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Comment by cormacrelf | Hacker News Reader

I agree, but as we speak Russia has amassed 150k+ troops on the Ukrainian border and Putin is waiting to see whether the West can apply enough sanctions to make the whole effort a net loss before he gives the green light on an invasion.

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I'm not sure economic sanctions are the solution here. More likely, a positive deal and various security promises for Russia (e.g. no more NATO exercises for a mock invasion of Russia, or simply more commerce) will probably do a lot more to ease tensions. As long as NATO and Russia continue to behave as enemies, Russia will continue to see Ukraine as a necessary buffer at its borders, and seek to make it a vassal state, to the detriment of everyone...

Edit to add: avoid phrases like "the West", it's very "Us and Them", it's much better to be explicit: is this about NATO? The US and its closest allies? The EU?

But why do I have to care about that? Due to the overreach of US policies even companies in countries which don't have sanctions against Russia have to worry about the efficiency and performance of payments going towards Russia. SEPA and ACH may be marginally performant but SWIFT is incredibly expensive, which is the only option you have for international transfers that doesn't depend on an American monopoly of power.

Do you just not care about anybody else in the world? We live in a society.

I am surprised at the political ideas on display in this thread. This isn’t even under the comment in which I described the influence of “techno-libertarian anarcho-capitalism” on the crypto community! If you are not part of a western democracy, of course you do not have to care, but if you are, then you should. (Moreover if you think war is bad, like that other commenter agreed before wondering how to erase the effect of sanction deterrents, you should also care.)

>Do you just not care about anybody else in the world

Sure I do, however I also get to choose who I care about, and it definitely doesn't include people who make policies which are extraterritorially enforced on me.

>If you are not part of a western democracy, of course you do not have to care

What do you do when a "Western" "democracy" enforces their laws on you and all remaining solutions point you to services that are beholden to a "Western" "democracy".

They’re not extraterritorially enforced unless you’re talking about a blockade, so unless you’re a Cuban or Puerto Rican, you can’t complain. Most sanctions are just one nation deciding it prefers to lose your business than to lose its security agreements with its allies. If you find yourself unable to make a cross border deal, it’s because your country was unable to negotiate it with another. I have no intrinsic right to do business with anyone in the world as I see fit. Neither do you. I’m just okay with that because there are bigger goals than my own.

> What do you do when a "Western" "democracy" enforces their laws on you and all remaining solutions point you to services that are beholden to a "Western" "democracy".

Correct the aberrant behavior that caused your nation to get kicked out of the global trade system, or move to a nation that hasn't gone rogue. That's what the sanctions are meant to encourage. Bypassing the sanctions with clever math is just going to get the clever math outlawed; exerting international pressure to keep countries in line is far more important than your coinbase account.

> before he gives the green light on an invasion

And the reason why the USistan should entangle itself in that mess is ... what exactly?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secur...

  The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994 to provide security assurances by its signatories relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

  As a result, between 1994 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons. Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile

If the US convinced Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons with the promise they would help fend off an invasion, and then proceeds to not help fend off an invasion, what do you think happens the next time the US asks a country to give up their nukes?

Thanks for this, that is a fair point, and I was not aware that these events had taken place.

[EDIT]: Whatever happens to nukes that are "given up on". That's a lot of fissile material.

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