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Comment by t-3 | Hacker News Reader

Attacking a country's people because the government is a dictatorship makes no sense. Especially when we were just fine with the brutal dictatorship that preceded the one we hate, because that one was capital-friendly and didn't try to give white man's money to brown people.

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I mean, if your argument is that sanctions never work and are useless, then that's a position that we can argue, but I guess that means you also would support lifting all sanctions against Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, etc?

Sanctions don't never work, but they certainly must be used judiciously. They can and will be anticipated and countered, as Russia has shown. Their overuse has pushed the intended victims into a trading bloc rather than isolating them. I want a competent and effective government, even if it's one that kills innocent people for profit and destroys democracy in other countries. Instead we just get sanctions that do nothing and evil for profit.

> [Sanctions] can and will be anticipated and countered, as Russia has shown.

How have they shown that? I think they've showed that they won't stop the war, but that's not at all the same as anticipating or countering the sanctions. Since they couldn't anticipate the war lasting longer than a week I think we can safely say they didn't anticipate having an ongoing war AND sanctions.

Due to the sanctions, Russia has shifted its economic focus away from the West. This has given BRICS a massive boost. BRICS+ now controls over 40% of global GDP and over half of global oil exports. I don't know how much the sanctions are affecting people's everyday lives in Russia itself. In 2023, there were newspaper articles here in Germany about how we are still importing Russian oil, just not directly from Russia, but indirectly via India.

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