Understandable in light of sanctions against Russia. However, this truly sucks for him as an individual, particularly in light of what he had to say about the invasion. The man is truly pained.
It's understandable when the lines between state and individual are blurred - like with state sponsored doping of Olympic athletes, who are competing as part of a national organisation.
But when it's an individual whose nationality just happens to be Russian?
It isn't understandable really. What is happening here is discrimination and can't be justified. Unless they have some proof that they are a spy or as an extension of Russian government for a dangerous intent, then there is no excuse.
This is only going to create more conflict and tension, and generate hatred in people that would otherwise be neutral.
Framing a rescinded invitation as discrimination is not a stretch at all, it very literally is discrimination. If you replace this definitely not discriminatory action against a Russian with a Black Man would you still support it?
> What is happening here is discrimination and can't be justified
It is discrimination. And it's entirely justified. The same way when, if your friend stars a bar brawl, you all get kicked out. Only he should get e.g. arrested. But there's a big difference between not being able to compete for your country and getting shelled.
Gotta love how discrimination is so easily spread. Like, this guy has said very many times in public that he doesn’t support the invasion, but he’s Russian, y’know?
It’s sad how humanity just keeps doing the same thing over and over…
In the domain of Mixed Martial Arts there's a discussion over whether to permit Russian nationals to have fights, even though the majority of Russian nationals in MMA are from colonized ethnic groups who live in the southern Russian republics, e.g. Chechnya, Dagestan, etc. Amateur wrestling would be completely fucked if it were to conceive and follow through on such a ban given the hegemony in amateur wrestling these southern Russian republics hold there, particularly Dagestan.
Agreed - I can't believe how quickly the "mainstream" had adopted a hatred basically of a whole people based on the actions of an autocratic leader that does not represent them, and where speaking out would almost certainly have very bad consequences. We should be doing everything we can to stop Putin from waging war, but casual hatred of a group is not helpful or appropriate, even if it's the obvious extension of all the online mob behavior we've seen in recent years.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. What you say is correct and ethical, in my view. Putin and the Russian government are to blame, not random Russian citizens.
I believe the goal of sanctions like this is to make the people mad at their leaders. So you sanction Russian citizens in the hope it'll help motivate them to create change. Not sure it could work with Russia, but maybe?
This is incorrect. Electoral rating of Putin (as of 2021) is around 30%. The central election committee will just declare the results that Putin wants.
People in the West who live in (relatively) democratic countries just go around saying "Russians elected him" without actually understanding what living under an autocratic rule is like. Putin never won a free and fair election. He persecuted his opponents, denied them access to media (and as of today, there's no independent media left) installed dummy ones that play into his hand and falsified the elections.
It's like seeing hunger in a 3rd world country and saying "why don't they just learn how to program and get an actual job?"
The electoral rating of someone outside an election is hardly relevant, it only matters on election day. On that day (in 2018) the result was (according to [1]), 77% (56M) in favour of Putin. The second candidate got 11.9% (8.6M). No doubt this guy is a narcissistic deranged dwarf, but are you suggesting he faked 48M votes?
Ummm, yes. There’s Shpilkin’s famous research (dont know if available in English) suggesting that about 30% of latest Duma election ballots were fake.
And what people also don’t understand is that they falsify on all levels. First, they persecute their opponents and deny them access to media. If they think an opponent has a chance and isn’t sufficiently toothless, they just don’t register them. Then they cast fake ballots during actual voting. There are reports of fraud during counting: police is known to remove independent observers from the room. If the results at this point are not satisfactory enough, they rewrite the numbers in counting protocols. And even if that’s not sufficient (like in Lukashenko’s case), they can just declare any result they want and beat/jail anyone who disagrees.
I think western commentators on Russian elections/popular opinions just can’t wrap their heads around how corrupt the system is.
Most people in Russia aren’t pro-Putin. They’re indifferent, don’t think about these things much and mind their own business.
This is also a failure of the news media, to not more clearly explain to people what Putin is doing and that the election results he declares, is a joke.
End result, some people here for real believing that the people in Russia supports Putin.
It's depressing that the newspapers let themselves be used by him as a tool for manipulation
It's also annoying, I think, that the newspapers keep calling him the "president".
> Fighting the people directly who are holding the guns will do less “collateral damage” than uniform discrimination of all Russians.
Nato forces directly attacking Russian military in Ukraine would be the start of a third world war. The collateral damage of a direct war between Nato and Russia would be unfathomable.
> Fighting the people directly who are holding the guns will do less “collateral damage” than uniform discrimination of all Russians.
Nuclear war between NATO and Russia would cause less collateral damage than Russian people not getting to play chess tournaments for an indefinite period of time?
Yea what is the solution when the west throws sanctions but keeps buying Russian oil and gas? Basically bankrolling this invasion.
Like others have said the solution to this crisis might be “drill baby drill” but that’s unfortunately more toxic or an argument than a country getting bombed to the ground. I guess we can stomach the war but not domestic oil and gas production.
Please don't argue in the flamewar style on HN. We don't want this site to go down in flames. This gets more important, not less, when the world is on fire.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
This is completely, totally wrong. There's no "discrimination" here - Grischuk is a Russian citizen, which is why he's being kicked out of the tournament, along with the other Russian citizens mentioned - their ethnicity is a non-factor.
The only relevant issue is the question as to whether all Russian citizens (regardless of ethnicity) should be banned from these kinds of events (more generally: have sanctions and sanction-adjacent actions taken against them), or just those who have directly contributed to the invasion (Putin, his military advisors, some Russian oligarchs maybe?) - which is a good topic for discussion. Claiming "discrimination", on the other hand, is factually incorrect, blatant emotional manipulation & unnecessary flamewar-bait, and does not belong on HN.
Discriminating based on nationality is only "discrimination" in the sense that you're differentiating between two groups of people, and treating them differently. It's not bad - unlike discriminating based on race. GP clearly meant "discrimination" in the discriminating-against-a-protected-class use of a term, which discrimination based on nationality is not.
Not sure why the title is about Grischuk specifically, Norway Chess banned all Russian players. Which sucks given that many of these players have spoken up against what Russia is doing. Seems like they're being penalized unnecessarily.
The country is being punished. Countries are made up of people. In all likelihood no Russian will be untouched by these sanctions. The secondary motivation is that other players might drop out in protest. Look at what just happened to the Paralympics. The plan from on high was to keep the Russian team. It looks like it was complaints from the other athletes complaining that reversed decision.
Once Putin is gone, if there actually is some revolution, everyone in Russia has learned to have the deepest, most passionate hate towards the west and their undifferentiated discrimination.
You are looking at removing Putin, who will, if democratically voted for, be replaced by someone even more extremist. Stop giving the working Russian people a reason to have the west. Give them hope, show them what life can be like, dont beat them down and scream at them.
2. Ban only players who have publicly supported Putin and the invasion of Ukraine (like Karjakin has).
3. Ban all Russian because they were born in the wrong country.
You're saying that 3 is better than 2, and I can't agree because in option 3 you're banning innocent people for reasons completely out of their control.
Grischuk is a special personality who most of any chess enthusiast will know. This is like banning a Michael Jordan style personality - charismatic, charming, and a world class player on top. And he does this all in his own sort of unique deadpan style package. His demeanor and comments from the video in this thread are **EXTREMELY** out of character for him, emphasizing how much this is all clearly personally affecting him.
This is an absolutely stupid decision, and an injustice.
Two wrong don't make a right and two million wrongs most certainly don't.
Persecuting Russians who oppose the invasion, who fled Russia and went to the West because they don't want to be associated with the regime, is just plain stupid.
These people are actually your allies and a very valuable resource (intellectual, economic, political). Some of them risked their lives supporting opposition, cried for sanctions for years while your politicians benefitted from the regime's corruption and you did nothing. And now you're persecuting them like they're accomplices.
It does nothing. It's a statement for the west audience. He can't say the same in Russian for the Russian audience loudly. Because in this case he will be put in jail for years. Wake up, Russia is a fascists state. Which is on the blood run.
Forbidding him to play chess also won't stop a single bullet or ruble destined to their war. This sudden Russian = Evil attitude is nonsensical, the Russian government and its oligarchy are the real evil, and they don't care for chess.
Looks like Norway Chess could not distinguish between the individual's view vs the views of the Russian Government and did an over-reactionary blanket ban on any Russian which is beyond stupid, even though he condemned it.
Does that mean if say, Garry Kasparov was to play against another chess player, he should be banned even though he also condemned the invasion? Quite ridiculous tbh.
Even Russian cats are banned [0], they don't have a view of the Russian governments actions on the invasion either and have nothing to do with it, except 'being from Russia'.
Of course from them, there's no redemption. Anything Russian thrown into the lost and banned.
To Downvoters: You do realise you can be Russian and be against the Russian government and condemn the whole invasion right?
Frankly I'm getting tired of all the psyops flood. This helps nil because they're only inconveniencing Alexander, not the Russian government, their military or their oligarchy. Of all the sports, I would have thought chess would be much less prone to politics because chess players are almost free agents.
Many people think that, in the time of the USSR, Russian chess players conspired to make sure a Soviet player won tournaments.
For example, they would try harder to beat strong non-Soviet players than to beat strong Soviet players, would throw away games to give a Soviet player more points, would offer a draw very soon to give a Soviet player time to rest/prepare for theirnext matig, etc.
This is absolutely untrue. Russian chess has always been used by the Russian state as a propaganda vehicle, similarly to Olympic sports. And the chess players are hardly free agents as long as they or their families are based in Russia.
It absolutely is brave of him, and really commendable. The bravery of a large part of the Russian citizenry who have so much to lose by speaking up is inspiring.
And that usually plays to the advantage of the elite. Now the working class has only one supporter, the Russian government. Their propaganda of "west hates you" feels very real to them now.
This is quite age old tactic that usually doesn't work, punishing civilians in the war usually does not demoralize them, but works against the aggressor. Same can be said about these sanctions. Why would they trust the west if we want to punish them and their only hope is their current administration?
> They have only one enemy, the Russian government.
Do you think layman thinks the friend is the person who punishes them without them doing anything wrong? I find that seriously difficult to believe.
Think about it yourself. You go to a nightclub and then the doorman says only you're not allowed, because your friends who just went in said you're not wanted. Do you still consider them as your friends and just think it's for your best?
I don't think that's the best example for your point: the doorman and your friends are collaborating together, not adversaries who's fight is affecting you. Anger would rightly be directed at everyone involved.
The better example is you go to a nightclub and the doorman won't let you in because he says your friends were there being dicks earlier. Do you go and chew out your friends or get angry with the man stopping your night for something you didn't even do?
It's not about the chess players. It's about the little people who see the headline that another of their representatives is unwelcome, and about the powerful people who see one more way Russia is being shamed for its actions.
Do you apply the same logic to all of the banking sanctions that effect regular Russian people? should we not enact any sanctions that could in any way effect the value of the rouble for instance? as the whole country relies on it to pay their bills.
People are dying, heavy handed measures are needed.
Everyone in Russia is going to be hurting from this. Most of them don't really deserve it, but you can't bring an entire economy to its knees without harming everyone.
