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Sanctions lead to widespread suffering & even death among the civilian population. Why do you want the Chinese people to suffer or die? Sanctions are scarcely l
by ahelwer 6y ago
Sanctions lead to widespread suffering & even death among the civilian population. Why do you want the Chinese people to suffer or die? Sanctions are scarcely less psychotic than bombing a school or hospital. The violence is just hidden in life expectancy reduction & many other metrics instead of "N civilians' bodies ripped apart by bombs".
Oh, and targeted sanctions - aren't. Entities will view any sanctions as a legal risk and find it easier to just stop trading with the country at all. See Iran with medical supplies during the pandemic.
This idea that sanctions are a peaceful or nonviolent alternative to bombing things needs to die. In the 90s the sanctions against Iraq led to the deaths of half a million civilians and caused multiple successive UN humanitarian coordinators in Iraq to resign, calling the sanctions regime "genocidal". How anyone can continue to view sanctions as a favorable option is beyond me.
- hntrader 6y agoWhat alternatives do you propose, and do you have the same view about the recent sanctions on the Saudis?
- ahelwer 6y agoWhy must there be alternatives? Why do anything at all? This bias toward a manufactured vague "do something!!!" feeling has just led to the deaths of countless civilians around the world.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoThe status quo also leads to suffering and death in the civilian population and it's hard to predict which future would be worse
- ahelwer 6y agoActually it's quite easy to predict! We can simply look at the track record of Western intervention since WW2, see that it comes down so squarely on the side of "please USA just leave the world alone, my god" that it achieves the platonic definition of a square, then call it a day.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoWhy exclude WW2?
- ahelwer 6y agoI'm assuming you're saying this because you want to compare China to Nazi Germany, which is strange when the USSR is a much more apt comparison that existed in the postwar period.
- emteycz 6y agoWhy do you think so? China is acting very much like Nazis in many cases. That they both call themselves communists doesn't mean much, actions matter.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoI'm just curious about people's reasoning whenever they cherrypick arbitrary start/end dates
- ahelwer 6y agoWW2 marked the birth of America as global superpower, as it was the only developed nation to have its infrastructure basically untouched by the war.
- alacombe 6y ago> Sanctions lead to widespread suffering & even death among the civilian population So does doing nothing.
- vharuck 6y ago>Oh, and targeted sanctions - aren't. Entities will view any sanctions as a legal risk and find it easier to just stop trading with the country at all. See Iran with medical supplies during the pandemic. The sanctions on Iran aren't targeted. They're blanket sanctions with specific exceptions. The problem there is asking international companies to do a bunch of stuff otherwise forbidden by the sanctions (financial, logistical, etc) which I assume is either a pain to get approved ahead of time or frightening to justify after the fact. A better example of targeted sanctions is what's happening in response to the poisoning of Navalny. Specific Russians were sanctioned. That doesn't hurt uninvolved citizens nearly as much.