How many people complaining about the weaksauce sanctions proposed against Russia would be prepared to deal with the effects of more stringent measures?
I'm thinking especially of people in Europe castigating politicians for not wanting to clamp down hard on the Russian energy sector. The way I see it, the europols are in a no-win situation. If they go easy on Russia and keep the gas and oil flowing, they look like weak and waffling appeasers, which yes, they are. If they cut off the Russian gas supply, will the people posting Ukrainian flags on Twitter remember or care about the noble root causes when faced with unprecedented energy prices?
I.e. the politicians know their people better than they know themselves, and they're well aware that showing support on social media is one thing, but being asked to make drastic sacrifices is quite another. These politicians will not survive if they do what their voters are clamoring for them to do.
Of course, they probably wouldn't be in this position if they hadn't taken energy strategy advice from Greta Thunberg, but that's neither here nor there.
>Of course, they probably wouldn't be in this position if they hadn't taken energy strategy advice from Greta Thunberg, but that's neither here nor there.
How does this make sense? If anything getting rid of the dependence on fossil fuels would have helped immensely now.
My superficial understanding is that Germany divested on Nuclear and other tech and focused on Solar + Wind + Natural Gas. They’re now over -relying on Russian gas to cover energy needs. There are no gas lines from southern to central Europe due to several political interests / disagreements (Spain imports Gas from Northern Africa)
Don’t claim deep knowledge and happy to be educated.
> My superficial understanding is that Germany divested on Nuclear and other tech and focused on Solar + Wind + Natural Gas. They’re now over -relying on Russian gas to cover energy needs.
And if that's the case, they might have capacity they can bring back online:
> BERLIN -- Germany on Friday shut down half of the six nuclear plants it still has in operation, a year before the country draws the final curtain on its decades-long use of atomic power.
That's only two months ago. Hopefully the plants are simply shut down and they haven't started dismantling them.
Sorry, I take comment above as non-literal. Greta is not the direct cause but energy strategy driven by climate policies (where there’s push back against nuclear in some circles) might caused Germany land in a tough spot over-reliant on Russian gas supply.
This is my current understanding and an interesting topic I would love to learn more.
> I'm thinking especially of people in Europe castigating politicians for not wanting to clamp down hard on the Russian energy sector. The way I see it, the europols are in a no-win situation. If they go easy on Russia and keep the gas and oil flowing, they look like weak and waffling appeasers, which yes, they are. If they cut off the Russian gas supply, will the people posting Ukrainian flags on Twitter remember or care about the noble root causes when faced with unprecedented energy prices?
That seems like it's a false choice. Couldn't they cut off the gas supply while simultaneously implementing other policies to keep "unprecedented energy prices" from falling to hard on everyday people? Maybe even rally people around making some collective sacrifices?
A petition or a Tweet poll is very far from direct democracy. I have spoken to a person in Switzerland, where direct democracy exists, and she told me that people vote stupid things, but then as they feel the consequences, they start to vote more responsibly. Of course you don't start it by something as serious as what is happening now.
(Swiss speaking) What is important is that the vote/referendum process must be slow. Very slow.
We often see a trendy referendum being launched because of an event. Years later when we finally have to vote about it, we realize that it was only an historical parenthesis.
Economic sanctions will do nothing for the Ukrainian men and women fighting for their homes on the ground. Western nations need to begin running air missions over Ukraine directly. With control of the air, the local Ukrainian troops can easily triumph on the ground.
Sanctions work and have worked against Russia[0]. Anyone telling you otherwise is wrong.
What's important here is to maintain the moral upper ground. China won't be able to withstand public opinion swaying to the side of the Ukrainians as more and more video evidence surfaces of massacres. If we offer real military support to the Ukrainians, China would use any video of our success as justification to begin helping the Russian side.
Protip: If you want to research the effects of sanctions, go to Google News search and set the time period to exclude articles from after 2020ish. You'll get higher-quality articles.
