Americans can't be this shallow. This is ridiculous. THINK about what you are suggesting with these sanctions regimes. Sanctions are a crime against humanity, too.
>They should share some of the pain.
Such utter totalitarian-authoritarian nonsense. Did 9/11 stop the US from bombing innocent people in the Middle East?
Your experience is valid and interesting. Still, unless you’ve got a better alternative, and until sanctions do actually cause those potential harms, I think they are the best weapons we have.
No, bad actors/dictators produce extreme poverty and hyperinflation.
> Guys who are in power can even more easily hold to the power and use force against the populous.
Too bad for the populace. Maybe they should have got off their arses and got rid of the bad guys a little earlier, eh?
> Destroying free media and maxing propaganda and sadly average person falls for propaganda if it is fed to him daily.
Do you really think it's sanctions from the West that have turned Russian media into propaganda mouthpieces?
So .. Why are we supporting the KSA by shipping it weapons and refuelling their planes, then?
Because we learned that genocide by sanctions is an effective weapon, as per Iraq, Libya, etc. Alongside the children of Yemen, we are directing this same policy at the children of Russia.
It's not the rest of the world that keeps putting dictators in power in Russia, is it? It's the Russians.
Yes of course there is: That's the only way to do it. What else do you think economies and states are, if not people?
NATO, EU, Switzerland and a few others are not trying to hold Russians accountable. They are trying to hit the Russian economy strong and hard to demonstrate that Putin's Russia cannot afford a war against the West. That's after Putin and his representatives articulated several times and in no uncertain terms the threat of a nuclear attack against the West.
Are people going to suffer for it? Absolutely. That's the definition of a war, even if it the West has chosen to use money to wage it, rather than deploying soldiers.
Is it worth it? Time will tell, I suppose.
All I can tell you is that in the past week, I have spent time role-playing/strategizing the entire situation with friends (that's how I evacuate stress, YMMV) and, based on the information I have at hand, I would have done the same if I was playing the West.
edit Clarified.
I would need to double-check, but I'd be surprised if it didn't hurt Napoleon's army, as well as Hitler's and Mussolini's, for instance. I remember that one of the reasons for which the Allies won WWII is that towards the end of the war, the Wehrmacht had considerable difficulties finding fuel for their panzers and logistics and had insufficient ammo for extended fights.
Hurts bystanders, too, of course.
Gas isn't just used for heating people. About 20% of Europe's power is generated using gas, and there is not enough spare capacity to compensate for that.
Germany is currently looking to extend the operating life of its nuclear powerplants and will indeed have to consider replacing them despite pledging not to. France and the UK are ahead on this, with the latter investing heavily in small-scale nuclear reactors. The first of those will still take another 10 years to arrive, though.
Even if gas was just for heating buildings, what you're asking for would kill quite a lot of elderly and vulnerable people. In the UK alone, it's estimated that 3000 people die each year due to fuel poverty already, and the UK is far from the coldest country in the region. Europe is not California.
You are of course correct that we should reduce dependence on fossil fuels (Russian or otherwise), and it was a major error of judgement by our leaders (over several decades) to get us into this position, but that cannot be rectified overnight.
It's pure hypocrisy that you want the other side to suffer now, but you want to roll off your reliance on Gazprom on a timescale of a decade as to not be inconvenienced.
Do you think Amazon should stop doing business with the USA, or are you saying you do not believe the international community should hold the USA accountable for their murderous incomprehensible actions around the world?
Not to Saudi Arabia, not to USA/UK/France, not to Israel.
Libya, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, etc are not worthy victims (see manufacturing consent).
The war fervor and demand for generating damage against "the others" is at an all time high and is very clearly propaganda.
There's no context (2014 to now, interesting things have been happening in Ukraine) nor desire for peace. It's full on white Vs black and calls for action, not diplomacy.
Those of us who have been following Geopolitcs for a while and remember Iraq and others... Will be way more skeptic than to buy a simplified narrative of us Vs "terrible them".
How, exactly?
Responsibility is a very precisely defined concept: how are they all responsible?
By not having removed Putler from power.
Passport used to travel is called foreign passport.
By this logic 9/11 was fully justified.
It seems the lesson of 9/11 was not learned, and there will simply be more events just like it until Americans understand, they do not have the exceptional moral authority to get away with crimes against humanity and war crimes, if they're not willing to grant those same 'rights' to other nation states too.
Oh wait, they do grant those 'rights' to other nation states, its just a matter of whether those states have the moolah to keep American military industrial complex partners in caviar ..
I mean, fair game.
is every american responsible for the countless deaths the US and their profitable war machine caused?
how about anyone living in [1]?
I safely bet the majority of people on this planet would prefer money spent on conflicts be invested in research, development, health and education.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...
This isn't political, but a result of sanctions applied by politics.
Don't get me wrong, I am not really defending the big players, because they generally have a lot of trashy things going on.
I'm really just pointing out the obvious results of political changes.
What service will you move to that will exclusively act in your best interest?
Best bet is to pick a side.
I'm sure the Ukrainians feel the same way about the anti-Ukrainian trope saying they are being run by neo-Nazis.