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Comment by bmarquez | Hacker News Reader

> minimal price that we all have to pay, that includes those of us in the western world

I was talking to a Russian friend recently who also mentioned trying to stockpile some food while it was affordable, just like the parent commenter. I think telling the average Russian citizen that their food insecurity is a minimal price they have to pay comes off as a bit smug.

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And the Ukrainians who are dead or have had their homes and communities bombed? Who are now refuges or fighting for their life and country?

I don't think it's an either/or thing; I think it's possible to have empathy for both anti-war Russian citizens, and Ukrainian citizens.

You can have empathy while still taking the punitive steps that need to be taken on the country as a whole.

The desired outcome is clear: Russia gets government replaced and war stopped.

The debate is on what steps "need to be taken". I don't take it as gospel that sanctions which will mostly affect non-war-engaging people are one of those steps, yet I am not sure what evidence any sanctions-supporting people have that it really works.

If sanctions negatively impact the Russian economy as a whole, resulting in a long-term reduction in its ability to wage conventional war, then that's a benefit regardless of whether regime change occurs.

Why are you concerned with long-term reduction of Russian war-faring capability? How is that relevant to this situation?

If I believe that would help, I would only be concerned with their immediate reduction of war-faring capability and replacement of their government with a more reasonable one, but none of that seems likely to be achieved with sanctions. And I hope we are not in this for the long run, because I am pretty confident Russian army can keep this up for a number of years.

FWIW, I would hope for the same in regards to all the countries in the world: for their governments to be more reasonable, to do less lying, and to start no wars.

> Why are you concerned with long-term reduction of Russian war-faring capability? How is that relevant to this situation?

I’m concerned with all time scales in this situation. And I think steep economic sanctions can be relevant to all of them.

Whether you ascribe to it or not a lot of people (in the west, especially) have been jolted into now seeing this conflict through an ideological lens. That means long term strategic steps are being put into play. There is a lot more being considered now than just the short term, though I think most everyone also wants the immediate war to resolve with minimal loss of life — and I don’t see those twin goals as being in conflict at this point in time.

The point is that this has to happen for change to occur from within. Change of regime from outside with be far more disastrous to the Russian people.

What if the regime doesn't change though? I hate to say it but if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow and every western tech company started banning Chinese users, 99% of them wouldn't even notice. By rushing to deplatform an entire nationality without nuance we're accelerating the decline of western tech hegemony and won't have any more cards to play if things get worse. A more sensible approach would be sanctions on elites while maintaining pipelines of information to Russians. If Russians get cut off from the world they will become more like North Koreans.

There's certainly a possibility that change will not happen, but this is the best chance we have without escalating it to a world war.

Sanctions on elites have not caused regime change in other authoritarian regimes, we have even less reason to believe that it would happen with this one.

Russian people need to see that they are at a crossroads, and if they don't act in this narrow time window by organizing and protesting by the millions, they may indeed end up like North Korea.

It's really interesting that you point out that "sanctions on elites" have not worked, but seem to assume that general sanctions have. Do you have any example where they have worked? We've got plenty of examples where they haven't.

South Africa

Thank you: this is the sole example that I've seen where there is, at least, a correlation. Does not convince me that it's a generally applicable tool.

Still didn't end up in an overthrow of the regime, but rather regime recognizing that writing is on the wall, but definitely could be a case in point.

The West's threat against China is that they would stop importing their goods. A coordinated action like what we're seeing against Russia would completely crash China's export-driven economy. I doubt the CPC could weather that (or at least, I doubt the current leaders of the CPC could weather that).

I agree we shouldn't try to cut off the Russian internet, they need access to non-government-sanctioned information. But the economic sanctions need to apply to everyone in the country - if nothing else, it reduces Putin's ability to wage (expensive) wars. It sucks.

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