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Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

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Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#21

Post by InCityDreams »

glogla wrote: post #5
turtledove wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are punishing people for rolling poorly on the parental lottery. Some kid starving to death because of sanctions doesn't understand what's happening. Their parents will be too poor and hungry to meaningfully fight back against their leaders. It's only going to hurt the vulnerable people in a country - militaries and oligarchs will not be impacted unless you target them specifically and narrowly . Imagine if China…

[flagged]

Your last paragraph lost me. Every country has rapers, murderers and (when given the opportunity - eg even recently, and very probably, still, in the Ukraine) looters. Especially in the military. Calling 'worrying about...civilians', 'disgusting', based on the actions of a few soldiers is a little disingenuous and very straw man.

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#22

Post by deepsun »

turtledove wrote: post #3
praptak wrote: post #2

So what's wrong with sanctions as an instrument of attrition?

You are punishing people for rolling poorly on the parental lottery. Some kid starving to death because of sanctions doesn't understand what's happening. Their parents will be too poor and hungry to meaningfully fight back against their leaders. It's only going to hurt the vulnerable people in a country - militaries and oligarchs will not be impacted unless you target them specifically and narrowly . Imagine if China…

Nope, they are good policy. Speaking as one affected.

Those who can move -- move out of the country (usually the most economically active people), weakening the regime ability to make weapons.

Those who starve have nothing to lose, so they start fighting the regime. Revolutions never happen in well fed society.

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#23

Post by deepsun »

landemva wrote: post #19
glogla wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If sanctions don't work, is there hypothetically a number of years after which USA should drop the sanctions? How many more years of sanctions on the people of Cuba?

Why dropping the sanctions if the regime is still torturous?

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#24

Post by deepsun »

InCityDreams wrote: post #21
glogla wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your last paragraph lost me. Every country has rapers, murderers and (when given the opportunity - eg even recently, and very probably, still, in the Ukraine) looters. Especially in the military. Calling 'worrying about...civilians', 'disgusting', based on the actions of a few soldiers is a little disingenuous and very straw man.

You're messing single cases with 1. Mass and 2. Higher command-approved and 3. Denying afterwards crimes.

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#25

Post by glogla »

landemva wrote: post #19
glogla wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If sanctions don't work, is there hypothetically a number of years after which USA should drop the sanctions? How many more years of sanctions on the people of Cuba?

What does it mean for sanctions not to work?

You can see sanctions work - both in specific effects (e.g. a factory producing missiles has to stop since it can't get chips) and in some macroeconomic effects - though those are harder to disentangle from the general chaos of everything.

It is much harder to see sanctions not work, how would you even discern that?

As for Cuba, I have no idea what USA is doing there.

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#26

Post by yorwba »

glogla wrote: post #6
yorwba wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point of the article is that sanctions as an instrument of attrition have the same problems as strategic bombing as an instrument of attrition: it works, but causes a lot of collateral damage that doesn't contribute much to attrition, so if you hope to achieve quick results by turning the enemy's civilians against their military, you'll be disappointed.

I wonder how much can we even talk about collateral damage when almost all the enemy civilians support an aggressive war. I get that they're non-combatants, but they're not innocents. Especially when the "collateral damage" is in this case is "I can no longer buy iphone".

Imagine dropping a bomb on a shipping container of iPhones. What's the point? What objective does it serve? How does it contribute to the war effort?

Considering the cost of the bomb, I think the expected value is rather likely to be negative.

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#27

Post by ikrenji »

fuoqi wrote: post #15
bee_rider wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we'd defend them, and, if so, the US naturally wouldn't be trading with what would be our enemy. Maybe we'd do sanctions, cross our fingers, and hope that heavily entrenched Taiwan would be able to defend itself. Who knows? It is the mystery of strategic ambiguity. They've been, while maybe not getting along, getting by for the last couple decades. So, hopefully we'll never find out what exactly the plan is. Lu…

Neither Taiwan, nor Ukraine are about economic value. It's about "historic justice" and protecting vital long-term national interests as seen by rulers of China and Russia respectively (e.g. in the Chinese case the latter is about breaking the first island chain). The economic aspect certainly plays a major limiting role, but it has limits as we can see today with Russia.

one could say it was in the vital long-term national interest of russia NOT to invade ukraine. taiwan / ukraine is just megalomania of a few men

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#29

Post by fuoqi »

ikrenji wrote: post #27
fuoqi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Taiwan, nor Ukraine are about economic value. It's about "historic justice" and protecting vital long-term national interests as seen by rulers of China and Russia respectively (e.g. in the Chinese case the latter is about breaking the first island chain). The economic aspect certainly plays a major limiting role, but it has limits as we can see today with Russia.

one could say it was in the vital long-term national interest of russia NOT to invade ukraine. taiwan / ukraine is just megalomania of a few men

Brzezinski would disagree with you.

Not even touching the political aspect (Ukrainian nationalism being clearly anti-Russian long before 2014), for the Russian military having well established NATO military bases in Ukraine and Georgia is many times worse than for US to have Russian bases in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America (and you should remember how US reacted to the possibility of those). And no, the Russian military can not responsibly believe in "defensiveness" of NATO for a number of good reasons.

The invasion itself is clearly a bad and desperate move, but it comes after all the previous moves (from trying to be friends with NATO during the pre-Munich years and keeping Ukraine on the hook using the Minsk agreements) were exhausted and it has piled on top of the utter failure of Russian policy on the Ukrainian front since 91 (targeting oligarchs instead of population).

Re: Sanctions and Strategic Bombing

#30

Post by robrorcroptrer »

alar44 wrote: post #17
eastbound wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I get old, the more I notice that people’s opinions are not really their own, but are function of the nation’s medias. Can we blame people for their opinion?

Yes, ffs.

Free will and the self does not exist.

Edit: with this I only meant to say that it is unfair to judge or blame - policies still need to be enforced which is in line with the established consensus of moral philosophy.

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