It'd be kinda weird to single out chess masters to save from the pain, while a grandma on a fixed income is facing shortages and watching her already-meager buying power drop by the day, the low-level staff at various businesses are put on half-time or cut altogether and they'll be skipping meals to make rent, et c.
I didn’t single them out; I highlighted this instance in my reply.
I agree with you, and i sympathize for all working folk, everywhere, always, and forever. I was only meaning to point out that people who play chess for a living are technically working folk too, that’s all.
The people of Russia must seize their nation back somehow, whether by means of diplomacy or other means, if necessary.
It doesnt matter if the person themselves opposes the Ukrainian invasion, the person is representing Russia. Is it the tournament organizers job to vet the political views of every single participant to make sure they're sufficiently anti-putin? Blocking Russian participants isnt about blocking the individual people, its about sending a blanket statement across the board.
> Even if they were under a neutral flag everyone would think of the person as Russian.
Yeah because they're from Russia. I just don't see how "people will think" is enough of a reason to ban them from playing an event.
(1) Some deranged person running Russia decided to invade Ukraine, kill innocent people and ruin millions of lives.
(2) A chess organization in Norway bans a player because they were born in the same country as the deranged person from above.
I don't get how (2) is an appropriate response to (1) or how it helps anyone. It's not a deterrent, it's not any kind of response - nobody in the Russian government will feel the tiniest bit of pressure because of it, it's such a token act that it's laughable to think about in the context of what's happening in Ukraine. At the same time it's a big deal to the handful of players it affects.
All this does is create publicity and make the careers of a few people significantly worse just because they happened to be born in the wrong country.
> Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though, especially if you just let them be called "Russian Olympic Committee" or similar.
Citation needed. If I see someone playing chess, or any game for that matter, then I assume they represent the flag that they're playing under is what the represent. If I see someone playing under a non-Russian flag, it doesn't matter how Russian their name sounds - I don't consider them to be representing Russia in any capacity - they could have been born in India, a French citizen, ethnically Ethiopian, and just given that name by their parents, for all I know.
(and, if I look into them further, and discover that they're a Russian citizen and they're intentionally not playing under a Russian flag, there's no way I'll think that they're representing Russia)
Please find me examples of people who do not believe this, because the idea that "Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though" is both deeply weird and completely illogical to me, and I've never met someone who agrees with it.
You gotta be kidding me. The winter Olympics just ended. Who did you think Valieva was skating for? Herself? There's a huge team behind each competitor and they're based around nations. What about the ice hockey team? Bunch of neutrals who happened to have a history of playing together, having grown up in Russia, and got to the final? Totally disingenuous to not call them the Russian team, and nobody thought otherwise either. At some point you have to common sense and admit the whole neutral flag thing is just a convenient way for the IOC to avoid some tough decisions.
To me, chess is primarily an individual game, and I was mildly surprised that so many here think about it as a country thing. Magnus Carlsen the individual, not Norway, is best in the world. Norway is just one mildly interesting data point about him. In my mind.
In the Olympics -- yes then I understand, then it's one player per country. So disallow, then. But there's so many other chess competitions.
Comparing with ice hockey doesn't make sense to me.
To add to this, it seems like chess players semi-frequently change what flag they play under, and can play under no flag at all.
Alireza Firouzja (world #2) for instance originally played under the Iranian flag, played under no flag for a year and a half, and now plays under the French flag.
Firouzja is now French. He did the right thing. Alexander Grishuk should be able too, i'm pretty sure the Ukrainian government would be thrilled to give him a passport, even for free and without the usual administrative red tape.
If that were actually the issue they’d be allowed to play, but not on behalf of Russia.
Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again? If actions have to be taken, which ones?
If actions can be taken to allow them to participate then in a sense is that saying the actions are sufficient to compensate for the senseless killing of Ukrainians? If no time or actions can be taken then are we ok with indefinitely ostracizing a group of people? What of their children?
Earth has already been down that road, it’s not really great. Best to just punish those who directly contributed to the things with disagree with.
> Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again?
I think the idea in this case is that since many Ukranians can't play, Russians shouldn't be able to either. So I would think the sanctions would end when Ukraine isn't fighting anymore, and can participate again. That's at least the IOC's stance. [0]
You're right! The only fair solution is to drop Grischuk in central Kyiv; if he survives the journey to Norway and arrives on time, he should be allowed to play.
Not every Ukrainian is located in Kyiv. There are Ukrainians living abroad, that have left Ukraine, and have the ability to leave Ukraine.
Why is the standard an imaginary Ukrainian grandmaster currently trapped or engaged in fighting?
Perhaps they should cancel it for everyone because this imaginary person can't make it. After all it is also unfair that people can travel from Germany and the US while the imaginary Ukrainian can't.
Chess isn't something that's played "on behalf of" countries like the Olympics are, are they, or some gray area in between? Aside from that, I kind of view it as a blunt instrument. If there were a way to target Putin and his regime directly within a reasonable amount of risk, I think they'd have chosen that option. In 2014 I think I remember some people under Putin took it as a badge of honor to be on the sanctions list, it seemed like an inconvenience that could be solved by more corruption to work around it. I think if you make it policy to try to isolate a country, but start allowing exceptions, then it's not going to be ordinary Russians that benefit, but instead only connected people and the whole thing loses its bite. And it's a response to a specific action by a specific regime. I don't see why these bans wouldn't be lifted once sanctions are lifted.
Having said that, I could see it resulting in a small increase of harassment of Russians in other countries.
> Chess isn't something that's played "on behalf of" countries like the Olympics are, are they, or some gray area in between?
Most events, and the general culture, is in a grey area. Outside of the Olympiad which features literal national teams, flags still feature prominently. There's of course wild variance in how nationalistic players feel; some like Karjakin are deeply nationalistic while the average probably feels loosely tied. Some even change associations after conflicts with their country of origin, see young prodigy Firouzja moving from Iran to France recently. I can't think of a comparable international sport to compare it to since I mostly know about American sports. Somebody else that follows chess and i.e. football may be able to make that comparison - AFAIK most players play for national teams during nationalized events but don't wear their country's flag prominently when they play for private clubs.
Each country has its own federation and playing for one's federation is so deeply ingrained in the culture that the solution "well, just play as yourself, not a national" that seems obvious outsiders is something that organizers and players are hesitant to reach for. I think *a* reason for this is that dipping out of a federation prevents you from playing in that country's championship or representing them in the Olympiad, each of which are a big deal to the top players. There are also almost surely other complications in FIDE rules that I'm not aware of. Suffice it to say that playing under the FIDE or ROC flags is not the sort of thing you'd see until recently.
>no one is going to draw the line sooner than "during the actual invasion".
If it's going to just be countries still in ongoing war or occupation, then I suppose China, India, Turkey, France, Israel, and the US will be next on the list to be uninvited from the tournament. I'm sure we could think of more too.
People playing under the Iranian flag aren't allowed to play people under the Israeli flag. Because they represent Iran, and the player under the Israeli flag represents Israel.
Not only is this not a new issue, it's an issue where lines are already drawn. This is just a tournament choosing sides where the previous instance that I'm aware of was an entire chess federation...
> Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again? If actions have to be taken, which ones?
Not until the government has changed or reparations have been paid.
No, that is only true in an event such as the Olympics where the team is officially sanctioned and determined by their country. A random individual does not represent their country whether they are playing a sport, working a job, or doing anything else - they represent themselves.
> Are you claiming Alexander Grischuk allowed Russia to invade Ukraine?
The purpose of the cultural sanctions is not to punish the individual sportsmen or artist or change their opinions, the purpose is to undermine the popular support for the war and the Putin-regime.
The Putin regime have used sports as a point of national pride in order to strengthen popular support. So it stands to reason that excluding Russia from sports would weaken the regime in some degree.
Apparently many Russians are not even aware they are involved in a war due to the massive propaganda and censorship. Maybe Russia getting excluded from all sports event might at least get them to ask some questions about what is going on?
Genocide and ethnic cleansing is already in full swing. Too late for "step on a path".
As a Russian immigrant in US, i support kicking out from US or any other country any Russian who wouldn't condemn in straight clear words Putin's fascist regime and the genocide it conducts in Ukraine. Anything less is just a support of what is going on.
For any public figure it is doubly so. Grischuk didn't even use the word "war" in order to not have issues with Russian government. Well, it is a war and one can't be on good terms with all the sides simultaneously, and there is no neutrality when it comes to genocide and ethnic cleansing. Ukrainian civilians get killed being intentionally bombed in their homes just for being Ukrainians (it is called genocide), Ukrainian women and children are running for their lives to Poland (as their lives are in danger just for them being Ukrainians, and such ethnicity based forced displacement constitutes ethnic cleansing), with some walking tens of kilometers in cold winter, and even some women giving birth in-route. If you don't take their side then you really should be kicked out of the civilized world.
This comment makes me think of a piece of relevant literature who’s television adaption is about to end called Shingeki no Kyojin or it’s English translation “Attack on Titan”. I wonder what the reaction of the upcoming episodes will be as the Russian Invasion continues.
That is BS. Government coming upon you for the "war" is exactly a statement one has to make in such situation if one is really against that war. Especially that the government just can't chase everybody uttering the word, and there are a lot of such people.
Russians have been carpet bombing innocent Syrians for years. Even using thermobarbic bombs against them, with no sanctioning from the West. Obviously the middle east is of little consequence in these discussions for all parties.
You’re not wrong there. The BBC interviewed a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who told the network: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.” Rather than question or challenge the comment, the BBC host flatly replied, “I understand and respect the emotion.”
In one of the "Russian Roulette" episode when the Ukrainian army circle and bomb some city in Dombas, the journalist notice a swastika pendant on one of the soldier and ask if he is not afraid of being misrepresented as a fascist, before moving on.
Double standards at its best.
What is the purpose of the ban? Is it really doing anything to undermine Russia’s leadership? My guess is that this harms chess players who happen to be Russian but who have no control over the government and doesn’t do anything to hinder the actual Russian government in any meaningful way.
Yeah as an Iranian, I have experience with these sort of decisions and they are discriminatory and an excuse for xenophobia. I never chose where I was born. I left the second I could. Holding me to my birthplace is just as fucked as having a "no Browns allowed" sign.
The purpose of the ban is to weaken and undermine the Putin regime. Of course it is unfortunate for the players not getting to play a chess match, but if this ban (along with all the other economic and cultural sanctions) shorten the war by just a day, surely that sacrifice would be well worth it.
There is no way to hit Putin and his war chest directly. The intent of the sanctions is to indirectly weaken him and his power structure and undermine his public support. The cultural sanctions are certainly the mildest, the economic sanctions are going to hit the average Russian a lot harder. All of the sanctions work together to send a clear message.
Will it work? We don't know. Sanctions does not have a good track record of being effective, but on the other hand such a massive package of sanctions have been tried before.
Of course the effect of any single sanction seem negligible. Does it stop the war to cancel a chess match? Of course not. Does it stop the war to seize some billionaires Yacht? Probably not. But the combined force of all the sanctions hopefully have an effect.
