Norms are established through precedents. There are considerable precedents in the 21st century that military invasions DO NOT lead to international sanctions. So this isn't a valid argument, and it's true that that decision was emotional and politically motivated.
The idea that you turn a conversation about fairness for victims into a conversation about fairness for bullies means you don’t actually care about victims.
In other words, there are no norms or standards for handling these situations. It's purely political.
This whataboutism is a circular argument where any brazen invasion can be justified by some previous perceived slight. Because someone somewhere got away with something, now anything is permissible.
is a weird way to see it. I rather doubt your average peer human sees it that way.
The UN's "deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by Russia" vote was 141 yes 5 no, the 5 nos being Russia and allied dictatorships.
It doesn't fit your narrative.
It's clear from the last decade or so that there is much to gain from portraying oneself as a victim, to appeal to supposed liberal values, all to mask what is really a commitment to naked Realism and Tribalism, the true principle that consistently binds the "global south" together. They do not care for colonialism, oppression or "bullying", it's only wrong that it should happen to them. Otherwise they're quite glad to brutally suppress their own internal separatist movements or opposition. That is what the "average" person thinks.
You can convince a few useful idiots in universities to act against their own interests, but people elsewhere aren't stupid to see what one's intentions really are.
Not sure where you are going with Bahrain.
As far as Yemen the official government of Yemen is a democracy and its opponents believe in eternal theocratic autocracy blessed by God.
Otherwise it's a mighty coincidence that the West only "intervenes" in places that are simultaneously relevant to Western geopolitical-economic interests and just happen to have a "murderous autocrat" begging to be toppled.
So convenient that the bloc which dominates the global media landscape is always narratively-justified in its murder campaigns. Nothing fishy there!
This is so, so ridiculous take of the war that I refuse to believe there are any significant number of people outside of Russia believing this. NATO/US is forcing Russia to destroy Ukraine, really now? They really are forced to wage an expansionist, genocidal war against a small neighbour?
We can't have it both ways. Either Russia is a functioning democracy (which I don't personally believe exists anywhere but that is another topic), or perhaps the average person does not actually have very much say in such events.
Sanctions are meant to harm innocent people as much as possible, on purpose, with the idea being that it will cause so much unrest that the government either caves to the pressure or the people revolt. While I find that very sick in and of itself, I would at least appreciate it if we were honest about that rather than making contradictory moral statements.
That said, worse yet, almost hilariously, I cannot think of a single time sanctions have ever truly worked in a situation even remotely similar to that of Russia. Just think about countries like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria, etc -- like it or not, these countries have not toppled as a result of the sanctions. Do they hurt? Yes, of course, but they evidently do not destroy nations the way we believed they would.
Instead, the innocent are hurt, as was the intention, yet the goal never gets achieved. North Korea still has nuclear weapons, and all we've done is force Iran to develop its own industry, such that, ironically, it is now capable of sending weapons to aid Russia.
We didn't think of the poor Germans when we burned them alive as part of the effort to stop the Nazis and few argue that the Germans aren't collectively complicit save only for those who actively resisted.
I'm fully willing to hold blameless those who burned weapons and recruitment centers, spoke out publicly against the war within or after fleeing Russia, shot their commander, or surrendered to avoid an unjust fight.
I'm aware those are all extremely risky. I know exactly why someone would want to keep their heads down and I none the less blame them no less than I blame all the good Nazis who didn't believe in the ideology but kept their heads down while Jews burned in ovens and their neighbors rotted in battlefields and economic consequences are the least of what is just and fair.
A million people are dead including many of their own they are complicit.
That’s an insane take. The vast majority of their citizens are just regular people like you or me.
All decisions are discrimination, and discrimination in general is fine. There are narrow, specific kinds of discrimination that are suspect and need additional justification. OTOH, a perfectly valid reason was offered: legal advice based on international sanctions imposed on Russian entities in response to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Now, certainly, there was not public information sufficient to assess the correctness of that decision, and I would not prejudge any claim from any party adversely impacted that chose to challenge it.
But I’d also note that where there is not a contractual relationship or some other binding commitment to way against the potential consequences of sanctions violations, legal advice will likely be “better safe than sorry” in that it is better to cut off relations where there is no commitment more broadly than sanctions might require rather than to err on the other side, too. Acting in such advice mag still be a reasonable and prudent decision.
Now it's frequently used as a defense for hypocrisy.
It sucks for the good-faith programmers in Russia but what would you have the rest of the world do? The Russian state must be sanctioned for its blatant disregard for international norms.
Please don’t just respond with whataboutism. The whataboutism in these threads involves different people in different times. This is happening now.