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Oh? Go on. Or are you just insulting me for no reason?
Obviously Ikes isn’t going to expand on this supposed contradiction, I doubt you’ll expand on this, either. Just a zero content potshot.
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We’re not talking about Yemen. Everyone prob agrees with you on that so it’s a strawman, no one here is really a cheerleader for the US military. The issue is this framing:
Russia bombing Ukrainian cities is an understandable and obvious response to some deals or proposed deals between the US and Ukraine. It’s our fault.
US economic sanctions in reaction to the invasion? Well that’s a horribly immoral act worse than 9/11*.
*This would be a great line to use as an exaggeration to make my point but alas someone actually said that.
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No, the difference is one of basic moral responsibility. I’m not responsible for what Russia does, and have no control over it. I am, along with all other American citizens, responsible for what the US does. So of course it makes sense to be more critical of the policy I am responsible for and could conceivably do stuff to change, rather than the policy I have no responsibility for or influence over. So, let’s say that the US foreign policy in Ukraine contributed to the Russians’ decision to attack. Obviously the Russian invasion is a monstrous crime. I can criticize that but I have no moral responsibility or influence over that. I do have moral responsibility for the US mistakes that made the invasion more likely.
As far as the sanctions stuff, I don’t think that they will cause starvation or mass death in Russia, but if, as @danby suggests, they did and that was the actual goal or a known likely outcome it would be a hideous policy. Just as the US sanctions on Iraq were a hideous and grotesque policy.
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just need some of them sanctions that actually effect a country’s willingness and/or ability to fight a war but don’t actually affect the population. (because realism doesn’t trump harm to Russians)
And oh, can’t actually fight an aggressor either. (because realism trumps harm to Ukrainians)
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Realism is that sanctions that harm the population aren’t effective - unless your aim is simply to harm people you don’t like. Sanctions that cause starvation or general suffering by Russians are likely to make Putin more popular and the Russians more willing to fight and die for the cause.
I don’t think anyone is against sanctions entirely, just that ones that seem aimed at hurting average Russians are bad - both from a realism perspective and morally.
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Actual realism is that sanctions that are effective in any way that don’t affect the population do not exist.
Sure - all sanctions will hurt the population in some ways. The point is that ones that are basically aimed at hurting the population aren’t effective. Sanctions that are aimed at the military/people in power will of course have effects on the population as well, but can still be effective and worth it. Sanctions that lead to starvation are not.
These people are fearless, good luck attempting to quell the insurgency, Vlad.
Americans would have scattered as soon as they heard the first shot.
But defining ‘aimed at the population’ here is meaningless as whether or not a bomb was aimed at someone other than civilians when it hits an apartment block. The whole effect of the sanctions, aimed or not, is that they are going to cause harm to the Russian population as a whole.
For example, a civilian who gets paid in rubles who suddenly can’t buy anything because the ruble is near worthless is still getting fucked over here, whether or not that sanction was aimed at oligarchs and the Russian government.
I hate youtube on a bunch of levels. I pretty much only watch Chiefs stuff.
Russia needs to return to 1991 when soviet union collapsed. We opened our economies to Russia hoping good things will happen and the west gets rewarded with the first war in Europe since 1945.
We are doing this right now economically to him with sanctions but it will take time to bring it to 1991. Maybe a few months?
The only way to get rid of Putin is to bankrupt Russia, make it default which is western policy at the moment.
I have zero pity for Russian country while seeing Ukraine getting genocided.
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https://westminster-institute.org/events/what-makes-putin-tick/
Interesting interview of Putin’s ex-Chief Economic Adviser in June, 2021
But there is one more element, which is also partially business-type relations and partially [an] ideological one because in all those cases [with] those countries, those regimes are authoritarians, dictatorships, and that is why he feels himself absolutely necessary to support them. This is some kind of dictators international and he understands if one of those dictators fall, it means the next one will be a next one and finally [it] will be him. So that is why by keeping them alive and on the floor it means he is strengthening himself. He does not allow them to fall, and that is why he supports the whole international.
And then in that particular business he felt that he has essentially only one serious adversary, the United States, and everybody understands that only one country in the world is physically able and [is] the right person at the top. The United States is able mentally to stand up in reality against Putin and able to crush his troops as it happened in year 2018 in Syria, yes, when the United States troops kind of destroyed private military company Wagner, which is essentially crazy Russian troops in Syria. That was the first time for any U.S.-Russian military contact that ended with total elimination of this particular group, about 200 troops.
And Mr. Putin learned this lesson very well, that if somebody is in the White House (and it the time President Trump was in the White House) who either can give an order or he would not resist using force by the American military, his troops can be destroyed within minutes or hours. And that is why the most important thing that he is looking for [is] the level of readiness of the current U.S. president to use force to defend freedom, liberties, rule of law, independence of different countries around the world, so that is why he tested each president one by one, whether they [are] able or not. He thought that George Bush would not use American force and that is why he moved Russian troops into Georgia.