Some say that popular support does not matter because Putin is a dictator. However Putin himself clearly believe popular support is important, otherwise why the need for the massive propaganda and silencing dissenting voices?
When taking about the fairness of the sanctions, realize that a "fair and proportional response" according to international law would be to literally bomb and shell Russians cities.
> weaken him and his power structure and undermine his public support
A problem is, these things can also make him stronger? And increase pubic support.
If people start getting "bullied" because they happened to be born in Russia, then maybe some of them will start disliking Europe, and think "Putin not so bad after all".
What if you threw stones through someone's window, because they were born in Russia? Do you think that makes Putin weaker or stronger
Not saying I know what to do, or that I have the answers.
Putin only got stronger and bolder after the mild and ineffectual international response to the annexation of Crimea. So you are basally saying, if the West does nothing, Putin gets stronger, if the West strike back against Russia, Putin also gets stronger. So what do you suggest could possibly work?
This initially may seem like unproductive, mistargeted overreaction.
However, consider that if Russians can't do what they want to do, maybe they'll focus more efforts on fixing their country so it stops the invasion and doesn't do something like this ever again. It may not work, but every Russian needs to be thinking about that, with priority over their jobs and hobbies. Making things painful for them is one way to do that. It's terrible for people whose jobs are directly affected, but the situation is even worse for Ukrainians.
And Russia is a country where high profile dissenters do risk their freedom if not their lives outright. The people comfortably making this decision from Norway aren't doing anything like that.
This tells to Russians that the world doesn't care about them, individually, risking their lives to stop the actions of their Government as they like to claim.
I would also add that Grischuk was under no obligation to say anything that he did. He was even rudely cut off by the 'host' at one point. And he even mentioned that in his phrasing he was going to avoid using the war since it's illegal in the media, and he wants them to be able to quote him.
If there was ever a man you want with a voice and face in the media at a time like now, it would be somebody like Grischuk. This is somebody that, especially in times like now, that should be elevated. Instead he's going to be effectively depersoned on the international stage and effectively silenced, seemingly like every single Russian regardless of their wrongthink or lack thereof. What a world we're creating.
These kinds of attitudes show to me that much of the western world didn't draw many lessons from 1914 other than that you can do more than figurative painting in the visual arts.
I'm not going to defend America's military adventurism, but do you really see no difference between a limited military campaign against a brutal dictator (and yes, partially over control of oil) vs a campaign to take over a bordering, more-democratic country for mythological ethic reasons, including by shelling cities?
Killing people isn't righteous. It is, however, more acceptable or tolerable depending on the context and military force and tactics used. Blame what you want, but what percentage of the UN and UN security council denounced American actions? What percentage denounce Russia's current actions?
2) I assume you brought up drones in particular because the drone war has raged, as you wrote, "all over" the Middle East, which is part of what's alarming about it. Iraq and maybe Syria have experienced US-led saturation bombing during the drone war (but not by drones). Countries subject primarily to the drone part of the war have not.
Cool. Again, I find the drone war more than a little worrisome, so we're probably more-or-less on the same "side" here, but drones have not, as far as I know, been used for this sort of "destroy an entire large area kinda indiscriminately" attack—not because they couldn't be, but because that's not the usual tool the US happens to use for that at this time, so if they did it it'd be with traditional aircraft (as in the linked article), and also because the drone war has, as far as I can tell, mostly not involved those sorts of strikes. Iraq is a big exception, but that's not because of the drone war—it's because of the ordinary war that the US waged there.
The drone war has caused plenty of collateral damage regardless, of course. I'm just not sure characterizing it as carpet bombing is either accurate or helpful in pinpointing exactly what's uniquely bad about the drone war. In fact, I don't even think the people in charge of it are trying to cause widespread damage beyond their typically-very-limited targets—though lack of accountability ultimately is one of the bad things about it, along with normalizing that kind of extraterritorial violence in the first place, the everything-looks-like-a-nail factor (when all you've got is a Predator drone...), and so on.
"Democracy" is your litmus test, remember that the US has been happy to overthrow democracies and put dictators in power if it better serves their economic interests:
- Panama - US invaded it in 1989 and overthrew their leader
- Iran - US staged a coup in 1953
Not to mention how the US is actively helping Saudi Arabia's dictators suppress dissent in both Saudi Arabia itself and neighboring Yemen
I was in high school when the US invaded Iraq and around that time I went skiing in Quebec with a friend. We spent the weekend in the city and, while exploring, accidentally got caught up in what felt like a pretty big protest against the American invasion of Iraq. Looking back it was actually a fairly small and very tame protest but I was just a kid and it was totally unexpected so it was scary. And it really changed my worldview. It was my very first time ever leaving the country and I hadn’t expected Canadians, of all people, to be “anti-American” in any way. It was also the first time it had occurred to me that what the US was doing could even possibly be wrong. The thought had not even crossed my mind.
It’s important to have a friend who will tell you when you’re being an asshole.
I understand the intention, however, the majority of those broad-stroke sanctions hurt the most progressive and self-reliant citizens first, the current regime support is extremely low for those people already.
Putin's main support base will start to feel anything only in a few weeks, when the economy crashes and inflation starts reflecting on the base needs. Most of the "deep nation" have only internal passports (never travel abroad), work in a government-funded spheres of economy, use mostly state-sponsored sources of information. Sanctions will probably just reinforce the narrative of "the ruthless enemies are encircling the motherland and can't wait to rip it apart".
This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read online. When it comes to war, countries like Russia or the US do whatever they want whenever they want, no matter how the population feels about it.
It is a sucky situation without any perfect solutions. Banning all Russian athletes is a clear decision. Judging everyone based on their individual reactions to the invasion is just not a scalable solution, and probably also puts those who speak out in greater danger.
> Banning all Russian athletes is a clear decision.
Yes, it would be clear if you define "Russian". Do you mean everyone who currently holds a Russian passport? Everyone who has at some point held a Russian passport? What about someone who used to have a Soviet passport with their nationality recorded in it as "Russian" but who didn't live in Russia? What about people who used to have a Soviet passport and lived in Russia but with a different nationality in their documents?
(Apparently Russian passports up until around 1997 had a "nationality" field, like the old Soviet passports, so you could have a Russian passport with your nationality recorded as something other than Russian. Presumably you could officially be a Ukrainian citizen of Russia, for example. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the other former Soviet states also record nationality so you might be able to have a passport from Kazakhstan or Latvia that says "Russian" in it. I would hope, however, that nobody is seriously thinking of banning "Russians" while defining "Russians" to include people who have never had either a Soviet or a Russian passport.)
EDIT: I would guess that you'd probably want to define "Russian" for these purposes as someone who currently has a Russian passport, but perhaps it's not totally obvious that that's the right answer?
Any chess players who played under the Russian flag before the invasion. I don't know the exact details in chess, but in most sports you have to declare a country when participating in top level sports. For example dual citizens cannot just switch between playing for any country's national team that they are a citizen of.
Cannot "just" switch? What's that mean, exactly? Surely there is some kind of a procedure for people to change their "sports" nationality if they really have emigrated and so on?
(You might think of having a rule that you can only change your "sports" nationality if you "renounce" your previous citizenship, but it many cases it's not possible to "renounce" citizenship: you can let your passport expire, but whatever condition, such as place of birth, allowed you to apply for that passport in the first place would still exist so you would continue to have the option of receiving a passport for the previous country if you ever wanted to apply for one. Moreover, it would be impossible for you to prove you hadn't done that because countries do not, as a rule, issue documents to certify that a given person does not have a valid passport!)
What’s with all these cancellations of Russian citizens?
Surely this is not going to look good at the end of this war, and it’ll just be more propaganda for the Russian gov’t to use - “look, the west doesn’t care about you”.
Is this just “cancel culture” exposed in a different area?
Sanctions are often universal rather than person specific. Grischuk isn't being banned for his specific political beliefs. He is being banned as an action against his country. Some of the ways we punish that country are by punishing its people. It doesn't mean the people receiving that punishment are guilty of anything, it is just the method of putting pressure on that country's government to reverse course. This is true of basically all sanctions against Russia whether is is something symbolic like preventing athletes from competing under a Russian flag, something general like trade sanctions, or something very specific such as seizing a yacht of an oligarch. These all hurt specific people in varying ways that isn't proportional with those people's personal politics or guilt in the actions of the Russian government.
It's bad when you word it like that, but change it to "in a way designed to prevent you and your loved ones from great harm" and suddenly it's very understandable.
The article is an opinion piece that's inaccurately framed in that it's not the specific canceling of an individual (and cats), but solidarity with sanctions placed on Russia.
This is getting really stupid. Anytime there is some major event we always work to try to ensure that people appreciate there is a difference between the people of a country and the bad actors of a country - even when those bad actors are the government. But now because it's our favorite geopolitical enemy, everything goes out the window.
Imagine if the victims of our wars (or their partners) were more influential and were able to effectively spread global messages of arbitrary hate and intolerance against people simply for being American. And not mob mentality from extremists and radicals already predispositioned to hate, but orchestrated top-down hatred and intolerance from the "liberal" world order.
This is not going to spark some amazing revolution of frustrated chess players, disabled athletes, and cat show enthusiasts. The only thing this sort of stuff is doing is driving more hatred and division, and helping us inch that much closer to WW3. Putin invading Ukraine was a terrible decision; many Russians of all walks of lives oppose it. Yet they're at least as helpless to ever change any of it than we are to end our never-ending wars in the Mideast since we, at least in theory, could stop voting for warmongers.
I don't understand the people who object to these tactics. It would simply be a good thing if Americans were reviled for waging wars of aggression on other states. That would mean fewer people in the US would support wars and there would be fewer wars. That would be good. It's at least worth a shot.
Adam Smith wrote - "In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconvenience from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war."
In other words, war is kind of fun and exciting for a populace that doesn't feel harm from it. I remember watching stories of the invasion of Iraq, and it seemed a lot like that to me. The media and the country generally enjoying the exploits of our armies.
Well, we can balance that enjoyment by a dissatisfaction of denying other pleasures to the population. No more chess, international sports, travel, etc. The complaint here should not be that this is being done to Russia, it should be. You're justified to complain that America was not made a pariah, but that's a different kind of complaint.
>I don't understand the people who object to these tactics.
So after 9/11, should we have sanctioned all Muslims? When a black man commits a crime, should we round up and sanction all blacks? We are all entirely responsible for what we do as individuals and not responsible at all for what other people do.
Black people and Muslims aren't an organized group with leaders and armed forces. Russians are.
It's very sad and unfair that individual Russians will suffer for their leaders misdeeds. But, I think the average Russian should prefer sanctions to alternative means of solving Russian aggression.
You obviously do not support what we are doing in a vacuum. We are trying to hurt and ruin the lives of people who had nothing to do with something (and some, as in this case, who were even actively outspoken against it) because of their nationality. We are becoming the worst of everything that the "liberal world order" is supposed to stand against. The reason you might be okay with this is because of Machiavellianism - a belief that carrying out large scale injustice might trigger chaos and even a revolution/coup/insurrection in Russia and eventually result in a nation that might be more aligned with our geopolitical interests.
