Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by paulus_magnus2 1580 days ago
As the author correctly noted the role of Preemptive Sanctions is not as a deterrent but his argumentation agains it is based on a nof far-sighted enough analysis of the consequences of sanctions.

(1) Russia is a state on brink of bancrupcy. Deplatforming Russia from SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, stopping gas pipelines, etc etc. cutting any trade swhatsover would degrade Russia's finances enough to prevernt them from being able to finance a prolongued military offensive operations. Helicopters, tanks, planes are very expensive.

(2) Russia is a also a very oligarchical state with regular people having zero power or assets. Therefore preemptive sanction should have been imposed on Russia's oligarchs in order to "motivate" them into questioning their support of Putin himself. Again degrading his ability to order risky military missions, degrading his ability for prolongued war and perhaps the oligarchs would overthrow Putin altogether. With perhaps the war itseelf already being Putin's preemptive tactic to escape being overthrown.

Forthermore, again, preemprively NATO should have supplied Ukraine with vast amounts of defensive antitank and antihelicopter weapons which wold inflict very costly damage and perhaps stop the invasion altogether - there were ideas to supply these weapons but Germany opposed.

NATO could also have ordered massive militaty training in Ukraine and again did have this idea but again Germany was against.

1 comments

> Russia is a state on brink of bancrupcy.

Proofs? AFAIK it is exact opposite: very low debt, stable source of income from resources export, large gold reserves.

They are a petrolstate with no real economy going and producing virtually no tradeale goods other than raw resources[a] [b]

70% of their trade is with Western countries [c] so if cut them off, their deficit quickly pushes them hard into debt and with no external financing they will go into internal debt. With no credibile ways to pay off debt they have hyperinflation and people on the streets demanding Putin out.

Modern war is super expensive [d]

[a] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russia_Export_Treema... [b] https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=186&product=un... [c] https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=186&product=un...

[d] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-i...

Thanks for [b]&[c] links, very useful.