Country 'A' would like to build a weapon of mass destruction. Country 'B' asks them nicely to not do that.
They ignore the request and continue building the technology. At that point you can either do the following:
- Ignore it and hope they don't destabilize the region / world.
- Economic and Trade sanctions to slow down their progress, and impact the economy of the country.
- Physical blockade / severing of Internet connections.
- Declaration of war.
Unless you're saying we should simply ignore these states and let them do what ever they want. I don't really know what solution you would envision that would be _less_ impactful to the average citizen.
War sucks, and there are rarely good choices; it's nearly always going to be a choice between something truly awful and something just merely really bad. Nuclear weapons suck, but I dare say they saved lives -- on both sides -- when used in that instance. Of course, after more people had them, and we realized the implications of MAD, using nuclear weapons is (thankfully) more or less off the table for any non-suicidal nation.
Iran doesn’t count because they were / are complying but the US is a bully.
North Korea is a good example of sanctions not working in every way that matters.
In the absence of a working solution, people would prefer a well-intentioned (but as you said non-effective) solution to NOTHING.
If you do nothing, people will yell at you to do SOMETHING.
Sure, doing the RIGHT thing is best - but until then doing something is better than doing nothing.
Not saying I agree, just that's the idea.
If you’ve got something and it functions, your job is done, move on.
However what's the alternative?
In this particular case, country B and country A have both behaved terribly at various times.
Yeah, sure. For some reason, the US enjoys some special privileges when it comes to the international politics.
How long has the Russiahoax been going, five years? For five years, every single media outlet in the US attacks attacks my country and blames it of all sorts of criminal activity, while not a single piece or evidence has been presented.
And for some reason, most of the Americans that I've talked to don't see any problem with that and won't call their government russophobic, so much for your "different views."
Why should anybody believe anything said by an American anymore?
I'll expand: In the country I live in, a country often touted as very highly developed, there are still a lot of people that have weirdly (uninformed) nationalistic views about certain topics probably due to some oddities of history. This is the case in every single country I've traveled to or lived in. No one is advocating for designing global policy on Russia based on the views of the average American. That has little to do with trusting Americans (or Britons, or any other nationality of a place with a violent history) on other specific issues.
On the other hand, the fingers of the US are everywhere I turn.
Long-term sanctions are likely futile. There's a point at which the domestic economy compensates. They buy from other players, they learn to do without, they grumble and suck it up, but it doesn't evoke a reaction anymore. I also suspect the tendency to roll them out as "we're sanctioning 13 specific people in the cabinet and their companies" in waves until we finally actually impact everyday civilians doesn't help-- it's basically saying "brace for impact" to the population.
I suspect there's an entire generation or more of Cubans and Iranians who just grew up assuming "this is our economic normal" and don't really see it as a direct call to action of "if you'd be so kind as to remove your leadership, we'd buy your products."
Now, if you spend as much time as possible getting nations to build and maintain deep economic ties with each other, THEN pulling the plug suddenly and boldly, can have an impact. There's more disruption and a clear inflection point.
I also suspect that a lot of civilians view sanctions as non-actionable because there are usually limited and absurd requirements for them to be lifted. I can't imagine, for example, any way Cuba or the DPRK gets out of sanctions without explicitly discharging their current leadership. At best, that's intrusive and insulting to a sovereign nation; at worst it's cheering on civil war and strife. The Iran nuclear deal, before it imploded, was a potential breakthrough here-- we gave them tangible, realistic milestones that could be achieved without a coup, and honoured the commitment.
Oh thank god they’re less likely to believe that, because at least in this version of reality no government actually worries about the interests and rights of the human beings on the other side of the planet; if they say so they’re just bullshitting.