A question: does Switzerland have any prior precedent of actions like this? I thought they were neutral?
They aren't that neutral.
> Close cooperation has also been established in the area of international sanctions. As of 2006, Switzerland has adopted five EU sanctions that were instituted outside of the United Nations. Those affected the former Republic of Yugoslavia (1998), Myanmar (2000), Zimbabwe (2002), Uzbekistan (2006) and Belarus (2006). [0]
There were many more since.
> de-dollarization in China
I'm not sure how you mean this (which side), but I think a de-dollarization in China would be terrible. Countries will still rely on their manufacturing etc, so sanctioning them out of SWIFT would probably just weaken SWIFT, since it'd encourage them to have their own system (since it must exist by necessity of the world's dependence on Chinese stuff). These sort of sanctions only work because there's just a small fraction/party being excluded, I think.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...
Neutral as in "does not participate in armed conflicts between other states".
People just have a huge misconception of what the "neutrality" in "Swiss neutrality" really means.
No clue where the interpretation comes from that this "neutrality" is extended to basically everything around the topic of war or military. Switzerland is a weapon export country and has been for a long long time. Neutrality for this only means they dont export to countries at war or if there is reason to believable that the recipient would sell it to countries at war or if it would fall in the hands of terrorists etc. etc.
The real swiss neutrality is way broader and includes mandatory independence. So while Switzerland can join sanctions they decide and do not agree in advance to join sanctions the EU defined. It also includes military mission to promote peace. Swisscoy is the association of the Swiss Armed Forces in Kosovo. This is not against the swiss neutrality because there is no armed conflict there. The Swiss Armed Forces there are still armed for self-defense only.
It makes all sense in the world, if you are not a cooperating entity you are cut off from the network and you are free to do your own thing.
Obviously, you can be bullied into things that might not be in your own interest but you are still free to asses the pro’s and con’s and break of if it’s better for you.
Unless you are benefiting too much from the arrangement, there’s no interest in bullying you because it’s actually a in a mutual interest to have you onboard.
It’s much, much better option to settling things down through killing each other.
I do like the ability to shape monetary policy, but that would only go hand in hand with governments not able to just deperson people.
Corporations do not offer any protection. Like on social media, if there is a legal question, the users gets banned.
How exactly does that work? As long as Americans send billions of dollars to them for their goods, I don’t see how they can escape it.
Certainly in the field of international relations the concepts of good and evil are in the realm of media commentary and politicians. Foreign policy crafters, and the literature around them, have a completely other way of talking.
And while rooting for the Ukrainian side, I can't even find the Russian perspective within the sphere of information and data, other than what Russians tell me, which sounds so completely different information-wise, that I wonder if we live on the same planets. In fact I got off the phone with a Russian friend a few hours ago, and I asked their perspective but replied nothing in response. It was literally 100% inverted: that the country was fighting fascism and was conned by the U.S. due to weapons treaties in the past.
So the question is NOT about morals, whose are better - it's hard to find a villain in history with an army behind them, where each individual believed in their own evil.
So the question is about information asymmetry, at the very least, a foggy issue we have to get past before we talk about morals. Again, I'm about 90% confident that the Russian side aren't behaving in good faith, but I leave that 10%.
And most importantly I recognize my bias, in the superiority of Western European values, which means that I'm also biased with regards to those nations having the military upper hand. Which implies that even if the situation were much more ambiguous I would likely root for the Ukrainian side.
I hope that does the opposite of clear up the issue!
War is rarely a matter of good and evil purely. It's a muddled world we live in.
Oh, come on. You don't need to invoke existential certainty to know that unilateral military invasion of peaceful nations is "evil" inasmuch as that word has any meaning at all.
America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on flimsy pretexts and then continued to occupy the latter for what, 20 years?
Why wasn’t there similar international pushback against that?
Afghanistan was harboring al Qaeda and Iraq was threatening use of WMDs. They weren't peaceful nations.
The latter turned out to be bluster, supported by terrible intelligence and a U.S. administration that didn't have the wherewithal to counteract its own confirmation biases, and that deserves its own appropriate condemnation, but it's nowhere near the same thing.
1) America has Europe by the balls because we provide most of the major military security guarantees.
2) Iraq wasn’t exactly a peaceful nation (see: Kuwait)
3) Both Iraq and Afghanistan were governed by non democratic governments; a dictator in one and by religious zealots in the other
4) No one other than the local middle eastern Arabic countries were threatened by this action by the USA, and they didn’t have enough power to put pressure on the USA
In Ukraine, Russia invaded a neighbor of NATO countries, Ukraine was actually a peaceful nation and has a democratically elected government, and the countries that don’t like Russia actually have the power to try to stop it and can get by without anything from Russia.
Talk to a Russian, then come back and let's talk about what's an invasion of a peaceful nation. They're going to tell you that 14K were killed due to a fascist regime. Now, I don't believe that, but you're proving my point. Maybe it's just the naive perspective of moral certainty speaking, or maybe it's the lack of international perspective -- something one unfortunately commonly finds among Americans.
We come back to the question of evil. Maybe we grew up on too many cartoons and Hollywood movies, but good and evil are symbolic fictions.
What's less certain is the information, and my point is that you should always have a sliver of doubt in your mind that you're correct.
I certainly have the international perspective you accuse others of lacking, and I rather suspect it might in fact be you who lacks that perspective.
Nobody in positions of power believes for a second that Putin has anything but his own legacy in mind at this point.
Perhaps now is their time to fix that situation.
You can also ask Cuba what they think about the "new" aspect of financial cancellation, or 1920s Germany
If it was purely populist Germany would be using the $100b they have committed for NATO defence and spent it on universally popular policies e.g. tax cuts or handouts.
Well yeah, sanctions are also impacting us on many levels and they're damaging future relations for decades, that's obviously not something to take lightly. But what's the other options ? Not do anything ?
> There is a very Twitter mob feel about it
We would have said that about the Treaty of Versailles too, we just didn't have twitter back then. I think people are delusional because these types of events aren't a thing in Europe for quite some time now, I bet they'd blame the "cancel culture" and say that Putin is an angel
Twitter and media pressure that calls for war just a bit less than Russia invading Ukraine. I bet there are many people secretly very happy about that. Often it is just plain idiocy though.
Never in history has there ever been consequence-free speech or egalitarian trade and economics.