When you look at history the one thing you will find is that things rarely work out how you want them to, and more often than not the resultant end is often nothing like you desired. We successfully worked to overthrow the democratic, secular, and relatively benign and democratic government of Iran in 1953 and replaced them with an exceptionally unpopular puppet monarchy. Then in 1979 the Iranians had a genuine revolution of their own against our puppet monarch and installed their own government. This is where the current radical Islamic government came from that, for some reason, really doesn't like the West. Today we'd give anything to have the Iran of 1953, but that's a bridge long since turned to ash.
And the other tales are endless as well. The point of this is that Machiavellianism relies on a claim that the ends justify the means. But even if one believes that, you can't really make that argument in good faith when you cannot realistically claim to have any idea of what the ends will be. All that one can be certain of is that we will live through the means. So we are turning into tyrants for what may very well be an even worse future for Russia and us alike.
You have a puzzling, and, I think, bespoke, notion of "Machiavellianism". If a cancer patient undergoes painful therapies to cure the disease, is that Machiavellianism, because the ends, curing cancer, justifies the painful means?
I would say no. That's simply an example of doing something unpleasant in pursuit of a larger goal. Typically, when people use the term Machiavellianism they are referring to doing immoral and objectionable things in pursuit of personal goals. That's not really the case here at all.
Free people have no moral obligation to transact with one another. There is no moral obligation to permit people to your chess tournament and no moral violation in denying them. When we decide that the crimes of the Russian government, acting, at least nominally, on behalf of the Russian people reach a critical point we can decide to discontinue business and relationships with the Russian people.
Perhaps you think, as others in this thread have suggested, that this is something like a civil rights action. Indeed, in the US we have laws prohibiting businesses from denying service to people purely on skin color. In my view this is more of an ethical choice than a moral one, but even if you think it's a moral necessity not to deny service to someone based on their immutable characteristics, that is irrelevant. Russians are being denied service not because the world has suddenly become slavophobic, but as a condemnation of their country's crimes. Put another way, it would be wrong for a restaurant to turn away a customer because they are black, but completely understandable for a restaurant to turn away a customer because that customer is OJ Simpson.
I assume you would say that individuals are unlike countries, and I think that's true. Some individual Russians oppose their government's attack on Ukraine. Alas, there is no way to scope sanctions such that they hurt only people with the wrong opinions. There is a simple way to scope sanctions such that they hurt Russians though - i.e. make the sanctions apply to Russia. (And here I use a colloquial sense of the word "sanction" that I mean to extend even to non-governmental groups making decisions to refuse service to or interaction with Russians).
Finally, I agree with what I think you mean - which is that it's very possible for things to work out in ways other than what are expected. I expect that the majority of "things" work out roughly as expected throughout history but it is unremarkable when they do. If most of our choices were going awry civilization would probably unstable.
That said, I agree with the spirit - it's hard to predict the consequences of our actions. But, so what? It's hard to predict the consequences of sanctions and hard to predict the consequences of no sanctions. My own reasoning is: a war is too much, nothing is too little, and sanctions seem about right. Sanctions must hurt or they are meaningless. I would not want to see a headline like "Russian school hit by stray bomb, hundreds dead." A headline like "Russian chess player kicked out of tournament" seems about right for unintended consequences.
We also should be considering that there will be this giant country with a giant military after Putin is gone.
We seem to have no concept right now that there is a level of suffering and alienation we can impose on the average Russian that will cause a large chunk to become highly radicalized going forward. Who are those people going to want as a leader then? It seems like so many right now are living in a fantasy world that the Russian people will have some kind of French Revolution because of sanctions, get rid of Putin and by magic some Western friendly Russian government will emerge.
It is like that same thinking that went into hitting Germans with crippling reparations for WW1. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't the best idea..
The Russian diplomatic corps and information operations teams are taking advantage of the emotional signaling power of the word "cancel" to attempt to manipulate the American right, with whom the word resonates as their world seems to unfairly change around them.
If you want to be taken seriously as a nuanced thinker, rather than a sketchy what-abouter trying to yank people around, I wouldn't use that word.
Not what happened though. They removed all Russian players, out of solidarity with Ukraine. That includes Svidler and Nepo, who are both critical of Putin and the invasion. As was Chucky!
There is no "EU passport", just 27 national passports that also have "European Union" written next to the issuing country. It's only up to individual countries to issue their passports, also Norway isn't in the EU anyway.
This is not a case of punishing individuals. From one of the source links from the linked article: "Norway announce that no Russian players will be able to play in the 2022 edition of the event"
But Saudi Arabia can bomb Yemen for years and Israel Palestine for decades without repercussions? I'm all for sanctions against Russia but the hypocrisy here is so thick you couldn't cut it with a knife.
Are you obsessed with Israel or something? This isn't the first time I've seen your comments about Israel, and your submission history is just full of this topic.
Israel isn't "bombing Palestinies for decades". They're fighting back when Palestinians attack them (why did you gloss over Palestinians bombing Israel?), then there's quiet for a while, and then more fighting.
The Israeli/Palestinian relationship is very complicated with enormous history, and claims by both sides. Just because you can't distinguish it from Russia/Ukraine doesn't mean others can't.
1) Accusation of obsession with Israel - check
2) Classic both siding with a cute "we're just defending" and leaving out the constant colonisation and ethnic cleansing campaigns & apartheid[0] - check
3) "it's complicated" - check
(it's not remotely complicated, plain old settler colonialism)
It's actually not plain old settler colonialism because Jewish people are also the "indigenous" inhabitants of those lands - but instead of sharing them with the non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants (now called the "Palestinians") the militant Zionists have declared a "Jewish State" where they systematically discriminate against Palestinians (e.g. no right of return for non-Jews & hardly any building permits for non-Jews in the West Bank).
Regarding bombings & war crimes, they have indeed been done by both sides. The crimes of Palestinian terrorists are obvious, but there is widespread denial & attempted justification of the IDF's crimes, hence the topic generates a lot of writing & debate. Examples of IDF crimes are the bombing of houses with many children in assassination missions (these are obviously not preceded by warning phone-calls) [0], and the shooting of Palestinian protestors at the Gaza fence who do not pose a risk to the lives of IDF soldiers.[1] The data ([2]) also speaks for itself.
Perhaps we can take this time to stop having competitors in international competitions play under a national flag, as if they are property of a nation. The place one is born frequently has no bearing on one's personal identity.
To always be associated with one's nationality (which we generally do not get to choose) seems exhausting and rude.
I am always deeply disappointed with how little civic and ethical values the average person has left.
Whenever the common narrative finds a way to blame something or someone, the collective dehumanizes the target in a way that's quite terrifying, actually. People love to parrot about how "dictators are bad", "hitler was bad", etc, but when they find themselves in trivial situations where they have to show what they're made of not much more comes out of it.
Without saying much about it, let me remind you that there is a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, it's pretty clear that no one should be discriminated because of their origin or nationality. Every single "developed" country shares a set of laws that guarantee similar rights to their citizens (and visitors!).
Whether you think that people who are in these situations are having their rights dishonored or not it's up to you, I just want to remind people that some blades cut both ways so one has to be careful about which one is being honed today.
Disclaimer: I'm not Russian, never been to Russia, no friends in Russia either. I am a human being and have empathy for all other fellow human beings.
This is in reaction to a much greater moral outrage: thousands of dead Ukrainian civilians because of an unprovoked Russian invasion.
One can either 1) sanction Russia (which impacts all Russians) 2) partially sanction (which is unavoidably subjective and abusable) or 3) not sanction Russia. This is a case of 1, based on the source link, "Norway announce that no Russian players will be able to play in the 2022 edition of the event"
It is not fair to talk about "civic and ethical values" outside of this extremely relevant moral context.
If a Russian in America gets hurt and goes to a hospital, should it be denied medical attention? Where do you draw the line, actually?
If I'm not Russian but my parents are, should I be sanctioned as well? Again, where do you draw the line?
If you happened to be at Russia, would you be okay if everyone denied their services to you?
If your country got involved into a conflict, and you don't even live there anymore, and people started treating you like a pariah, would you feel be fine with that?
Some guys thought about all these things, and wrote:
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the POLITICAL, JURISDICTIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE COUNTRY OR TERRITORY TO WHICH A PERSON BELONGS, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty."
You seem to be confused about the moral weight of being temporarily banned in gaming and sports tournaments to unprovoked invasion and warfare. They aren't equivalent. Your questions are just absurd slippery slope fallacies that I won't give the dignity of answering, and you should be a little embarrassed about using that technique in a good faith discussion.
Which article in the UN link that you sent would categorize participation in a chess tournament as a human right?
Where is your concern about Ukrainian human rights? If you are so passionate about Grischuk's human rights to participate in this competition, then you must be incensed the magnitude of the violation of individual rights being violated in Ukraine. Do you condemn the Russian invasion?
But this is banning someone who has actively spoken against the war. If you're a Russian doing that, you're exposing yourself to danger in the name of doing the right thing.
This isn't someone who was caught up in broader sanctions, like the innocent Russians whose life savings are being demolished. That's terrible, but in the broader context it is understandable and necessary. This is someone being specifically targeted for his nationality despite the fact - and this is the key differentiator - that doing so in no way does any damage to Russia.
You want to harm Russia? Treat anti-war Russians well. Show that the world isn't blindly taking action out of anger, but rather doing so in a targeted way to harm Putin and the Russian government. Russians who are speaking out against the war are good for Ukraine and the rest of the world, and they're bad for Putin. It makes no sense to punish them.
There's certainly a gray area for Russians who don't comment - they could be pro-war, or they could be reasonably afraid for their safety - but for Russians who say "In my view what we are doing is very wrong from both a moral view and practical view," punishment is counterproductive.
I was against the war in Iraq 20 years ago. I am still ashamed of it, and as an American I bear some shared culpability for it. I would have understood bans and boycotts and would have been at peace even if I were personally impacted. It would have been immeasurably less than what the hundreds of thousands of innocent, dead Iraqis suffered. I think Tyler Cowen is more concerned about this than Grischuk. I wonder why.
You're totally ignoring my point, though - bans and boycotts make sense. I fully agreed with that. Targeting you, specifically, even if you protested against the war, does not. You're pointing out the immense suffering of the Ukrainians, which I think everyone here agrees with, but then you're using it to avoid the question of why their suffering makes it appropriate to punish someone whose actions (speaking out against the war) are beneficial to them.
Also, it's not reasonable to compare the culpability of an American, who lives in a democracy and can choose to spend their time and effort protesting the country's leadership and trying to oust it in the next election, to someone living in a dictatorship who cannot reasonably do those things.
You do realise that Grischuk is a Ukranian surname, don't you? As well as the fact that Grischuk's first wife was Ukranian and his current wife is of the half-Russian, half-Ukranian descent?
And he's also vocally against the conflict, which matters much more to me than his ancestry. His moral character in this regard is extremely admirable. Many people in Russia have Ukrainian surnames for obvious reasons of proximity, which is why so many Russians are against this invasion.
I don't know anything about his personal circumstances, but it is not inconceivable that he, or his spouse, or both have relatives in Ukraine who are potentially being shelled at this very moment or hiding it out, and that Grischuk and his relatives are in a great distress right now.