The Brookings article you linked to directly contradicts your point. It argues (correctly) that sanctions will hurt Russia's people but are extremely unlikely to change Putin's policies, and in fact, will only entrench Putin's control over what remains of the Russian economy.
I suspect you might have stopped reading the article at the first paragraph - which presents a thesis that the rest of the article then proceeds to analyze and disprove.
>It argues (correctly) that sanctions will hurt Russia's people but are extremely unlikely to change Putin's policies
If I'd linked you an article that said the Russian people wouldn't be hurt but that the sanctions were likely to change Putin's policies, then would you feel the opposite? It seems like you're trying to play both sides of the coin here.
We can only control the financial damage of the Russian people with our sanctions in the hopes that their public opinion will sway the opinion of Putin's cabinet and we've accomplished that here. There is no intervention on Earth that would guarantee the changing of Putin's mind short of a gun to his head. I'd go so far as to say you've erected a straw man.
> If I'd linked you an article that said the Russian people wouldn't be hurt but that the sanctions were likely to change Putin's policies, then would you feel the opposite?
Of course.
> It seems like you're trying to play both sides of the coin here.
It seems like your telepathy machine is broken.
> There is no intervention on Earth that would guarantee the changing of Putin's mind short of a gun to his head.
That might be the case. But if you think that is the case, why are you suggesting a different, ineffective but cruel intervention? An uncharitable interpretation of your proposal is that you want to hurt ordinary Russian people because you want to see someone suffer for Putin's actions.
World leaders are scared to give more weapons to Ukraine, let alone actually fight in that space.
Germany is having issues delivering the 5,000 promised helmets, let alone any arms deal to Ukrainians. Lets start with a more reasonable goal, like NATO countries standing together and actually arming the Ukrainians?
------
Ukrainians need more missiles to keep up their defenses. Politically speaking, that's where the discussion lies for now. Its unreasonable to expect the various world powers to give more than that right now... and seems like a political battle to even ask for this much.
If Putin pushes outside of Ukraine the USA/NATO won't have any choice but stop them, especially if it's in NATO or NATO allied country. I think if goes anywhere outside Ukraine that the USA will start sending troops and Putin won't be able to talk his way out of it or threaten his way out. It will be like Poland in WW2.
Watched Jens Stoltenberg press conference that finished minutes ago. During the conference, three times, the Secretary General of NATO, stated Russia rhetoric changed. He mentioned several times, Russia stated they want NATO to withdraw troops from half their NATO members or there could be "technical military consequences".
Both Europe and US leaders are still asleep. There is a different dynamic going on and many are still in denial.
It is a game of who blinks first. Block SWIFT maybe take effect only in long term, maybe helping China and hurts Russian people. But if keep on adding weight to the sanctions, show the solidarity of the world, guess who will blink first?
NATO is adversarial to Russia, so it shouldn't be NATO, but some entity should be brokering a deal here, not seeing much upside in escalating militarily or even banning Swift.
There's ultimately no war to be won against Russia, Putin knows this unfortunately, but that's what it is.
It was just a month ago we lived in a world where IBM was scathed for working with Nazi Germany. Now something tells me people will come up with excuses too…
I'm thinking especially of people in Europe castigating politicians for not wanting to clamp down hard on the Russian energy sector. The way I see it, the europols are in a no-win situation. If they go easy on Russia and keep the gas and oil flowing, they look like weak and waffling appeasers, which yes, they are. If they cut off the Russian gas supply, will the people posting Ukrainian flags on Twitter remember or care about the noble root causes when faced with unprecedented energy prices?
I.e. the politicians know their people better than they know themselves, and they're well aware that showing support on social media is one thing, but being asked to make drastic sacrifices is quite another. These politicians will not survive if they do what their voters are clamoring for them to do.
Of course, they probably wouldn't be in this position if they hadn't taken energy strategy advice from Greta Thunberg, but that's neither here nor there.