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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

Sanctions against the US for the Iraq war would have been totally legitimate. What exactly is your point?

That the US is arguably the most powerful nation in the world and that sanctions by smaller economies vs empires like the US are like Palistinian children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks.

It is easy to claim that sanctions against the US would have been legitimate when it is clear to most that they would have had little to no meaningful impact.

This was true during the first iraq war... and even then barely.

Now, just china imposing sanctions, would seriously fuck with US economy. Add on EU to that, and the situation would be pretty bad for americans.

The point is that there were no sanctions, and there won't be the next time the US decides to invade another country. So punishing Russia this time gives the US an unfair advantage, and that's not good for anyone outside the US.

It's more than that. There are other impact:

* There are a lot of Indians openly support Putin. I guess there is an excuse to justify the invasion because Russia is not the first one doing that.

* Inside China there are a lot of debate. Russians invasion obviously breaks the international law. But if US did the same thing in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria ...(Let's not debate if US conducted good invasion to avoid to going to rabbit hole), also indirectly caused humanity disaster and refugees, why put Russia in a different standard?

Not making judgement of which is correct or wrong, just saying it's difficult to convince certain population if different standards were applied.

India has a similarly authoritarian nationalist govt and looks a lot like Russia 20 years ago. I am very nervous about the direction India is heading.

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