My heart sincerely goes out to him. I suspect this weighs on him much more than other circumstances. I think any individual passionate about morality and chess can follow https://twitter.com/Kasparov63 and learn how someone deeply impacted by this situation feels about it.
Just because you can speak or write, doesn't mean you should. Nothing you said is reasonable.
Japanese American imprisonment without due process or access to legal counsel during WW2 was condemnable. You advocate the opposite. I mean, nothing was written against then, was it?
Advocating for an individual's human rights and disassociation from their government's actions doesn't mean unequivocal support for the latter.
I think it's pretty reasonable to separate injustices by magnitude. If one doesn't do that, one begins to think things like "being asked to wear a mask is like the Holocaust because in both cases the government told people what to do". It is a lazy way for one to make a point when they struggle to make a point on its own merits.
In fact it is a special and famous case of sophistry to leverage a tenuous connection between two things and declare they are comparable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence. To quote, "This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result"
You are correct - in both cases, Japanese Internment camps during WW2 and Norway Chess's banning of Russian competitors in a chess tournament are examples of cases where innocent individuals were harmed by collective punishment. I completely agree with you on that.
However, only a very silly person would think both actions are comparable. It would be extremely offensive to suggest they are. While they exist on a continuum, they are very, very far apart and any reasonable person can see that 1) the forced imprisonment of 100,000+ people for multiple years while being charged with no crime and 2) the temporary exclusion of several dozen entrants from an international chess tournament are not in the same moral universe.
The moral calculus of applying pressure to Russia to withdraw from a war of aggression that is killing thousands still isn't easy, and decent people can disagree civilly about it.
I think you are simply describing collective punishment. You are making the case that collective punishment is easier and more fair because you don't even consider about if any individual person punished is deserving or innocent.
It is like Israel bulldozing random Palestine homes because someone else fired a rocket. It is like people beating up random Chinese on the streets of San Francisco because of some decision Xi Jinping made
> This is in reaction to a much greater moral outrage: thousands of dead Ukrainian civilians because of an unprovoked Russian invasion.
No, this is racism and intolerance under a thin guise of outrage. We are talking about targeting individuals who bear zero responsibility for what people claim they are outraged about. The sole reason these individuals are targeted is because of their nationality. This is cancel culture at its worse - we don't even care about what people think or say anymore, and hurt them for something they can't change anything about.
What next? Should we make the Russians immigrants in our countries live in fear of reprisals? Should our children bully theirs in schools? How far can we take it before the outrage excuse wears out?
Outrage over the Russian invasion of Ukraine is warranted. I feel the same. It is good to see an international reaction to it, and I sincerely hope that this will pressure Putin to stop. The virtue signalling and posturing we have seen this week on social medias is not justice, however. It's a disgusting act of violence by people who feel they can get away with it. Is that violence comparable to what the Ukrainians live through at the moment? Of course not! But that doesn't make it excusable.
Like I said - you can ban none, some, or all Russian participants. That is just simple logic. If you ban some participants, you harm the integrity of the competition by subjective criteria. If you ban none, you are failing to impose a cost for Russian war crimes. It's an awful situation for everyone involved and the best situation would be for an immediate cessation of hostilities and military withdrawal so the ban can be lifted. After all, this is simply chess and nobody is dying. On the other hand, thousands of civilians are dead, families are divided, and there is real hardship.
> you are failing to impose a cost for Russian war crimes.
Isn't the simple logic that the people who should bear the cost of war crimes are those who commit these war crimes?
> It's an awful situation for everyone involved and the best situation would be for an immediate cessation of hostilities and military withdrawal so the ban can be lifted.
Not only that, but the immediate cessation of hostilities and military withdrawal would be better for everyone even if there were no ban. Aside from a few deranged hawks in the Russian government I can't see how this conflict is good for anyone, Russian or not.
> this is simply chess and nobody is dying.
And the ban does nothing that would influence Putin's decisions. The economic sanctions might change his attitude (only time will tell). A ban of Russian chess players won't. Sanctions are a tool to force Putin to the negotiation table. Pointless actions like this are only harming people with no influence or responsibility on the conflict.
> On the other hand, thousands of civilians are dead, families are divided, and there is real hardship.
This war is dreadful, and I would like (without much hope) that Putin and those responsible for it respond for their crime. I just don't see how imposing hardships (however less strong they may be) on people unrelated to the conflict has any bearing on this.
> Like I said - you can ban none, some, or all Russian participants.
I can understand sanctions, they specifically target the country.
I can understand sanctions against individuals who are supporting Putin like the oligarchs.
I can understand cutting financial, business ties as they specifically target the country.
It starts to get difficult based on the criteria of nationality, there are a variety of reasons to ban people from Israel, Iran, Saudi, United States, and a bucket full of others. Many countries are involved in human rights abuses, military occupation, questionable politics etc. Should all their citizens suffer because of what their country's are involved in.
I applaud your stance, I don't discount it as being objective. But Alexander Grischuk, he is not Russia and we should think about the motives and reasons why such bans should be in place and just because their "homeland" is doing something doesn't mean they are. Imagine carte blanche banning people like Yeonmi Park from events because she is from North Korea.
Here's a bit of irony, Russian athletes are banned from competing in the Winter Paralympics which is based in a country know for it questionable human rights abuses and political stances including that against Taiwan and Hong Kong. It is a very difficult situation with Ukraine and I feel this fits into a situation where there are no correct answers.
There are reasons to ban then, but is it the right thing to do.
Clearly, Tyler Cowen has his reasons for framing this issue in an inflammatory way. I suspect he didn't seek out any 44 open letter signatories for their feelings.
I simply see no way of keeping out Karjakin in an equitable way. I am tired of repeating myself about how I hate this situation, but the victims are not Russian grandmasters, they are Ukrainian children. Some people are trying very hard to move the focus off of this (I don't believe you are, and I appreciate your conclusion.. I agree there are no right answers).
> I am tired of repeating myself about how I hate this situation, but the victims are not Russian grandmasters, they are Ukrainian children.
Nobody in this thread has denied that Ukrainian children are victims, and nobody has disagreed that there should be a reaction.
What people are questioning is who should be targeted by this reaction, and with what actions. Your stance, as I read it, is everyone who is Russian, because there is no other way. Even with that, people didn't argue against, at least when it comes to economic sanctions. But bans that do not affect the war criminals, but only common people (aka, civilians)? That does feel petty and unnecessary. And to be clear, unlike others in the thread I don't suggest selecting people based on their opinion -- it feels too antithetic to our democratic ideals (so that it is clear, I personally despise these opinions).
Forgive me for changing the focus a bit, but since you bring up the plight of children, it is likely that Russian children will also suffer from the consequences of economic sanctions. Some will grow up in poverty because of this mess, some will die indirectly, from the effects of poverty. I don't really have a solution to that (right now the efforts should go to stop the war in Ukraine), and that doesn't mean that sanctions can be avoided, but I do think that they are also victims.
If a man murders someone, the victim's family sues and win, and as a result the murder's children are economically deprived... everyone comes out worse than before. But who is at fault and what is the equitable outcome?
> If a man murders someone, the victim's family sues and win, and as a result the murder's children are economically deprived...
Sorry but this is not accurate. This would be more accurate: a man is in the process of murdering hostages, so we hurt his children to make him stop.
The sanctions are not "justice", they are pressure tools to make Russia stop the invasion. There cannot be any justice until the crime (the war) is stopped.
> everyone comes out worse than before. But who is at fault and what is the equitable outcome?
There is no equitable outcome, and it is not a betrayal of the victim to feel empathy for the murderer's children.
When he plays professional chess, Grischuk _is_ representing Russia, he's not just an individual. A win for him is a win for Russia, and the chess commentators constantly say things like "I'm excited for the Hungary vs Russia final" and "looks like Russia will come out on top in this game".
Russian nationals and teams have been removed from FIFA, IHL, and many other competitions. It isn't fair, but it isn't fair that Ukraine has had its sovereignty violated by an unprovoked invasion.
It is intrinsically biased to vet individuals based on their personal political beliefs, that seems like it would be worse. So the alternatives are to allow Russian nationals / national teams or to not allow them. These are extraordinary circumstances so I reluctantly support exclusions, and am deeply saddened by them.
It would be so beneficial to everyone if this horrible invasion ceased and the Russian army withdrew from Ukraine. They should stop killing innocent people for the goal of territorial expansion, and then the world can renormalize as quickly as possible.
It wasn't an unprovoked invasion, and rarely any invasion is. I dont support it at all, but I want to point out that this was an avoidable and certainly provoked war.
It was under the usual meaning of that phrase, which doesn't merely refer to anything that bugs the invader, but something rising to the level of a legal casus belli such that the invasion is not the crime of aggression. (It also occurred in 2014; the current crisis is an escalation of the invasion, not the initiation of the crime against peace.)
It's embarrassing the amount of individuals/corporations that are deciding to screw over random Russian citizens, who have a fairly good chance of not even supporting the war.
The next time an Islamic terrorist attacks the US, let's use this as precedent for denying random Muslims access to civic culture across the globe. Lovely world we're building.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 269 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFN0s53RpGY
It's understandable when the lines between state and individual are blurred - like with state sponsored doping of Olympic athletes, who are competing as part of a national organisation.
But when it's an individual whose nationality just happens to be Russian?
Seems more unfair, than just.
This is only going to create more conflict and tension, and generate hatred in people that would otherwise be neutral.
If they get to kick people out for their nationality (when that person is not "representing" a nation) then I get to think they're foolish.
It is discrimination. And it's entirely justified. The same way when, if your friend stars a bar brawl, you all get kicked out. Only he should get e.g. arrested. But there's a big difference between not being able to compete for your country and getting shelled.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
It’s sad how humanity just keeps doing the same thing over and over…
Even if the invasion had never happened boycotting Chechnya would have been acceptable given their previous actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya#LGBT_rights
They did elect him (with 76.69% of the vote).
People in the West who live in (relatively) democratic countries just go around saying "Russians elected him" without actually understanding what living under an autocratic rule is like. Putin never won a free and fair election. He persecuted his opponents, denied them access to media (and as of today, there's no independent media left) installed dummy ones that play into his hand and falsified the elections.
It's like seeing hunger in a 3rd world country and saying "why don't they just learn how to program and get an actual job?"
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Russian_presidential_elec...
And what people also don’t understand is that they falsify on all levels. First, they persecute their opponents and deny them access to media. If they think an opponent has a chance and isn’t sufficiently toothless, they just don’t register them. Then they cast fake ballots during actual voting. There are reports of fraud during counting: police is known to remove independent observers from the room. If the results at this point are not satisfactory enough, they rewrite the numbers in counting protocols. And even if that’s not sufficient (like in Lukashenko’s case), they can just declare any result they want and beat/jail anyone who disagrees.
I think western commentators on Russian elections/popular opinions just can’t wrap their heads around how corrupt the system is.
Most people in Russia aren’t pro-Putin. They’re indifferent, don’t think about these things much and mind their own business.
End result, some people here for real believing that the people in Russia supports Putin.
