[grujicd]

I was on the receiving end of sanctions in Serbia during 90-ties. That felt very, very unfair, since they also affect people like me who were against government.

They're also countereffective, since dictatorship uses it to push story that "they are against out people, we all suffer but if we stand together (under our rule) we'll prevail". And from what I saw at that time, people redirected their hate from government to evil foreign enemies. This seems to be the pattern in other countries where sanctions are pushed. They really make life worse for ordinary people, not those in power, who even use it for their own benefit.

[kspacewalk2]

Let dictators push whatever story they want. Serbia was a belligerent pariah and suffered economically for it. When the dictator was ousted it stopped being a belligerent pariah and benefited economically from that. That's all that matters in the long run.

[grujicd]

It's not like that, sanctions make it harder to overthrow a dictatorship.

On one hand, 90% of people can only hear official media. With sanctions, they have much easier job telling that someone else is to blame.

On the other hand it makes much much harder for political opposition to fight that narrative, to propose opening the country towards West when they're clearly acting against population through these sanctions.

That's why these sanctions benefit regime, and that's why they're double evil - hurt people + make it harder for opposition to fight the dictator.

In Serbia's case, sanctions didn't help at all with overthrowing Milosevic. They just brought misery to ordinary people and he remained in charge through the 90-ties.

It took loosing all the wars, getting country bombarded by NATO and de facto loosing control over Kosovo, getting entire opposition united, and massive protests to remove him from the power.

[medo-bear]

i agree the us policy in the balkans is an overwhelming success. bosnia and herzegovina prospers and is more stable than ever [1]. kosovo and serbia are best of friends [2]. there is almost zero corruption and gdp is through the roof [3]. there are no children being born with defects and there has been zero cancer cases due to nato dropping depleted uranium [4]. as far as former yugoslavia is concerned, only slovenia is dirt poor

[1] https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/bosnias-next-crisis/

[2] https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-kosovo-dialogue-dead-selakovi...

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

[4] https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2019/12/26/depleted-urani...

[5] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/groups/Former-Yugo...