Seems more likely sanctions would cause a steady state where the sanctioned country is some n months/years behind where it would otherwise be, speaking as a complete geopolitical layman anyway.
On the flip side, you have China, where US pretty much helped build up their economy and hoped for a peaceful and democratic outcome. How well did that go?
and yet US is spending taxpayer money to defend Ukraine.
"So?
I'd rather live in the modern day, "unequally" with the rich, than starve or die of disease equally with the rich of the middle ages.
Just because the rich have 100Xed in quality of life over the last century, doesn't negate the fact that the poor have 10Xed in quality of life.
Making everyone equal is easy. Just make them all equally dead, starving, or miserable, just like they were in past centuries."
Shows a lack of historical knowledge. If all were so miserable, how did they built the greatest civilization, Christendom? Did Newton or Leibniz starve to death? The picture you are drawing here of past centuries is ahistorical and completely disregards the unbelievable quality of art and architecture that was possible during times where people were, according to you, "dead, starving, or miserable". (As if they aren't today.)
I don't want to live at all. I would kill myself immediately did I not fear God, Christ, and eternal damnation.
Thats the point. They are taking nothing but losses. All for some land that is now worthless after the war.
Oh they are absolutely have motivations against their own people dieing in the hundreds of thousands and they have motivations against them losing significant military assets and having massive amounts of economic damages.
Those are normal motivations they every county has.
That's why the best way to get them to change behavior is to "motivate" them with those consequences.
Current analysis is that Russia has maybe another year and a half left in their war before it ends due to these "motivational factors".
Still a ways to go, but manageable.
Those machines are not fit for a war with China, which is our current fear, and have to be replaced anyway. It literally costs obscene amounts of money to scrap and disarm them, but it turns out it's very cheap to let them save a few Ukrainian lives.
Nearly every dollar "spent" for Ukraine was either spent in the 80s military build up or is loaned to Ukraine so they can purchase our stuff.
The Russia/USSR transition is more like that of the Roman Republic to the Principate/Dominate. Or the different stages of other closely related empires throughout history after dealing with internal regime, partial reversals and so forth.
Even Putin sees Russia/USSR as parts of a organic historic continuum, and this is a key component of his rhetoric. That the USSR's territorial losses are Russia's losses and must be reversed if Russia it to "save face" and so on.
USSR was a necessary collaborator in this invasion.
Recent events have shown that to be very much not the case. Over the past few weeks we've had news of the Russian Navy paying port calls and the Chinese building major signals intelligence capabilities. Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally?
It's always interesting to contrast our relationships with Cuba vs Vietnam. We fought a long hot war with Vietnam yet today we have good relations with them. Obviously we can't say we would have a good relationship with Cuba if we had been nicer to them but it certainly makes me think.
I strongly suspect the possibility of normalizing relations while the Castros held power would have been impossible.
I had actually expected some progress on this front after they got new blood in a few years ago, but he's much the same, and given their relations with other sanctioned countries like North Korea, and calling Israel a terrorist state, I don't really see much desire for change from either side.
Many senior government officials over the years, including then Vice President Cheney, have plainly said that our interest in Venezuela is their oil. The sanctions, as in any country, are about wanting control over their resources.
Then when it comes to Cuba, another dictatorship, the left complains the US is applying sanctions.
It seems inconsistent.
Most people are pushing for the latter, to get a more neutral approach to foreign relations.
It seems divorced from reality.
There are opinions that come from different groups on the political spectrum, that pop up again and again and can be regarded as "common beliefs".
My comment is based on that.
- Working against them with sanctions
Don’t you see any other options here?
What is their government doing that is so terrible?
Anyway let's suppose Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, even though it really isn't by any metric. Why are there no sanctions on Saudi Arabia? Why no sanctions on Taiwan during the white terror? Why no sanctions on Chile when they threw alive protesters from flying helicopters? I could go on for a while.
Surviving while Communist.
The thing is that people would get killed for disagreeing even under Batista. If your family was happy with Batista then I don't think they were in a clean line of business.
We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to fund what their government is doing, and allying with them gives us little to nothing in return.
That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.