Even more major than the current major sanctions…
Yes, keep isolating Russia from the Western economy. This will surely work!
Oh yeah just let Russia trade with impunity, now that will really help!
Well, yeah. When they were integrated into the global economy that had an incentive to follow international law. Now that they’re completely separated they have no reason to bother anymore because they’re building a parallel economy. Sanctions have only made things worse because now Russia can act with impunity and there’s nothing anyone can do.
They never followed international law, and they always acted with impunity.
They were poisoning people all over Europe and treating their own citizens like shit this whole time. Pretending free access to western markets changed their behaviour is ridiculous.
They’ve clearly gotten worse since they were completely cut out.
Anyway, sanctions are a spent weapon. That only works when they can’t find buyers and sellers outside the “rules based international order”. That ship has sailed. Sanctions are a dead strategy.
You’ve got it the wrong way around, they’ve gotten cut off because they got worse.
Yeah, nah. If they weren’t effective, you wouldn’t have Russia complaining about them.
As for “rules based order”, that phrase is telling. It’s a chud remark, and loops back around to Russia complaining about them.
That phrase is the one the US uses constantly, I’m using it to refer to the ecosystem of the US and its allies. They’re the only people that are enforcing the sanctions.
And effect how? If the goal is to defeat Russia with sanctions that really doesn’t look likely. Obviously they’d prefer them to go away but only in the sense that they’d prefer to make more money. It’s not stopping them and it can’t.
So either they were going light on sanctions despite Russia invading and attacking a sovereign nation or they’re lying about adding sanctions just for diplomatic clout.
That’s not exactly how sanctions work. You have legal limits on sanctions based on trade agreements. Certain actions by the other nation allow you to enact or lift sanctions and still keep the trade agreements and diplomatic ties in place.
Why should anyone care about legal obligations to Russia? A country that invades its neighbors is not operating within the realm of law and should not benefit from legal protections.
Because geopolitics is a hard problem that ends up being unfair by nature.
“It’s complicated” is a non-answer. How, specifically, do Western countries benefit from honoring agreements with a country that is currently threatening them with nuclear weapons?
If I owe money to a someone who murders my neighbor and then threatens to murder me and all my other neighbors, I’m never going to pay him no matter what I agreed to in the past. That goes double if the murderer is also a broke alcoholic who spends all his money on weapons.
