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As a country, your option to respond to another country doing something you don't like is either A) Sanctions or B) Military Action. B used to be a ton more com

As a country, your option to respond to another country doing something you don't like is either A) Sanctions or B) Military Action. B used to be a ton more common so it feels like we are improving, not getting worse.

buran77 2y ago
> doing something you don't like I think people mostly aren't surprised that a country is taking action against an enemy, that's expected in general. What might raise an eyebrow here and there is when they're doing it via the exact same means they classified as anti-democratic, anti-free market, anti-freedom, etc. when their enemies were doing it. It's the hypocrisy of the explanation and the realization once you try to look beyond the veneer of righteousness that those giving the explanation think their own people must be at peak ignorance.
- stackskipton 2y ago
  Sure, we make a ton of freedom noises. However, we also run into paradox of tolerance problem where entities exploit those freedom noises against us. So yea, we have to break those rules against entities who would use them against us.
  - buran77 2y ago
    > Sure, we make a ton of freedom noises. As I said, the hypocrisy of the speech and perhaps the expectation that people will always swallow it (which sets a low bar for the opinion about those people) are what stands out, not that a country takes actions against an enemy. Atomic bombs were dropped in the name of peace, a minor phone app being banned can hardly be called "aggression".
    - redserk 2y ago
      Can you name a single country that succeeded by following pedantic absolutism? I’ll wait.
  - ozgrakkurt 2y ago
    Freedom or any ethical, moral thing is meaningless to any state or corporation. It is a tool to be used to get what they want. US or EU isn’t strong and rich now because they gave everyone freedom or treated everyone ethically, it is the opposite
bagels 2y ago
What of diplomacy and negotiations? Surely those two are what happens when those processes fail, but those processes don't always fail.
barryrandall 2y ago
Groundhogs are better at predicting weather than sanctions are at achieving their stated goals.
adrian_b 2y ago
Besides the hypocrisy noticed by other posters, there is a problem with the so-called sanctions of USA against China: they are not sanctions. True sanctions are associated with some political conditions. For instance one can apply some sanctions against Russia until it stops its war against Ukraine. In the case of the so-called sanctions against China no valid reason is provided for them and there is no "until". Real sanctions against China would be tied to some explicit requests, for example one could request from China to recognize Taiwan as an independent country, or to provide guarantees that they will not attempt to extend their territorial waters, or to guarantee certain rights for minorities, or whatever other changes in their current behaviors that are criticized by USA would be deemed as appropriate. Instead of this, USA has not requested anything from China, and the official motivations for the sanctions are ridiculous. Many Chinese companies have been blacklisted because they provide products or services for the Chinese military forces. This is a normal behavior for any company in any country. Plenty of the most important US companies provide products or services for the US military. If all these US companies would be blacklisted by other countries, it is likely that the participation of USA in the international commerce would disappear almost completely. While some of the less important US sanctions have at least this claimed purpose of weakening the Chinese military, even if no explicit rationale is given for why this is a legitimate goal, the most important US sanctions do not have any other goal than to eliminate the competitors of some US companies. For instance the war against Huawei has begun exactly in the moment when Huawei was on the verge of surpassing Qualcomm in the production of chipsets for smartphones and they were clearly demonstrating a superior capacity of innovation over Qualcomm. The second great wave of sanctions against SMIC and other important semiconductor device manufacturers has begun exactly when the Chinese were close to take a significant market share for flash memories from Micron. In both cases the US sanctions have succeeded to remove from the market for consumer products the Chinese competitors of the US companies, preventing thus a drop in the prices of smartphones and SSDs, which would have been beneficial for everybody in the world except for the shareholders of a few US and Korean companies, but their effect against the Chinese military is likely to have been close to null.
d0mine 2y ago
"A" is just a foreplay for "B", to soften the target.
pjmlp 2y ago
Unfortunately B) seems just around the corner.

buran77 2y ago

> doing something you don't like I think people mostly aren't surprised that a country is taking action against an enemy, that's expected in general. What might raise an eyebrow here and there is when they're doing it via the exact same means they classified as anti-democratic, anti-free market, anti-freedom, etc. when their enemies were doing it. It's the hypocrisy of the explanation and the realization once you try to look beyond the veneer of righteousness that those giving the explanation think their own people must be at peak ignorance.

stackskipton 2y ago
Sure, we make a ton of freedom noises. However, we also run into paradox of tolerance problem where entities exploit those freedom noises against us. So yea, we have to break those rules against entities who would use them against us.
- buran77 2y ago
  > Sure, we make a ton of freedom noises. As I said, the hypocrisy of the speech and perhaps the expectation that people will always swallow it (which sets a low bar for the opinion about those people) are what stands out, not that a country takes actions against an enemy. Atomic bombs were dropped in the name of peace, a minor phone app being banned can hardly be called "aggression".
  - redserk 2y ago
    Can you name a single country that succeeded by following pedantic absolutism? I’ll wait.
- ozgrakkurt 2y ago
  Freedom or any ethical, moral thing is meaningless to any state or corporation. It is a tool to be used to get what they want. US or EU isn’t strong and rich now because they gave everyone freedom or treated everyone ethically, it is the opposite

bagels 2y ago

What of diplomacy and negotiations? Surely those two are what happens when those processes fail, but those processes don't always fail.

barryrandall 2y ago

Groundhogs are better at predicting weather than sanctions are at achieving their stated goals.

adrian_b 2y ago

Besides the hypocrisy noticed by other posters, there is a problem with the so-called sanctions of USA against China: they are not sanctions. True sanctions are associated with some political conditions. For instance one can apply some sanctions against Russia until it stops its war against Ukraine. In the case of the so-called sanctions against China no valid reason is provided for them and there is no "until". Real sanctions against China would be tied to some explicit requests, for example one could request from China to recognize Taiwan as an independent country, or to provide guarantees that they will not attempt to extend their territorial waters, or to guarantee certain rights for minorities, or whatever other changes in their current behaviors that are criticized by USA would be deemed as appropriate. Instead of this, USA has not requested anything from China, and the official motivations for the sanctions are ridiculous. Many Chinese companies have been blacklisted because they provide products or services for the Chinese military forces. This is a normal behavior for any company in any country. Plenty of the most important US companies provide products or services for the US military. If all these US companies would be blacklisted by other countries, it is likely that the participation of USA in the international commerce would disappear almost completely. While some of the less important US sanctions have at least this claimed purpose of weakening the Chinese military, even if no explicit rationale is given for why this is a legitimate goal, the most important US sanctions do not have any other goal than to eliminate the competitors of some US companies. For instance the war against Huawei has begun exactly in the moment when Huawei was on the verge of surpassing Qualcomm in the production of chipsets for smartphones and they were clearly demonstrating a superior capacity of innovation over Qualcomm. The second great wave of sanctions against SMIC and other important semiconductor device manufacturers has begun exactly when the Chinese were close to take a significant market share for flash memories from Micron. In both cases the US sanctions have succeeded to remove from the market for consumer products the Chinese competitors of the US companies, preventing thus a drop in the prices of smartphones and SSDs, which would have been beneficial for everybody in the world except for the shareholders of a few US and Korean companies, but their effect against the Chinese military is likely to have been close to null.

d0mine 2y ago

"A" is just a foreplay for "B", to soften the target.

pjmlp 2y ago

Unfortunately B) seems just around the corner.