I understand people wanting to deter aggression, but this is not the way.
What happens when it’s your country on the other end of bad choices?
Not every country can shrug it off like America did when invading Iraq.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/opinion/putin-ukraine-chi...
Friedman is right that this is economic war. Which I think most people will agree is preferable to nuclear war. But the principle is the same. What democratic countries are attempting to do just now is demonstrate an economic force so great that the enemy sees they cannot win.
These companies are doing it because of the strength of feeling of their customers, employees, and owners. There were dockers in the UK who collectively refused to unload Russian oil off a tanker. Didn't matter that the govt hadn't banned it yet.
People are making lists but they're of the companies that continue to do business with Russia. And they don't seem to spend a lot of time on the list before caving into the demands.
In fact, the sanctions should be even worse by your logic, since the people had much more power to prevent these wars, unlike the people of Russia.
Of course what Russia is doing is unacceptable, but it's hardly alone in the world in this type of behavior. Rather than getting on your high horse and condemning the people of Russia, it's better to send help to the people of Ukraine who are suffering in this brutal war, and maybe as well to the people of Yemen and Palestine and other invaded places.
Also, see if you can lobby your leaders to advance negotiations for treaties to dismantle all nukes - a major weapon that enabled Russia to bully its neighbors.
If we actually eliminated nukes NATO influence would only expand.
I was discussing the principle of it - would UN sanctions against NATO countries be justified, especially if they were to target the population of NATO countries?
Note that my country is in fact a NATO member.
> If we actually eliminated nukes NATO influence would only expand.
My point was exactly that eliminating nuclear weapons entirely would in fact be a boon to NATO, since for example in the current situation it could have actually considered some limited military aid without risking nuclear Armageddon.
So at least one pretty important NATO country is very clearly not prepared to get rid of its nukes, or pressure allies to get rid of theirs. Even more scarily, per president Trump, this same country is very interested in finding ways to get usable nukes.
However, this does not mean that we should consider the invasion of Afghanistan as "defense" either. No state had been attacked by the state of Afghanistan. That a few afghan civilians conducted a terrorist attack in the USA doesn't mean that Afghanistan attacked the USA. Afghanistan even agreed to consider handing over Osama bin Laden to the USA, as long as they were provided with evidence of his guilt - like any state that is asked to extradite a resident. The USA decided that it didn't care to wait and produce such evidence, so they launched an invasion less than a month after the attack.
It is true that this war in particular got acquiessence from the UN security council, so I will admit that it was not technically illegal (unlike the Iraq war).
My only point was that claiming NATO is a "purely defensive alliance" is not supported by history. This means that some NATO claims about Russia's lack of reasons for fearing NATO expansion are bullshit.
But to be very clear again, this doesn't justify Russia's illegal murderous invasion of Ukraine.
This is wrong. The country of Afghanistan did not conduct the WTC attacks. The nominally ruling clique in Afghanistan would not extradite OBL. If anything Afghanistan was an area of civil war in which the US intervened.
After the Taliban refused to turn over the mastermind of the attacks, Osama Bin Laden, Operation Enduring Freedom officially began 7 October 2001 with American and British bombing strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-...
Sanctioning state organs and oligarchs is good and overdue, but the mob extending that to canceling all of Russian civil society seems stupid and evil to me.
Besides the majority of Russians support the war. The so-called "resisters" are a rounding error.
Listen to Ukrainians on social media. They're all calling for total sanctions against Russia.
People are dying, many of these people are friends, relatives, and co-workers of people living in Russia. Many Russian soldiers are dying needlessly because one - ONE man is having a end-of-life mental break. One man's pride is the cause of all of this. Just one man.
Period. One man. Blame Putin for Putin's war. If you don't like suffering for one man's tantrum -- call the Kremlin.
I'm sure they'd love to hear your complaints.
This reminds me how people in Soviet Union wrote letters to Stalin to describe injustices and how much they love him because he is the best possible leader they could have. Putin isn't Stalin yet, but the Russian people are waiting patiently for him to become one.
There is significant risk of Russians blaming the West if NATO gets involved. Navalny's organization did a survey of Moscow's internet users, and nearly half think Russia is liberating Ukraine. It strongly suggests the vast majority of Russians do not see this as them having started an aggressive war.
https://mobile.twitter.com/PopovaProf/status/150105368420955...
The nation-state system tends toward distributed blame (to the nationals) even when there isn't distribution of power (autocracy). For once, most of the world is blaming the autocrat rather than the nation. That's an improvement.
But in the scope of this conflict, and as an European living in a country that borders Russia, I'm all for it. What is happening in Ukraine is horrific and it is happening because in the mind of the Russian leadership the country had aligned it self to close to the west. So they are in a sense attacked because they are to much like us.
There is also the question about what happens next if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, where is next on the path to rebuild the Russian empire? Georgia and Moldovia are candidates, in addition both the Baltics and Finland used to be part of the Russian empire, then there are all of the old Warsaw pact countries as well.
How can they and the rest of Europe ever be safe without a regime change or huge degradation of Russian military capabilities? One of the ways to accomplish this to thrash the Russian economy, while that is horrible to all the Russian that do not support the war, the alternative seems worse. Not that Redhat pulling out of Russia is going to have much of an impact on the Russian economy. But everyone's contributions helps a bit.
What is the way in this particular situation? What would you do?
There are 125 armed conflicts happening right now in the world. Hell we just started bombing Somalia again. Nobody is saying a word about that.
It seems like there's too much power in the hands of too few. It will bite us.
IMO, this war has demonstrated where power really lies. And that is in the hands of the people. Do you think any politician West of Poland really wanted this economic war with Russia?
Clearly, the lives of the rich and powerful would have been much easier had Zelenskeyy snuck off allowing Putin to annex a big chunk of South Eastern Ukraine like he did with Crimea. Energy bills go back down. No additional influx of refugees. Pandemic free. Peachy.
So why is it happening? Because the free press is out there documenting the horrors for all to see. And it turns out that people do care. And they are fed up of the lies and the fake news. These sanctions are being made because people demand it. That is customers, individuals, employees. This is what is driving decision-making processes at the moment.
I think what's huge right now is soft power. Public relations and propaganda. Social media to form groups and opinions. I'm linking a Russian example here but I'm sure there's many others.
The balance of power has always been like that. If anything, the internet has diversified power more than it has ever been before in history.