently would.

Same occurs with nations. Small nations joins together to form large collection of nations, voting democratically on rules and decisions. EU is an union of European countries. If a country want to be in EU they will have to follow the decisions on the democratic process. We can eval this further and say that independent individuals can choose to form nations, and those independent nations can choose to form unions, and those unions can form global trade agreements, each however limited to the democratic process which dictate conditions, rules and laws.

Individuals can also choose to leave their countries, countries can leave unions, and unions can leave the global trade agreements. It is a choice. They do however loose the ability to achieve those things that is only possible when people work together.

Boycotts and sanctions are not the same thing. If I stop buying Coca-Cola products no one goes to jail. Sanctions create legal consequences for trade, enforced by law. They are very different.

> War doesn't necessarily mean killing human beings. You could bomb an empty munitions factory and it would be an act of war.

But it does require attacking or destroying. We aren’t engaging Russia at all. This is like calling a boycott theft.

> It's saying anyone who does business with russia is going to get attacked. It's why china was attacked for trading with iran when china doesn't have any economic sanctions on iran. It's saying the whole world can't do business with russia.

Sanctions are telling people that they must pick a side. We will not be friends with X and if you are friends with them, we will not be friends with you. China was not attacked. It was just told that it can be only with one group.

Blockading a port is only achievable by destroying vessels and people attempting to access that port. Similar to establishing a no-fly zone, it is an action that almost always involves shooting at people.

I simply don't understand the moral argument for why people and countries are required to engage in trades that produce economic surplus if they dislike the person or country with whom they are trading.

I think we are all slinging mud over the same reason, but money is only a part of it, it's really about geopolitical domination.

The EU wants to dominate the cultural and political landscape in Eastern Europe. The West have their ideals of human rights, democracy, climate change, migration, etc. Russia has different views. Even if Ukraine were to become a part of the EU and NATO, all that happens is the problem is postponed. At some point the West will impose sanctions on Russia anyway, regardless of an invasion, because Russia is an obstacle to Globalization. I think that Putin saw the writing on the wall and that's why he made a move.

I certainly don't agree with it, I don't agree with the war, but what did the EU think was going to happen? They and the US smugly admitted to tampering with the internal affairs Ukraine over the last several decades, and and have made their designs on Eastern Europe obvious. Now that they are implementing extreme sanctions on the Russian people, it is only confirmation bias for the Russians and more reason for them to double down on the direction they are headed in.

> Even if Ukraine were to become a part of the EU and NATO, all that happens is the problem is postponed. At some point the West will impose sanctions on Russia anyway, regardless of an invasion, because Russia is an obstacle to Globalization.

Yet Russia hasn't just been self isolating. It has demonstrated a thirst for influence outside its borders. And has been behaving much like the USSR before it, just with less success and the appearance of some democratic process like elections.

EU and NATO countries are trying to strike a different balance between nation sovereignty and economic power.

At one point Putin apparently wanted to join NATO. Though I doubt because of shared values or mutual defense against aggression.

> Economic sanctions are an act of war.

This 100%. I'm seriously wondering how all these people supporting heavy sanctions will feel when Putin realizes he can't win via conventional means and his economy is destroyed, so he starts nuking things.

What's the alternative? Doing nothing while Russia invades countries in Eastern Europe one after the other?

Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine held Normandy peace talks back in January, some of the things the Russians asked for (paraphrased): Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk would be granted special status within Ukraine, security guarantees from NATO, a limitation of the number of troops stationed in Eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine restoring the fresh water supply that they cut off from Crimea. Conceding on some of those things might have been a good alternative to war.

Or, put boots in Ukraine or Russia, and get nuked.

Or, nuke Russia, and get nuked.

Our options are very limited and these alternatives are all terrible.

Ensuring Ukraine's neutrality instead of sacrificing it as a pawn?

Ukraine is a democracy. It's not up to us or anyone else to "ensure their neutrality" if that's not what they want. We already refused to allow them into NATO under the guise of "ensuring their neutrality" and look how that turned out.

>Ukraine is a democracy.

It's a country similarly corrupt as Russia (oligarch wise), that's used as a puppet to pressure it. They have big foreign involvement, and even had their democratically elected leader toppled just 8 years ago. Nominal democracy and huge foreign influence are not contradictory, rather they are the norm.

How do you ensure Ukraine's neutrality as another country? If they pick your side, you start with sanctions against them?

Doing the opposite of how you ensure their non-neutrality as another country.

Don't use them as pawns against Russia, don't get them into NATO, and have Russia sign and respect that - and ensure their borders from Russia and everybody else, fighting for them if necessary (not merely with hypocritical sanctions and condemnations after you've sacrificed them).

It is always easy to criticize. What do you think should happen? Just yield Ukraine to Putin? Did not work with Germany and Elsass-Lothringen, did not work with Russia and the Crimea, won’t work now.

What happens if you give in to a dictator’s demands isn’t that he is satisfied and stops. Instead he will realize that he got away with it, then try something bigger next time. There are countless examples of this in history.

Absent evidence to the contrary, my take on Putin's actions are that he wishes to reestablish the buffer region Russia has historically maintained around itself to absorb invaders. He controls every state near him except Ukraine, so I would let him have it and then he will have his buffer and hopefully be happy. He has nowhere else to go after that except actually attack NATO, after which there is world war, so the appeasement that is possible in this case is rather limited, it really can't go further than this.

Anyway, I get the argument that you should stand up to the bully, but this guy gives me the vibe that he's actually all-in and will (literally) lose his head if he loses this war. I think if this continues and he gets into a losing spot, he will gamble that his nuclear forces will win. I don't see any other option for him actually.

Really he controls NATO member Latvia? He controls Finland? He controls Poland? All these countries are only a few hundred miles away.

When both sides have nukes, you can't win by nuking things either.