Kinda how WWI started.
How did attempting to get rid of Castro work out? And Cuba wasn’t a world power.
It can make it a lot harder for them to pull off the next invasion.
Sanctions against Cuba, to use that example, are stupid because Cuba wasn’t going to invade anyone (and hadn’t really done anything wrong to any other country.) Russia is an active threat to invade our allies and weakening their economy makes their military less effective.
IT’s also the moral thing to do. We cannot deal with Russia as anything other than a criminal state. Canada, IMHO, should start expelling its citizens and closing the border entirely to them. No relations at all.
donno …
the equivalent of that would be strapping Vlad to an open car with a big target painted on his back and joyriding through the Ucraine
and snipering No1 would still allow for “plausible deniability” … I mean it’s not that there is nobody who’d have reason to do it, even staying WITHIN russian borders (how many independent-movements have there been surpressed in the past 20 year)
My point was more about unintended consequences.
To be clear, I don’t have a problem with sanctions per se.
What bothers me is the attitude I see in too many comments, where they seem to think sanctions will actually stop this invasion. Or that sanctions will have some near-term effect on Putin’s actions.
No. Not going to happen. As has been pointed out, sanctions take years, decades even, to have even a minor effect on the behaviors of nations, and even small concessions in allowing some trade but not other trade increases the length of time they can drag it all out.
It’s like the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11. Lots of people were running around talking about bringing freedom & democracy to the Afghan people, while I was pointing out that such a project would be a multi-generational thing. Of course, no one listened, and of course, 20 years on, it’s all gone to shit just like I expected.
I see this going the same way.
Unless we commit fully to completely isolating Russia from the rest of the world, and are committed to maintaining that isolation until they get their shit together, which might take 50 years or more, it’s all going to be for nothing in the end.
I’d just like to hear someone in power admit that.
interesting thought …
I know that there were attempts … but I got the feeling that the US was never really committed to off him (in a way they were eg committed to offing Bin Laden)
I have a feeling (but tbh no real in-depth knowledge) that offing Nr1 today in .ru is similar to offing Hitler … there was nobody “equally crazy” below him … I do NOT see a strong Nr2 in russia today …
so if Vlad were e.g. hit by lightning today in front of live cameras while wrestling a bear… my guess is that things would calm down geopolitically
People may feel sorry for the bear, but I don’t see how that would calm anything down.
#GodHatesBears
Angola: Are we invisible to you 
(snip) Russia is an active threat to invade our allies and weakening their economy makes their military less effective.
A continent spanning, space faring nuclear power is always going to be a threat to smaller countries near by even if its presently benign
And this is before considering the fact that while its no longer a unipolar world, it not a bi-polar one either. We are back in the era of Great power rivalry and that brings the questions of the balance of power to the fore. Treating Russia like a “criminal” nation may feel gratifying, but it makes them closer to China which affects the balance of power in their favour.
IIRC, that was really little more than a Carlota Cuban troops, though.
Yeah, and that’s another problem. It’s one thing to isolate a small country that doesn’t have domestic supplies of certain key materials, but what exactly would Russia be missing out on, that can’t be produced somewhere in their own country?
They’ve got oil, they’ve got mines, they’ve got agriculture, they’ve got factories.
Imports from other countries might be cheaper, or better quality, but if those supplies are cut off, they can just suck it up and pay more for less, but still have the stuff they need to survive.
I don’t think a critical shortage of, like, bananas is going to topple Putin.
Critical shortages of almost everything didn’t topple Fidel either.
We didn’t do that with Hitler himself, or with Tojo or Hirohito, and for very good reasons. Had we done it then, it would have been open season on Roosevelt and Churchill. Once we start doing that, it’s open season on Biden and the leaders of every other western nation.
I have said nothing of the sort. In fact, I am on record on this board as saying the conquest of Ukraine is inevitable.
European football association decides to not to play the big football match final in St Petersburg, Russia which is Putin’s home town.
It is quite something when a rich, venal and famously corrupt organisation such as EUFA decides that such a prestigious and lucrative deal is off. With this sort of sanction, the Russian public might get the message that the rest of the world is not very happy with them at the moment.
For that angle, FIFA should kick them out of World Cup contention. Ditto the World Hockey League (or whatever it’s called), and so on. Maybe a sporting isolation will open their eyes. Treat them like a pariah state because they are a pariah state.
I like it, but it probably won’t matter much.
I don’t know, they take their hockey pretty seriously over there. Basketball, too, I think.
I’m thinking that those kinds of national humiliations may turn the public against Putin. Probably not, but who knows. The apparently cheat in all their sports anyway, with all the repeated doping scandals.
Absolutely worth trying. Just suspect won’t matter much. Hopefully all of these organizations can show themselves to actually have a conscience.