Try to keep the chatter contained here, folks.
Comment if you were here when the Russians dropped a bomb on our servers in Kiev. WE'RE BACK IN ACTION BABY!
Make sure to report comments that're overboard or sus.
Try to keep the chatter contained here, folks.
Comment if you were here when the Russians dropped a bomb on our servers in Kiev. WE'RE BACK IN ACTION BABY!
Make sure to report comments that're overboard or sus.
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I am so sorry about your friend. There is so much Russian blood on American hands even without overt war
Oh yeah the oligarchs and other business interests that run Russia made goddamned sure they'd be okay from sanctions before they did this. It'll be offloaded onto the people as usual.
Sanctions are war, everyone knows it except US citizens
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sanctions are economic warfare and do almost nothing besides harm the working class of the country they're inflicted on. i'm very disappointed to see anyone defending them on this website
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That's the problem. Sanctions come from the idea of "we have to do something." War is bad for the working class. Sanctions are also bad for the working class. The question is: will sanctions meaningfully prevent war in any way or will it just hurt the citizens of Russia, who were not the ones to invade Ukraine. Sanctions usually don't accomplish that, they are a negotiating tool for the US. "Well if you make this compromise, I'll start letting insulin come into to your country."
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No, because that would ultimately end up harming Palestinian people the most. That's what I'm saying, sanctions always hurt the most economically vulnerable.
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easiest way to think about it is Putin was in power in 2014 and the sanctions placed around then completely plummeted the value of the ruble yet Putin is still in power 8 years later. Putin, nor any of the elite of Russia, do not give a shit about the value of the ruble because that isn't what keeps them in power. The only people actually hurt by the ruble dropping in value was the Russian citizens.
i'm not talking about the actions of the Russian state, i'm saying it is not the U.S.'s business to respond. anything the U.S. would do is not going to improve the situation for either the Ukranian or Russian working class, and would almost certainly make it far worse.
you cannot convince me that sanctions are anything but an attack on the working class of their target nation. the lives of millions of people governed by states distasteful to the State Department have been measurably harmed by sanctions
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Sanctions are economic penalties taken against a country or person, preventing the use of banking systems, trade, access to necessary resources, or other things. Countries will always prioritize resources going to their elite, and deprioritize resources going to the group's they oppress the most, so the only people affected by sanctions will be the most vulnerable classes of people.
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Sanctions as a system will always be at least as ineffective as they have shown to be. Sanctions against the US would likely prove to be even more crushing to the working class and allow the elite to extract even more from them, given how little of a shit the US even pretends to give about its citizens.
Diplomacy is the only way. You have to talk to people to convince them to do things.
I'm not American and by no means an expert, but the US was sanctioned by a number of oil nations in the 70s, right? And working people suffered, suddenly being unable to afford gasoline, which is a real necessity in America, while the ruling class didn't even feel it, because they could just squeeze more money out of the working class to compensate and there was no way in hell the military would not have their toys.
Yes. The 70s oil crisis was the result of an economic embargo against the US and Israel during the Arab-Israeli War, which later extended to other countries that supported Israel. And just like you said, it resulted in working class people having extreme difficulty getting and affording gasoline, while the ruling class and government were fully insulated from it.
Oil supply was also mostly balanced out in America with increased usage of domestic and Mexican oil. A sanction on something the US cannot produce or acquire from other sources, such as cheap durable goods or semiconductors, would result in even more significant deleterious effects for the American working class.
Yeah, I thought I remembered that right. I guess I should have replied to the person asking about sanctions against the US instead of to the person explaining it to them. If they really are asking in good faith I feel like pointing to exactly what they suggested having been tried is a good argument.
US sanctions are particularly brutal now because of their increasing use of "secondary sanctions" in which any party, American or not, that is found trading with the sanctioned nation/group is put under the same sanctions as that group. All this does is make the workers even more isolated and at the will of a country's leaders, and while the assumption of sanctions is that the people will rebel when material conditions get bad enough and they are dissatisfied NO ONE EVER REBELS ON THEIR OWN WHEN THE US SAYS THEY ARE GOING TO AT ANY POINT IN HISTORY.
Stay out. It's none of our business to begin with, and the US basically forced Russia's hand by refusing to talk about the Minsk accords, refusing to provide guarantees that Ukraine would stay out of NATO, and continuing to support the thugs running Ukraine who have engaged in a cleanse against Russian speakers in the east since Maidan.
The US fucked around, whether out of hubris, misreading, or genuine stupidity, and now they're finding out.
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Was there ever a time when wars ended and nations, previously at war, normalized relations? Seems like that was a thing.