Comment by wheybags
5 years ago
You inadvertently argued against your own point. Your friend's startup died, that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do. Whether the specific instance of sanctioning was justified is another matter of course, but the point is that the economy was damaged. That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.
> that is what economic sanctions are designed to do
Agreed - that is the point. To hurt ordinary people so that they care (not said lightly). Sanctions are designed to punish a whole country.
While messed up, you can't just affect/punish the leadership. If you could we would already be doing that. The way to hurt the leaders is to hurt the ordinary people such that they vote, rise up, etc against the governmental actions.
Russia's ruble has dropped up to 40%+ because of the sanctions and the people are pulling their money in droves. This puts huge pressure on Putin to rethink what he's doing by making it incredibly expensive to wage this war.
> That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.
40,000+ people died in Venezuela because of sanctions.
[0]: https://cepr.net/press-release/report-finds-us-sanctions-on-...
This is an super exaggerated number to attributte only to sactions, our TOTALITARIAN REGIME actions killed those people and the reality is that sanctions just helped them
Before the sanctions, (that started in 2015), we had already huge economical problems (and problems of kinds), mainly due the goverment focusing on making one of the greatest corruption acts of all times [1] and focusing on systematically making the venezuelan population poorer, sicker, hungrier and dependant, in order to keep the power and keep stealing money.
The thing is, sanctions did absolutelly NOTHING in favour of venezuelans citizens and their freedom, in fact, they made it easier for the Venezuelan totalitarian regime to justificate their acts (forcing hunger, violating human rights [2], etc) and made it stronger in a way that since our country got alienated, we got more support from other totalirian regimes such as China and Rusia.
So hurting the ordinary people, as that post say, was just putting an extra nail to the coffin of every venezuelan that died of hunger and sickness.. Was just encouraging more people to fight for freedoom with rocks vs guns and died or got detained [3] [4]...
All for nothing, and 6 years later, over 300billions usd stolen later, 2.000.000% hyperinflation later, 7.000.000 venezuelans gone later, over 400 people killed in protest later, over 5,000 political detentions later, the govt is still there and... blocking venezuelans from using stripe, transferwise, etc, is going to help us haha ..
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Venezuela
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Venezuela
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_protests_(2014%E2%8...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Venezuelan_protests
If sanctions kill any amount of people greater than zero makes it a deadly weapon against innocent people and should never be used. Additionally, anyone who uses sanctions should be considered committing an act of terrorism because of their intended effect being killing innocent civilians.
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So you want NATO to start bombing Russia, or...?
I'm firmly anti-war so that means I'm anti-bombing as well as being anti-sanctioning.
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> that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do
They're designed to cause regime change, or at least diplomatic changes. That has failed in Venezuela's case (and Cuba's, and North Korea's, and Iran's, and so on).
What's funny (actually, it's very sad) is that any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis; we would see a repeat of 2008 (likely worse due to some factors having changed since then). Be careful what you wish for, as those who virtue signal naively today, thinking it'll only affect citizens in faraway lands, may themselves face frozen ATMs, credit cards, and bank transfers in a few months, if the worst-case (i.e. their dream scenario) occurs.
"any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis"
You'd need to back this up with some real evidence for it to be convincing.
As it stands right now the freezing of Russian reserves is in effect and international markets are essentially untouched, what are these additional sanctions you are referring to?
I am not an expert in this area but is seems to me that if Russia disappeared from the financial system, with an annual GDP of 1.4 trillion, nobody would really notice after the initial write-downs. It is one tenth of China, and has been chasing away FDI for over a decade - thus reducing its international impact. But I am open to explanations as to why this is a big deal, let me know!
I think the issue here is that sanctions require usually time to really take effect. The government is already installed by the time they come. The dictators and their cronies are shielded and live lo comfortably.
The population is either brainwashed or brutally repressed when it complains (particularly eliminating leaders).
It’s hard to make a case for sanctions as the solution as there are plenty of counter examples: Cuba has been heavily sanctioned for over half a century and little has changed no matter how dire the situation gets.
I wish they worked for sure, because what other resources you have against a nuclear power?
Edit to add: also, sanctions have exceptions (usually to shielding the sanctioning countries from suffering consequences, as in this case with Russia and the energy related transactions, with the effect of keep that money flowing for Russia).
And these tyrants workaround the sanctions in many cases with the help of other nations.
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Not really, his point is that sanctions do more harm to regular people. Kenya right now is the only country pointing out how this will cause a humanitarian crisis, because they know what that looks like. We should stand together against autocratic imperialists regimes, sanctions should be targeted at the regime and russian oligarchs
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docindex/v1...