And it was [at that] moment that there was a very big, very serious debate in the White House, in the Bush White House, whether to use U.S. force or not. And on August 11 year 2008 George Bush appeared near the White House flanked by his Secretary of Defense and his Assistant for National Security and he said, ‘Okay, I would not recommend Mr. Putin to make another step.’ And [the] U.S. Navy moved to the Black Sea and the U.S. Air Force moved to bases in Turkey and Romania. The next day, August 12th, Mr. Medvedev, who was officially President of Russia, announced that [the] operation in Georgia [was] finished. That was a decision [that] was affected, influenced by [the] decision of George Bush, President of the United States.
Then Putin tested Mr. Obama in year 2014 when he moved his troops into Crimea, and we remember what Obama answered. He said publicly, ‘I am not going using American troops to defend Ukraine.” What Mr. Putin said [was], ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Obama, I suspected that you would not use troops, but thank you very much for telling openly that you are not going to use troops, but I will.’ And he did use troops and he occupied Crimea and an accident and he moved troops into eastern Donbass.
When he met President Trump, he could not figure out whether Trump would use troops or not in the year 2018. It became clear when the ChVK, or the private military company Wagner, was destroyed in Syria. And Mr. Putin understood probably it is better not to try to test Mr. Trump anymore because nobody knows what will happen after that, but when Mr. Biden appeared in White House forum posting [it] became absolutely clear that Biden would never dare to stand up to Mr. Putin, and that is why [the] next day after inauguration [there] was a substantial jump in hostilities on the Russian-Ukrainian line in Ukraine in Donbass. Five days later Putin started to put pipeline Nord Stream 2 in the Baltic Sea, and so on, and so on.
And especially now, after the Geneva Summit for Mr. Putin [it] became absolutely clear, one hundred percent clear, that Biden would not use any force against Russia, not [use] any force to defend Ukraine, not even to supply necessary weapons or whatever to defend Ukraine. It means Biden gave a green light for new adventures of Putin against his neighbors.
The whole thing is really worth reading for potential insight into Putin’s mind.
You mentioned one of the reasons of my resignation. I can give you just a little story, which was behind that. I was invited to the meeting of Putin with a very close group of people. It was a dozen people there, and they were discussing how to steal $12 billion U.S. dollars from the Russian government assets. Because I was a latecomer to this discussion, I was the last person because as I learned from this meeting, they already agreed about this and just by some kind of coincidence, by mistake, they invited me. I never participated before, and there was Putin there. There was Mr. Medvedyev. Then he was the head of administration, and lately he became for some period of time President of Russia, as well. There was the Minister of Finance, the Minister of the Economy, the head of the central bank, the head of the presidential administration, and many other people, just kind of a dozen of them.
And they were talking [about] what would be the best way to steal $12 billion U.S. dollars. When I happened [to be] there and I listened to them, I said that it is illegal, it is criminal, it is against the criminal code of the Russian Federation. I was the only person, among these dozens of people, who said those words. And only one person understood me immediately and well. It was Mr. Putin, who in his body language immediately took it back and said, hey, it is not me, it is them, they discuss that, and we talked about that, but from this discussion [it became] clear that they [had] already decided.
And Putin for the first time he did not support me. Usually, he supported me and became neutral, and it became clear that he is part of this group. And the only one time that he intervened that I disclosed because I studied this case. And I said that just one of them was trying to steal out of this $12 billion dollars, $1.5 billion for himself, not sharing this money with others, and it was some kind of betraying this group of people, that they are not only kind of sharing this amount, but this part he is taking for himself. And it angered Putin. He started to reprimand that person, saying come on, how is it possible?
For me, it was enough. What was the force that was driving me? Legal issues, constitution, law, friendship? No, moral basis for myself. There was nobody around who would kind of judge whether [it was] right or not. For me, it was impossible to participate in this business, unlike others. For others, it was normal. Okay, that day they discussed $12 billion U.S. dollars, another small amount. The next day it will be a large amount. It does not matter.
For them, there were no more problems because there were no cameras, TV cameras. There were no journalists. Nobody would even have any knowledge about this stealing operation, especially in such [an] authoritarian regime or dictatorship. Nobody would know this, so they were absolutely sure that it would be absolutely hidden, and they could easily do it. Why? Because when they did not have moral limitations for undertaking [such corruption], who can stand up to them? Those who follow it, not only whatever official institutions or laws, but [people] who [have] different moral foundations.
https://twitter.com/SeanPenn/status/1501603494725259264
Sean Penn is on the case guys
I’m starting to think from stuff I’ve read that the jets aren’t that crucial right at this moment. Ukraine is barely engaging their air force as it is, trying to look for spots and/or defend the skies over Kyiv. So the jets will be useful, but the rush isn’t there (maybe).
Utter fantasy.
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Things like cutting off the supply of electronics needed to make weapons are aimed at the military - even if they hurt civilians. Things like McDonald’s pulling out/banks not letting Russians use their credit cards are aimed at the population. The former can be effective, the later is not.
I’m not even sure what your point is - are you supporting Danby’s goal of starving the Russians and that we shouldn’t bother with targeted sanctions, we should just try to destroy the Russian economy?
The Russian economy is the Russian war machine, and yes it should be destroyed. They are linked in such a way that they cannot be separated. This is the realist position and seems to be the consensus around the free world.
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I don’t believe for one fucking second Putin was ever worried about Donald fucking Trump unleashing the US military on him.
Also LOL “he immediately gave up because George Bush moved some troops around.” GTFO
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