It's depressing that the newspapers let themselves be used by him as a tool for manipulation
It's also annoying, I think, that the newspapers keep calling him the "president".
https://twitter.com/SergeyKaryakin
Obviously much easier said than done. Also not sure why you’re mentioning America here - the article is about Norway
You mean direct war against Russia? That would certainly also cause collateral damage on innocents.
I’m not a fan of violence in general, though. Ideally they’d find another way without killing anyone.
Nato forces directly attacking Russian military in Ukraine would be the start of a third world war. The collateral damage of a direct war between Nato and Russia would be unfathomable.
Nuclear war between NATO and Russia would cause less collateral damage than Russian people not getting to play chess tournaments for an indefinite period of time?
I disagree.
Like others have said the solution to this crisis might be “drill baby drill” but that’s unfortunately more toxic or an argument than a country getting bombed to the ground. I guess we can stomach the war but not domestic oil and gas production.
Good for the environment and world safety
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The only relevant issue is the question as to whether all Russian citizens (regardless of ethnicity) should be banned from these kinds of events (more generally: have sanctions and sanction-adjacent actions taken against them), or just those who have directly contributed to the invasion (Putin, his military advisors, some Russian oligarchs maybe?) - which is a good topic for discussion. Claiming "discrimination", on the other hand, is factually incorrect, blatant emotional manipulation & unnecessary flamewar-bait, and does not belong on HN.
Discriminating on nationality is still discrimination.
I assume Giri for example still has citizenship - I wonder if he will be banned despite not representing Russia.
You are looking at removing Putin, who will, if democratically voted for, be replaced by someone even more extremist. Stop giving the working Russian people a reason to have the west. Give them hope, show them what life can be like, dont beat them down and scream at them.
1. Don't ban anyone.
2. Ban only players who have publicly supported Putin and the invasion of Ukraine (like Karjakin has).
3. Ban all Russian because they were born in the wrong country.
You're saying that 3 is better than 2, and I can't agree because in option 3 you're banning innocent people for reasons completely out of their control.
This is an absolutely stupid decision, and an injustice.
Two wrong don't make a right and two million wrongs most certainly don't.
If Ukrainians can’t play, then neither should Russians.
These people are actually your allies and a very valuable resource (intellectual, economic, political). Some of them risked their lives supporting opposition, cried for sanctions for years while your politicians benefitted from the regime's corruption and you did nothing. And now you're persecuting them like they're accomplices.
Pretty brave of him.
Does that mean if say, Garry Kasparov was to play against another chess player, he should be banned even though he also condemned the invasion? Quite ridiculous tbh.
Even Russian cats are banned [0], they don't have a view of the Russian governments actions on the invasion either and have nothing to do with it, except 'being from Russia'.
Of course from them, there's no redemption. Anything Russian thrown into the lost and banned.
To Downvoters: You do realise you can be Russian and be against the Russian government and condemn the whole invasion right?
[0] https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1499289953443930113
Are you at all aware of the history of chess?!?
For example, they would try harder to beat strong non-Soviet players than to beat strong Soviet players, would throw away games to give a Soviet player more points, would offer a draw very soon to give a Soviet player time to rest/prepare for theirnext matig, etc.
There’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1948#...
This is quite age old tactic that usually doesn't work, punishing civilians in the war usually does not demoralize them, but works against the aggressor. Same can be said about these sanctions. Why would they trust the west if we want to punish them and their only hope is their current administration?
They have only one enemy, the Russian government.
Do you think layman thinks the friend is the person who punishes them without them doing anything wrong? I find that seriously difficult to believe.
Think about it yourself. You go to a nightclub and then the doorman says only you're not allowed, because your friends who just went in said you're not wanted. Do you still consider them as your friends and just think it's for your best?
That's a very odd logic there.
The better example is you go to a nightclub and the doorman won't let you in because he says your friends were there being dicks earlier. Do you go and chew out your friends or get angry with the man stopping your night for something you didn't even do?
It’s heavy handed, imo.
People are dying, heavy handed measures are needed.
It'd be kinda weird to single out chess masters to save from the pain, while a grandma on a fixed income is facing shortages and watching her already-meager buying power drop by the day, the low-level staff at various businesses are put on half-time or cut altogether and they'll be skipping meals to make rent, et c.
I agree with you, and i sympathize for all working folk, everywhere, always, and forever. I was only meaning to point out that people who play chess for a living are technically working folk too, that’s all.
The people of Russia must seize their nation back somehow, whether by means of diplomacy or other means, if necessary.
Sorry, you're right. My reading wasn't as good as it could have been.
Even if they were under a neutral flag everyone would think of the person as Russian.
There's no way around it, we all already know where they are from, regardless of what they think of the war.
Yeah because they're from Russia. I just don't see how "people will think" is enough of a reason to ban them from playing an event.
(1) Some deranged person running Russia decided to invade Ukraine, kill innocent people and ruin millions of lives.
(2) A chess organization in Norway bans a player because they were born in the same country as the deranged person from above.
I don't get how (2) is an appropriate response to (1) or how it helps anyone. It's not a deterrent, it's not any kind of response - nobody in the Russian government will feel the tiniest bit of pressure because of it, it's such a token act that it's laughable to think about in the context of what's happening in Ukraine. At the same time it's a big deal to the handful of players it affects.
All this does is create publicity and make the careers of a few people significantly worse just because they happened to be born in the wrong country.
Citation needed. If I see someone playing chess, or any game for that matter, then I assume they represent the flag that they're playing under is what the represent. If I see someone playing under a non-Russian flag, it doesn't matter how Russian their name sounds - I don't consider them to be representing Russia in any capacity - they could have been born in India, a French citizen, ethnically Ethiopian, and just given that name by their parents, for all I know.
(and, if I look into them further, and discover that they're a Russian citizen and they're intentionally not playing under a Russian flag, there's no way I'll think that they're representing Russia)
Please find me examples of people who do not believe this, because the idea that "Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though" is both deeply weird and completely illogical to me, and I've never met someone who agrees with it.
In the Olympics -- yes then I understand, then it's one player per country. So disallow, then. But there's so many other chess competitions.
Comparing with ice hockey doesn't make sense to me.
not really, in chess at least. Playing under the FIDE flag is pretty common when geopolitical tensions are involved, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_flag_player
Israeli players playing under the FIDE flag at UAE tournaments has happened as well. There's plenty of precedent for it.
Alireza Firouzja (world #2) for instance originally played under the Iranian flag, played under no flag for a year and a half, and now plays under the French flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alireza_Firouzja
Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again? If actions have to be taken, which ones?
If actions can be taken to allow them to participate then in a sense is that saying the actions are sufficient to compensate for the senseless killing of Ukrainians? If no time or actions can be taken then are we ok with indefinitely ostracizing a group of people? What of their children?
Earth has already been down that road, it’s not really great. Best to just punish those who directly contributed to the things with disagree with.
I think the idea in this case is that since many Ukranians can't play, Russians shouldn't be able to either. So I would think the sanctions would end when Ukraine isn't fighting anymore, and can participate again. That's at least the IOC's stance. [0]
[0] https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-eb-recommends-no-participa...
Why is the standard an imaginary Ukrainian grandmaster currently trapped or engaged in fighting?
Perhaps they should cancel it for everyone because this imaginary person can't make it. After all it is also unfair that people can travel from Germany and the US while the imaginary Ukrainian can't.
Having said that, I could see it resulting in a small increase of harassment of Russians in other countries.
Mostly not, but there’s the Chess Olympiad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Olympiad) and the World Team Championship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Team_Chess_Championship)
Most events, and the general culture, is in a grey area. Outside of the Olympiad which features literal national teams, flags still feature prominently. There's of course wild variance in how nationalistic players feel; some like Karjakin are deeply nationalistic while the average probably feels loosely tied. Some even change associations after conflicts with their country of origin, see young prodigy Firouzja moving from Iran to France recently. I can't think of a comparable international sport to compare it to since I mostly know about American sports. Somebody else that follows chess and i.e. football may be able to make that comparison - AFAIK most players play for national teams during nationalized events but don't wear their country's flag prominently when they play for private clubs.
Each country has its own federation and playing for one's federation is so deeply ingrained in the culture that the solution "well, just play as yourself, not a national" that seems obvious outsiders is something that organizers and players are hesitant to reach for. I think *a* reason for this is that dipping out of a federation prevents you from playing in that country's championship or representing them in the Olympiad, each of which are a big deal to the top players. There are also almost surely other complications in FIDE rules that I'm not aware of. Suffice it to say that playing under the FIDE or ROC flags is not the sort of thing you'd see until recently.
How is that relevant? I think no matter what the answer, no one is going to draw the line sooner than "during the actual invasion".
If it's going to just be countries still in ongoing war or occupation, then I suppose China, India, Turkey, France, Israel, and the US will be next on the list to be uninvited from the tournament. I'm sure we could think of more too.
People playing under the Iranian flag aren't allowed to play people under the Israeli flag. Because they represent Iran, and the player under the Israeli flag represents Israel.
Not only is this not a new issue, it's an issue where lines are already drawn. This is just a tournament choosing sides where the previous instance that I'm aware of was an entire chess federation...
Not until the government has changed or reparations have been paid.
It's not a team sport. One would think chess players represent themselves.
Invitations are based on personal performance, not allocated based on national identity like the Olympics.
Should us companies fire workers with Russian citizenship or ties?
How much more critical have you been of your own country invading other nations?
The purpose of the cultural sanctions is not to punish the individual sportsmen or artist or change their opinions, the purpose is to undermine the popular support for the war and the Putin-regime.
The Putin regime have used sports as a point of national pride in order to strengthen popular support. So it stands to reason that excluding Russia from sports would weaken the regime in some degree.
Apparently many Russians are not even aware they are involved in a war due to the massive propaganda and censorship. Maybe Russia getting excluded from all sports event might at least get them to ask some questions about what is going on?
As a Russian immigrant in US, i support kicking out from US or any other country any Russian who wouldn't condemn in straight clear words Putin's fascist regime and the genocide it conducts in Ukraine. Anything less is just a support of what is going on.
For any public figure it is doubly so. Grischuk didn't even use the word "war" in order to not have issues with Russian government. Well, it is a war and one can't be on good terms with all the sides simultaneously, and there is no neutrality when it comes to genocide and ethnic cleansing. Ukrainian civilians get killed being intentionally bombed in their homes just for being Ukrainians (it is called genocide), Ukrainian women and children are running for their lives to Poland (as their lives are in danger just for them being Ukrainians, and such ethnicity based forced displacement constitutes ethnic cleansing), with some walking tens of kilometers in cold winter, and even some women giving birth in-route. If you don't take their side then you really should be kicked out of the civilized world.
He said he didn’t use the word “war” to avoid being censored, so that the Russian media can quote him directly.
you are right, this is sending a message, but its a deeply philosophical message.
Will it work? We don't know. Sanctions does not have a good track record of being effective, but on the other hand such a massive package of sanctions have been tried before.
Of course the effect of any single sanction seem negligible. Does it stop the war to cancel a chess match? Of course not. Does it stop the war to seize some billionaires Yacht? Probably not. But the combined force of all the sanctions hopefully have an effect.
