Countries are not people (they are made of people). Punishing them makes little sense. If one wants a country to behave some way, one should think of how to mak

Countries are not people (they are made of people). Punishing them makes little sense. If one wants a country to behave some way, one should think of how to make it happen, and what's the cost to everyone involved. Sanctions should never be part of a punitive system, which at the level of a whole country is inevitably unjust. They should only be part of an incentive system, where you hope to steer the other country to the direction you want. Looked at it this way, we wouldn't ask ourselves whether sanctions are warranted. We'd ask ourselves how effective they are. Oh, and there's this question of whether a country should have the right to influence another country to begin with. Not gonna answer that one here.