There's plenty of actions they COULD take. E.g. defend Ukraine's airspace using NATO planes.
The problem with economic sanctions is that their record of success is rather disappointing. Economic sanctions just damage everyone, and there doesn't seem to be many instances of them convincing states to change course, never mind dictators.
Well, the issue with that view is that economic sanctions do kill people. If you create economic problems, it does causes people to die, and in far larger numbers. Economic sanctions destroy jobs - on purpose. With that, they destroy families, prevent people helping each other, prevent people from heating their homes/apartments, deny medical treatments, less food, more homelessness, ... They give us less of everything, and to make countries notice, they have to be gigantic.
The cost of oil sanctions against Russia is expected to be about $10 per barrel, which damages the Russian economy by about $7 billion per year, which really matters, yes. But Putin's not budging. To do that the G7 economies, who use a little less than 100 million barrels per day pay close to $1 billion per day, or about $320 billion per year. Most of which disappears into the pockets of Middle Eastern oil monarchies, all of whom are smaller, but not much better, than Russia.
Saudi Arabia are certainly not the worst enemy the US has, but only a fool could believe they are a friend to Europe or the US. Same goes for Qatar, except they are A LOT worse than Saudi Arabia.
And we damage ourselves, to entice Russia to peace. And, to put it mildly, it's not working. Hell, we've applied worse sanctions than we have against Russia to Iran for 50 years now. Can you point to any positive effect these sanctions have had? Whereas the Nuclear weapons the US has obviously have prevented Russia from using their nuclear weapons against Ukraine ...
The net effect of these sanctions is that they weaken Ukraine and the countries defending Ukraine a LOT more than they weaken Russia. And while they are definitely a negative to Russia, it a much bigger negative to the G7. It weakens Ukraine and it's allies much more than Russia could hope to achieve in a military campaign, and it breeds resentment in the west by disproportionately impacting the poor. There's a lot of poor.
320 billion per year pays for a lot of planes ... If we gave 50% of that to Ukraine, whether by sacrificing planes or other military support, while just continuing to buy Russian oil we would do a LOT more damage to Russia than we do with sanctions.
If putin has a bad bowel movement he might justify nukes. Paper & laws from russia are not worth the bits of bandwidth they are reported on. izs a dictatorship .
Biden has delivered a master class in how to stand up to a bully. Put a toe just barely over the line in the sand. If the bully reacts then it's an obvious overreaction and you can respond in kind without seeming a bully or irrational yourself. If the bully doesn't react do it again. And again. And again. And again.
Unfortunately that strategy is not going to continue.
19 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 57.5 ms ] threadThe problem with economic sanctions is that their record of success is rather disappointing. Economic sanctions just damage everyone, and there doesn't seem to be many instances of them convincing states to change course, never mind dictators.
Which they should start real soon.
The cost of oil sanctions against Russia is expected to be about $10 per barrel, which damages the Russian economy by about $7 billion per year, which really matters, yes. But Putin's not budging. To do that the G7 economies, who use a little less than 100 million barrels per day pay close to $1 billion per day, or about $320 billion per year. Most of which disappears into the pockets of Middle Eastern oil monarchies, all of whom are smaller, but not much better, than Russia.
Saudi Arabia are certainly not the worst enemy the US has, but only a fool could believe they are a friend to Europe or the US. Same goes for Qatar, except they are A LOT worse than Saudi Arabia.
And we damage ourselves, to entice Russia to peace. And, to put it mildly, it's not working. Hell, we've applied worse sanctions than we have against Russia to Iran for 50 years now. Can you point to any positive effect these sanctions have had? Whereas the Nuclear weapons the US has obviously have prevented Russia from using their nuclear weapons against Ukraine ...
The net effect of these sanctions is that they weaken Ukraine and the countries defending Ukraine a LOT more than they weaken Russia. And while they are definitely a negative to Russia, it a much bigger negative to the G7. It weakens Ukraine and it's allies much more than Russia could hope to achieve in a military campaign, and it breeds resentment in the west by disproportionately impacting the poor. There's a lot of poor.
320 billion per year pays for a lot of planes ... If we gave 50% of that to Ukraine, whether by sacrificing planes or other military support, while just continuing to buy Russian oil we would do a LOT more damage to Russia than we do with sanctions.
>> you
> me personally?
Unfortunately that strategy is not going to continue.