Some say that popular support does not matter because Putin is a dictator. However Putin himself clearly believe popular support is important, otherwise why the need for the massive propaganda and silencing dissenting voices?
When taking about the fairness of the sanctions, realize that a "fair and proportional response" according to international law would be to literally bomb and shell Russians cities.
A problem is, these things can also make him stronger? And increase pubic support.
If people start getting "bullied" because they happened to be born in Russia, then maybe some of them will start disliking Europe, and think "Putin not so bad after all".
What if you threw stones through someone's window, because they were born in Russia? Do you think that makes Putin weaker or stronger
Not saying I know what to do, or that I have the answers.
If I say, "this animal looks cute but it might bite", then, I'm not saying that all animals will bite you.
One sanction seems maybe-bad. But I'm not saying all sanctions are bad. On the contrary, most are good I think, eg SWIFT.
I want more sanctions: stop the gas.
However, consider that if Russians can't do what they want to do, maybe they'll focus more efforts on fixing their country so it stops the invasion and doesn't do something like this ever again. It may not work, but every Russian needs to be thinking about that, with priority over their jobs and hobbies. Making things painful for them is one way to do that. It's terrible for people whose jobs are directly affected, but the situation is even worse for Ukrainians.
This tells to Russians that the world doesn't care about them, individually, risking their lives to stop the actions of their Government as they like to claim.
If there was ever a man you want with a voice and face in the media at a time like now, it would be somebody like Grischuk. This is somebody that, especially in times like now, that should be elevated. Instead he's going to be effectively depersoned on the international stage and effectively silenced, seemingly like every single Russian regardless of their wrongthink or lack thereof. What a world we're creating.
Didn't the USA carpet bomb many places in the Middle East with drones?
Again, not to create a false equivalency but I believe the OPs point is that shouldn’t Americans be ostracized?
The drone war's been horrible, but "carpet bomb" means a specific thing, so, no, the USA did not do that
[EDIT] To be clear, this isn't pedantry—that doesn't even figuratively describe what's gone on.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-ir...
2) I assume you brought up drones in particular because the drone war has raged, as you wrote, "all over" the Middle East, which is part of what's alarming about it. Iraq and maybe Syria have experienced US-led saturation bombing during the drone war (but not by drones). Countries subject primarily to the drone part of the war have not.
And yeah your interpretation of my point is correct.
The drone war has caused plenty of collateral damage regardless, of course. I'm just not sure characterizing it as carpet bombing is either accurate or helpful in pinpointing exactly what's uniquely bad about the drone war. In fact, I don't even think the people in charge of it are trying to cause widespread damage beyond their typically-very-limited targets—though lack of accountability ultimately is one of the bad things about it, along with normalizing that kind of extraterritorial violence in the first place, the everything-looks-like-a-nail factor (when all you've got is a Predator drone...), and so on.
- Panama - US invaded it in 1989 and overthrew their leader - Iran - US staged a coup in 1953
Not to mention how the US is actively helping Saudi Arabia's dictators suppress dissent in both Saudi Arabia itself and neighboring Yemen
More fun reading: https://www.quora.com/How-many-countries-has-the-USA-invaded...
It’s important to have a friend who will tell you when you’re being an asshole.
Putin's main support base will start to feel anything only in a few weeks, when the economy crashes and inflation starts reflecting on the base needs. Most of the "deep nation" have only internal passports (never travel abroad), work in a government-funded spheres of economy, use mostly state-sponsored sources of information. Sanctions will probably just reinforce the narrative of "the ruthless enemies are encircling the motherland and can't wait to rip it apart".
The problem with this sentiment is that you're assuming that Russians are anything like your people.
We'll endure being deprived of Lego toys and Disney cartoons just fine.
Yes, it would be clear if you define "Russian". Do you mean everyone who currently holds a Russian passport? Everyone who has at some point held a Russian passport? What about someone who used to have a Soviet passport with their nationality recorded in it as "Russian" but who didn't live in Russia? What about people who used to have a Soviet passport and lived in Russia but with a different nationality in their documents?
(Apparently Russian passports up until around 1997 had a "nationality" field, like the old Soviet passports, so you could have a Russian passport with your nationality recorded as something other than Russian. Presumably you could officially be a Ukrainian citizen of Russia, for example. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the other former Soviet states also record nationality so you might be able to have a passport from Kazakhstan or Latvia that says "Russian" in it. I would hope, however, that nobody is seriously thinking of banning "Russians" while defining "Russians" to include people who have never had either a Soviet or a Russian passport.)
EDIT: I would guess that you'd probably want to define "Russian" for these purposes as someone who currently has a Russian passport, but perhaps it's not totally obvious that that's the right answer?
(You might think of having a rule that you can only change your "sports" nationality if you "renounce" your previous citizenship, but it many cases it's not possible to "renounce" citizenship: you can let your passport expire, but whatever condition, such as place of birth, allowed you to apply for that passport in the first place would still exist so you would continue to have the option of receiving a passport for the previous country if you ever wanted to apply for one. Moreover, it would be impossible for you to prove you hadn't done that because countries do not, as a rule, issue documents to certify that a given person does not have a valid passport!)
They're not. They're preventing the yacht from being moved or sold or serviced. It remains his property, and he's free to spend time on it.
Surely this is not going to look good at the end of this war, and it’ll just be more propaganda for the Russian gov’t to use - “look, the west doesn’t care about you”.
Is this just “cancel culture” exposed in a different area?
The article is an opinion piece that's inaccurately framed in that it's not the specific canceling of an individual (and cats), but solidarity with sanctions placed on Russia.
Imagine if the victims of our wars (or their partners) were more influential and were able to effectively spread global messages of arbitrary hate and intolerance against people simply for being American. And not mob mentality from extremists and radicals already predispositioned to hate, but orchestrated top-down hatred and intolerance from the "liberal" world order.
This is not going to spark some amazing revolution of frustrated chess players, disabled athletes, and cat show enthusiasts. The only thing this sort of stuff is doing is driving more hatred and division, and helping us inch that much closer to WW3. Putin invading Ukraine was a terrible decision; many Russians of all walks of lives oppose it. Yet they're at least as helpless to ever change any of it than we are to end our never-ending wars in the Mideast since we, at least in theory, could stop voting for warmongers.
Adam Smith wrote - "In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconvenience from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war."
In other words, war is kind of fun and exciting for a populace that doesn't feel harm from it. I remember watching stories of the invasion of Iraq, and it seemed a lot like that to me. The media and the country generally enjoying the exploits of our armies.
Well, we can balance that enjoyment by a dissatisfaction of denying other pleasures to the population. No more chess, international sports, travel, etc. The complaint here should not be that this is being done to Russia, it should be. You're justified to complain that America was not made a pariah, but that's a different kind of complaint.
So after 9/11, should we have sanctioned all Muslims? When a black man commits a crime, should we round up and sanction all blacks? We are all entirely responsible for what we do as individuals and not responsible at all for what other people do.
It's very sad and unfair that individual Russians will suffer for their leaders misdeeds. But, I think the average Russian should prefer sanctions to alternative means of solving Russian aggression.
When you look at history the one thing you will find is that things rarely work out how you want them to, and more often than not the resultant end is often nothing like you desired. We successfully worked to overthrow the democratic, secular, and relatively benign and democratic government of Iran in 1953 and replaced them with an exceptionally unpopular puppet monarchy. Then in 1979 the Iranians had a genuine revolution of their own against our puppet monarch and installed their own government. This is where the current radical Islamic government came from that, for some reason, really doesn't like the West. Today we'd give anything to have the Iran of 1953, but that's a bridge long since turned to ash.
And the other tales are endless as well. The point of this is that Machiavellianism relies on a claim that the ends justify the means. But even if one believes that, you can't really make that argument in good faith when you cannot realistically claim to have any idea of what the ends will be. All that one can be certain of is that we will live through the means. So we are turning into tyrants for what may very well be an even worse future for Russia and us alike.
I would say no. That's simply an example of doing something unpleasant in pursuit of a larger goal. Typically, when people use the term Machiavellianism they are referring to doing immoral and objectionable things in pursuit of personal goals. That's not really the case here at all.
Free people have no moral obligation to transact with one another. There is no moral obligation to permit people to your chess tournament and no moral violation in denying them. When we decide that the crimes of the Russian government, acting, at least nominally, on behalf of the Russian people reach a critical point we can decide to discontinue business and relationships with the Russian people.
Perhaps you think, as others in this thread have suggested, that this is something like a civil rights action. Indeed, in the US we have laws prohibiting businesses from denying service to people purely on skin color. In my view this is more of an ethical choice than a moral one, but even if you think it's a moral necessity not to deny service to someone based on their immutable characteristics, that is irrelevant. Russians are being denied service not because the world has suddenly become slavophobic, but as a condemnation of their country's crimes. Put another way, it would be wrong for a restaurant to turn away a customer because they are black, but completely understandable for a restaurant to turn away a customer because that customer is OJ Simpson.
I assume you would say that individuals are unlike countries, and I think that's true. Some individual Russians oppose their government's attack on Ukraine. Alas, there is no way to scope sanctions such that they hurt only people with the wrong opinions. There is a simple way to scope sanctions such that they hurt Russians though - i.e. make the sanctions apply to Russia. (And here I use a colloquial sense of the word "sanction" that I mean to extend even to non-governmental groups making decisions to refuse service to or interaction with Russians).
Finally, I agree with what I think you mean - which is that it's very possible for things to work out in ways other than what are expected. I expect that the majority of "things" work out roughly as expected throughout history but it is unremarkable when they do. If most of our choices were going awry civilization would probably unstable.
That said, I agree with the spirit - it's hard to predict the consequences of our actions. But, so what? It's hard to predict the consequences of sanctions and hard to predict the consequences of no sanctions. My own reasoning is: a war is too much, nothing is too little, and sanctions seem about right. Sanctions must hurt or they are meaningless. I would not want to see a headline like "Russian school hit by stray bomb, hundreds dead." A headline like "Russian chess player kicked out of tournament" seems about right for unintended consequences.
We seem to have no concept right now that there is a level of suffering and alienation we can impose on the average Russian that will cause a large chunk to become highly radicalized going forward. Who are those people going to want as a leader then? It seems like so many right now are living in a fantasy world that the Russian people will have some kind of French Revolution because of sanctions, get rid of Putin and by magic some Western friendly Russian government will emerge.
It is like that same thinking that went into hitting Germans with crippling reparations for WW1. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't the best idea..
If you want to be taken seriously as a nuanced thinker, rather than a sketchy what-abouter trying to yank people around, I wouldn't use that word.
Prediction: https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1498441260499017733
Outcome 1: https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1499041366696992772
Outcome 2: https://twitter.com/PaulSonne/status/1499421918629404681
Don't help propagandists.
Or at least, it doesn't "advance the game of chess", which is what organizers should care more about.
There is probably some creative middle ground to be found here, such as awarding them without recognizing Russia, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_202...
and of course the same thing happened in the Olympics a few weeks ago!
I feel the same way about Ukranian citizens who are being forced to flee their homes.
By your logic, Ukrainian individuals aren't being harmed because Russia is invading a country, not the individuals.
