[turtledove]

You are punishing people for rolling poorly on the parental lottery.

Some kid starving to death because of sanctions doesn't understand what's happening. Their parents will be too poor and hungry to meaningfully fight back against their leaders.

It's only going to hurt the vulnerable people in a country - militaries and oligarchs will not be impacted unless you target them specifically and narrowly.

Imagine if China said, "we're no longer shipping electronics to America and will not do business with anyone who does". You and I would experience huge jumps in costs and probably be angry at China, not our own government. But you probably aren't going to take up arms up being down your own government.

Broad sanctions are just bad policy.

[glogla]

[flagged]

[neilwilson]

Where do you think the Chinese get food from?

Where do you think the Russians get food from?

The belief in sanctions is the belief that the dollar is the one world currency - the silver coin. It’s fixed exchange rate thinking long after that went away

All that needs to happen for people to be fed is for there to be a circular economy in agriculture that produces a vast surplus.

Both China and Russia can do that internally now and certainly between themselves.

China and Russia has no need to sell anything outside of China and Russia. A simple Yuan-Rouble floating exchange rate will work just fine.

The people that lose out are those that can no longer access Chinese and Russian output in return for mere electronic promises. That’s the net importers of the West.

[KptMarchewa]

You believe in fairy tales if you think that China-Russia trade matters at all.

Russia is below 2% of Chinese trade and decreasing. Netherlands, 10 million people country matters more for Chinese trade than Russia.

China only wants Russia to sold cheap raw resources, and will squeeze them until they fold like Iran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93China_25-year_Coo...

Being a net importer is great. Net exporters sell their goods, getting way less than they produced and sold. What happens with your foreign currency reserves in times of high inflation like now? They rapidly devalue.

[landemva]

If sanctions don't work, is there hypothetically a number of years after which USA should drop the sanctions? How many more years of sanctions on the people of Cuba?

[glogla]

What does it mean for sanctions not to work?

You can see sanctions work - both in specific effects (e.g. a factory producing missiles has to stop since it can't get chips) and in some macroeconomic effects - though those are harder to disentangle from the general chaos of everything.

It is much harder to see sanctions not work, how would you even discern that?

As for Cuba, I have no idea what USA is doing there.

[deepsun]

Why dropping the sanctions if the regime is still torturous?

[KptMarchewa]

Cuba sanctions exist only because Cubans living in USA want them to continue.

[InCityDreams]

Your last paragraph lost me. Every country has rapers, murderers and (when given the opportunity - eg even recently, and very probably, still, in the Ukraine) looters. Especially in the military. Calling 'worrying about...civilians', 'disgusting', based on the actions of a few soldiers is a little disingenuous and very straw man.

[deepsun]

You're messing single cases with 1. Mass and 2. Higher command-approved and 3. Denying afterwards crimes.

[sokoloff]

I think worrying about the impact in civilians who had no part in a crimes by their fellow countrymen but are being punished by the bluntness of a response is perfectly reasonable. In fact, I find the opposite (an utter lack of concern for it) to be unreasonable.

That’s true whether the blunt response is economic sanctions or widespread bombing.

Those actions might still be the best available response overall, but that conclusion should be reached after considering the effects on innocent civilians, not after ignoring them.

[fuoqi]

>while Russian soldiers are raping, murdering and looting left and right

It's disgusting that you translate blatant low-quality propaganda which clearly aims to amplify hatred. Even Zelensky had to fire Denisova who was behind the most outrageous lies about "raping". The Western media liked to re-translate her sexual fantasies, but have you heard any official refutations of those claims?

P.S.: I wonder why this comment was flagged. Is the Denisova's case became too toxic and ruins the demonization narrative?

[sofixa]

There are numerous recorded cases of rape (according to various neutral NGOs present on the field), and there was that intercepted call of a Russian soldier getting permission from his wife to rape, as long as he used protection.

Saying the obvious fact Russian army rapes shouldn't amplify hatred, because the Russian army should already be hated and despised for it's brutality. To an extent it's not their direct fault because many of soldiers are just poor young guys acting on primal instincts with nobody to teach them better ( on the contrary, their war crimes are encouraged).

[deepsun]

Nope, they are good policy. Speaking as one affected.

Those who can move -- move out of the country (usually the most economically active people), weakening the regime ability to make weapons.

Those who starve have nothing to lose, so they start fighting the regime. Revolutions never happen in well fed society.

[newrotik]

What evidence do you have to support your claim? Many countries have been subjected to sanctions for years, yet their military power hasn't diminished significantly (NK, Iran, ...).

The misery of the poor and disenfranchised, which you dismiss as people not "having anything anyways", has however been much exacerbated.

[KptMarchewa]

You must be joking if you think both countries military power haven't been effectively diminished. Only thing NK has going for them are nukes.

Iran too - they've been focused on reverse engineering cold war tech, which they did with mixed results.

[deepsun]

It has diminished (or didn't grow) significantly. The only country I remember that still had really strong military after sanctions was Iraq.

[cudgy]

These actions only galvanize a country further to be even more dependent on manufacturing weapons to defend themselves, become more self-sufficient, and potentially seize nearby resources from adjacent countries. The people that do leave tend to be the wealthy aristocracy with the resources to leave for their own selfish reasons.

[deepsun]

> to defend themselves

contradicts

> potentially seize nearby resources from adjacent countries.

[turtledove]

> Revolutions never happen in well fed society.

What? My understanding was that the revolution in Iran happened during a period of relative economic prosperity.

[cudgy]

Everyone in the Matrix was well fed. All kidding aside, people want more than just food.

[praptak]

> You are punishing people for rolling poorly on the parental lottery.

If you accept this argument, you are letting the dictator hold his population hostage. Also the same argument applies to killing the invading soldiers.

Also it's not like Russian people are dying from hunger.

[turtledove]

No, because broad sanctions don't hurt the dictator. It won't make their country more likely to get rid of him.