All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government. Just a bullying tactic by the US with zero moral justifications, despite how it's framed by the media.
That requires some blind faith to believe. In that I don't think those applying them really expect overthrowing the government to result. I would guess sanctions are designed to hurt and weaken, to make them less of an adversary. Although that's a harder sell, so doesn't get presented that way.
Objectively untrue. Many of the Russian sanctions, for example, targeted Putin’s inner circle.
There are sanctions targeting governments specifically, but usually government sanctions also target civilians. You can't exactly expect a sanctioned government to be transparent, it'll hide its government business under company names if you let it.
By that definition Putin is a civilian.
More broadly: plenty of sanctions explicitly target military-only kit. Those are not “designed to hurt civilians,” though I guess a civilian working in a munitions factory might lose their job.
That's the thing in a crony dictatorship: these people might not hold public office in name, but in practice they act under direct license, authority and orders of the dictator. We're already seeing this in Hungary, where close friends of the local de-facto-dictator Viktor Orban control almost all media and absolutely use that ownership to further entrench Orban's rule - it's hard to achieve political change when the media simply doesn't care about you.
And now, we're seeing the beginnings in the US, just from another angle - public kowtowing and open extortion, such as with Jimmy Kimmel who got cancelled after a threat to block a corporate merger, and it's not the first time either. And no, the fact that Disney walked back after their stock price took a decent dip doesn't mean that this is the last time such an event will take place.
"Your country is sanctioned because your government is being a global ass, wink-wink"
Implying that a change in government will lift the sanctions.
I’m aware there are consequences to sanctions, and the way they are implemented is often half-assed or hypocritical (e.g. the way that russian oil still flows) but to drop all sanctions…
Is that not like saying boycotts hurt employees who had nothing to do with the decisions so we should never boycott?
That's what the US has been doing since forever, even actively participating in the war crimes. If you think any of the stated reasons for the sanctions are real, I have a bridge to sell you.
And you think this is a good thing? Like we should be consistent and support all war crimes instead of just some of them?
Just because we do bad things, doesn’t make it right to do more bad things.
Yes ideally we’d live in a world where this bullshit doesn’t happen. But it does happen, so our choices are to respond with the tools we have NOW or not respond at all.