Israel isn't "bombing Palestinies for decades". They're fighting back when Palestinians attack them (why did you gloss over Palestinians bombing Israel?), then there's quiet for a while, and then more fighting.
The Israeli/Palestinian relationship is very complicated with enormous history, and claims by both sides. Just because you can't distinguish it from Russia/Ukraine doesn't mean others can't.
The 1990s called, they want their hasbara back.
[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apart...
Regarding bombings & war crimes, they have indeed been done by both sides. The crimes of Palestinian terrorists are obvious, but there is widespread denial & attempted justification of the IDF's crimes, hence the topic generates a lot of writing & debate. Examples of IDF crimes are the bombing of houses with many children in assassination missions (these are obviously not preceded by warning phone-calls) [0], and the shooting of Palestinian protestors at the Gaza fence who do not pose a risk to the lives of IDF soldiers.[1] The data ([2]) also speaks for itself.
[0]: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-israel-wiping-entir...
[1]: https://theintercept.com/2018/04/10/gaza-protests-palestine-...
[2]: https://statistics.btselem.org/en/all-fatalities/by-date-of-...
To always be associated with one's nationality (which we generally do not get to choose) seems exhausting and rude.
Russian ban: good
Whenever the common narrative finds a way to blame something or someone, the collective dehumanizes the target in a way that's quite terrifying, actually. People love to parrot about how "dictators are bad", "hitler was bad", etc, but when they find themselves in trivial situations where they have to show what they're made of not much more comes out of it.
Without saying much about it, let me remind you that there is a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, it's pretty clear that no one should be discriminated because of their origin or nationality. Every single "developed" country shares a set of laws that guarantee similar rights to their citizens (and visitors!).
Whether you think that people who are in these situations are having their rights dishonored or not it's up to you, I just want to remind people that some blades cut both ways so one has to be careful about which one is being honed today.
Disclaimer: I'm not Russian, never been to Russia, no friends in Russia either. I am a human being and have empathy for all other fellow human beings.
One can either 1) sanction Russia (which impacts all Russians) 2) partially sanction (which is unavoidably subjective and abusable) or 3) not sanction Russia. This is a case of 1, based on the source link, "Norway announce that no Russian players will be able to play in the 2022 edition of the event"
It is not fair to talk about "civic and ethical values" outside of this extremely relevant moral context.
If I'm not Russian but my parents are, should I be sanctioned as well? Again, where do you draw the line?
If you happened to be at Russia, would you be okay if everyone denied their services to you?
If your country got involved into a conflict, and you don't even live there anymore, and people started treating you like a pariah, would you feel be fine with that?
Some guys thought about all these things, and wrote:
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the POLITICAL, JURISDICTIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE COUNTRY OR TERRITORY TO WHICH A PERSON BELONGS, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty."
I don't think that's open to interpretation but YMMV. Check it out by yourself at, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
I think it's made by some guys at the UN or something, they seem to know a thing or two about human rights.
Which article in the UN link that you sent would categorize participation in a chess tournament as a human right?
Where is your concern about Ukrainian human rights? If you are so passionate about Grischuk's human rights to participate in this competition, then you must be incensed the magnitude of the violation of individual rights being violated in Ukraine. Do you condemn the Russian invasion?
This isn't someone who was caught up in broader sanctions, like the innocent Russians whose life savings are being demolished. That's terrible, but in the broader context it is understandable and necessary. This is someone being specifically targeted for his nationality despite the fact - and this is the key differentiator - that doing so in no way does any damage to Russia.
You want to harm Russia? Treat anti-war Russians well. Show that the world isn't blindly taking action out of anger, but rather doing so in a targeted way to harm Putin and the Russian government. Russians who are speaking out against the war are good for Ukraine and the rest of the world, and they're bad for Putin. It makes no sense to punish them.
There's certainly a gray area for Russians who don't comment - they could be pro-war, or they could be reasonably afraid for their safety - but for Russians who say "In my view what we are doing is very wrong from both a moral view and practical view," punishment is counterproductive.
Also, it's not reasonable to compare the culpability of an American, who lives in a democracy and can choose to spend their time and effort protesting the country's leadership and trying to oust it in the next election, to someone living in a dictatorship who cannot reasonably do those things.
Japanese American imprisonment without due process or access to legal counsel during WW2 was condemnable. You advocate the opposite. I mean, nothing was written against then, was it?
Advocating for an individual's human rights and disassociation from their government's actions doesn't mean unequivocal support for the latter.
In fact it is a special and famous case of sophistry to leverage a tenuous connection between two things and declare they are comparable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence. To quote, "This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result"
You are correct - in both cases, Japanese Internment camps during WW2 and Norway Chess's banning of Russian competitors in a chess tournament are examples of cases where innocent individuals were harmed by collective punishment. I completely agree with you on that.
However, only a very silly person would think both actions are comparable. It would be extremely offensive to suggest they are. While they exist on a continuum, they are very, very far apart and any reasonable person can see that 1) the forced imprisonment of 100,000+ people for multiple years while being charged with no crime and 2) the temporary exclusion of several dozen entrants from an international chess tournament are not in the same moral universe.
The moral calculus of applying pressure to Russia to withdraw from a war of aggression that is killing thousands still isn't easy, and decent people can disagree civilly about it.
It is like Israel bulldozing random Palestine homes because someone else fired a rocket. It is like people beating up random Chinese on the streets of San Francisco because of some decision Xi Jinping made
No, this is racism and intolerance under a thin guise of outrage. We are talking about targeting individuals who bear zero responsibility for what people claim they are outraged about. The sole reason these individuals are targeted is because of their nationality. This is cancel culture at its worse - we don't even care about what people think or say anymore, and hurt them for something they can't change anything about.
What next? Should we make the Russians immigrants in our countries live in fear of reprisals? Should our children bully theirs in schools? How far can we take it before the outrage excuse wears out?
Outrage over the Russian invasion of Ukraine is warranted. I feel the same. It is good to see an international reaction to it, and I sincerely hope that this will pressure Putin to stop. The virtue signalling and posturing we have seen this week on social medias is not justice, however. It's a disgusting act of violence by people who feel they can get away with it. Is that violence comparable to what the Ukrainians live through at the moment? Of course not! But that doesn't make it excusable.
Isn't the simple logic that the people who should bear the cost of war crimes are those who commit these war crimes?
> It's an awful situation for everyone involved and the best situation would be for an immediate cessation of hostilities and military withdrawal so the ban can be lifted.
Not only that, but the immediate cessation of hostilities and military withdrawal would be better for everyone even if there were no ban. Aside from a few deranged hawks in the Russian government I can't see how this conflict is good for anyone, Russian or not.
> this is simply chess and nobody is dying.
And the ban does nothing that would influence Putin's decisions. The economic sanctions might change his attitude (only time will tell). A ban of Russian chess players won't. Sanctions are a tool to force Putin to the negotiation table. Pointless actions like this are only harming people with no influence or responsibility on the conflict.
> On the other hand, thousands of civilians are dead, families are divided, and there is real hardship.
This war is dreadful, and I would like (without much hope) that Putin and those responsible for it respond for their crime. I just don't see how imposing hardships (however less strong they may be) on people unrelated to the conflict has any bearing on this.
I can understand sanctions, they specifically target the country. I can understand sanctions against individuals who are supporting Putin like the oligarchs. I can understand cutting financial, business ties as they specifically target the country.
It starts to get difficult based on the criteria of nationality, there are a variety of reasons to ban people from Israel, Iran, Saudi, United States, and a bucket full of others. Many countries are involved in human rights abuses, military occupation, questionable politics etc. Should all their citizens suffer because of what their country's are involved in.
I applaud your stance, I don't discount it as being objective. But Alexander Grischuk, he is not Russia and we should think about the motives and reasons why such bans should be in place and just because their "homeland" is doing something doesn't mean they are. Imagine carte blanche banning people like Yeonmi Park from events because she is from North Korea.
Here's a bit of irony, Russian athletes are banned from competing in the Winter Paralympics which is based in a country know for it questionable human rights abuses and political stances including that against Taiwan and Hong Kong. It is a very difficult situation with Ukraine and I feel this fits into a situation where there are no correct answers.
There are reasons to ban then, but is it the right thing to do.
Clearly, Tyler Cowen has his reasons for framing this issue in an inflammatory way. I suspect he didn't seek out any 44 open letter signatories for their feelings.
I simply see no way of keeping out Karjakin in an equitable way. I am tired of repeating myself about how I hate this situation, but the victims are not Russian grandmasters, they are Ukrainian children. Some people are trying very hard to move the focus off of this (I don't believe you are, and I appreciate your conclusion.. I agree there are no right answers).
Nobody in this thread has denied that Ukrainian children are victims, and nobody has disagreed that there should be a reaction.
What people are questioning is who should be targeted by this reaction, and with what actions. Your stance, as I read it, is everyone who is Russian, because there is no other way. Even with that, people didn't argue against, at least when it comes to economic sanctions. But bans that do not affect the war criminals, but only common people (aka, civilians)? That does feel petty and unnecessary. And to be clear, unlike others in the thread I don't suggest selecting people based on their opinion -- it feels too antithetic to our democratic ideals (so that it is clear, I personally despise these opinions).
Forgive me for changing the focus a bit, but since you bring up the plight of children, it is likely that Russian children will also suffer from the consequences of economic sanctions. Some will grow up in poverty because of this mess, some will die indirectly, from the effects of poverty. I don't really have a solution to that (right now the efforts should go to stop the war in Ukraine), and that doesn't mean that sanctions can be avoided, but I do think that they are also victims.
Sorry but this is not accurate. This would be more accurate: a man is in the process of murdering hostages, so we hurt his children to make him stop.
The sanctions are not "justice", they are pressure tools to make Russia stop the invasion. There cannot be any justice until the crime (the war) is stopped.
> everyone comes out worse than before. But who is at fault and what is the equitable outcome?
There is no equitable outcome, and it is not a betrayal of the victim to feel empathy for the murderer's children.
When he plays professional chess, Grischuk _is_ representing Russia, he's not just an individual. A win for him is a win for Russia, and the chess commentators constantly say things like "I'm excited for the Hungary vs Russia final" and "looks like Russia will come out on top in this game".
It is intrinsically biased to vet individuals based on their personal political beliefs, that seems like it would be worse. So the alternatives are to allow Russian nationals / national teams or to not allow them. These are extraordinary circumstances so I reluctantly support exclusions, and am deeply saddened by them.
It would be so beneficial to everyone if this horrible invasion ceased and the Russian army withdrew from Ukraine. They should stop killing innocent people for the goal of territorial expansion, and then the world can renormalize as quickly as possible.
It was under the usual meaning of that phrase, which doesn't merely refer to anything that bugs the invader, but something rising to the level of a legal casus belli such that the invasion is not the crime of aggression. (It also occurred in 2014; the current crisis is an escalation of the invasion, not the initiation of the crime against peace.)
The next time an Islamic terrorist attacks the US, let's use this as precedent for denying random Muslims access to civic culture across the globe. Lovely world we're building.
If anyone knows a good alternative (other than LanguageTool), let me know