Comment by it_does_follow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by it_does_follow | Hacker News Reader

I'm presuming the link is supposed to be about this book https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259360/economic-weapo...

There's a review with the same title as this post here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2021-1...

Which sums up the topic with:

> In an original and persuasive analysis, Mulder shows how isolating aggressors from global commerce and finance was seen as an alternative to war that worked precisely because of the pain it imposed on the target society. From the very beginning, it was civilians who suffered the most. Nevertheless, the League of Nations embraced sanctions and established an elaborate legal and bureaucratic apparatus to enforce them. Mulder argues that instead of keeping the peace, this form of economic warfare aggravated the tensions of the 1930s, encouraging austerity and autarky and restraining smaller states but backfiring against the larger authoritarian ones, such as Italy.

I think this is an interesting point to bring up, because, especially in the West, we hold a believe that "economic" violence is not as bad as "physical" violence. It's well worth at least questioning this assumption.

I think that, in the world of nuclear powers, it is trivial to see that physical violence at war scales between nuclear powers is essentially infinitely bad.

Famine among millions of people, and general economic depression has a massive human toll. But it doesn't compare to full on nuclear war, followed by nuclear winter and Global radiation levels from fallout.

So it seems obvious to me that economic violence is the only for of violence the west can bring to bear against Russia. There is a discussion to be had on the matter of whether it should be brought to bear. Punishing the people for the actions of the elite and all that. Perhaps also a 'what does this system lead to in peace time' question, but that seems to argue 'economic sanctions are a tragedy of the commons', which means it is hard to address. At least the solution 'we just won't sanction' does not actually resolve the tragedy of the commons.

the question is whether economic sanctions could lead to "full on nuclear war"

I had not considered that.

It seems like "dude has nukes and feels backed into a wall" is just really shite. You either give him what he wants, or you risk nuclear war.

Here's the problem though: if you obliterate a country's financial system to the point that people start starving and fundamentally lack their basic needs, what incentive are you giving someone like Putin to not drop a bomb?

If people start starving en masse the way they did back during Soviet Collectivization, which saw 4-7M dead[0], what's stopping Putin from ending it all in retaliation?

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet...

No one listened to arguably the greatest economist of all time in 1919 when Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

No one is going to listen now.

Not to mention the die has been cast already.

In many ways, affected countries see sanctions not as a punishment or attack but as insult-by-action.

The actual economic effect may usually be countered but the humiliation remains.

So it may be efficient in scaring small, dependent nations but it won't lead to victories against large and proud ones.

And I mean the latter more in the criminal sentiment of "it's all about respect".

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