I agree that Russia is violating International law, and possibly committing war crimes at this very moment. But why don’t we apply the same standard to US or China when they do it?
I am not talking about boycotting or private businesses refusing to serve people from a country. I mean sanctions proportional to the damage!
No one would ever put sanctions on the USA no matter what we did. We could invade a country and occupy it for years, or totally destroy its government. We could drop nukes on it. Oh wait we did all these things.
Just as one example that was condemned by the UN: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pa...
The USA would never allow anyone to do to us what we routinely do to them. Imagine if USA were to, I dunno, attempt to invade a neighboring country, carve out a piece for ourselves, and then that country would ask Russia for help and Russia would put nuclear missiles on it…
Oh wait. Cuba. Bay of pigs invasion. Guantanamo. Cuban missile crisis…
Shoe on other foot for USA means unacceptable.
Imagine if Russia started arming “moderate rebels” against the president of Mexico, and they wound up joining the Zetas and Sinaloa cartel, and taking control of entire cities in Mexico. Russia would say we are propping up a brutal dictator who is cracking down on drug gangs brutally. Imagine Russian weapons would be used by drug gangs to kill Mexicans.
What would USA do? We all know.
Imagine if Russia started an alliance to “contain US expansion” into Central and South America and sign up countries that have historical grievances with US doing stuff like, I dunno, trainingg rebels and overthrowing their governments. Maybe start with Nicaragua and Panama, then gradually get closer.
Would the USA allow this? Shoe on other foot.
George W Bush was a worse actor than Putin by far. And got zero sanctions. He still gets to joke around and give speeches after large swarhs of the entire middle east were destroyed. Remember that guy campaigned on NO NATION BUILDING! Unbelievable
The world is fixated on Putin invading Ukraine and possibly doing regime change there. They are united in imposing extremely harsh sanctions that will affect the people of Russia. While USA Presidents have done far worse things just in the last 20 years, and the world doesnt really have a say… means we are above international law baby !!!
So, all this about “we would accept sanctions” please. We have privilege. The biggest baddest kind of privilege. White privilege is nothing compared to AMERICAN privilege baby.
I will leave China as an exercise to the reader. I will say this though… in the US we have freedom of speech, so people like myself and Noam Chomsky can live here AND openly speak the uncomfortable truth about what our country has done. Russians and Chinese can’t.
So in that respect, USA is far better.