Great. A precedent for seizing foreign owned property and assets in your country whenever you have Ann excuse.
Can you not think of ways this could go wrong?
I just say this publically: If Canada ever invades the US for some bullshit made-up reason, you’re free to seize all my overseas holdings for the duration.
An excuse like invading a neighbouring country with massive armed forces and shelling civilians.
Right. Just a wimpy excuse.
Have folk answered yet - do the US invasion of Iraq and bombing of Libya qualify? If not, why not?
Yes, the world should have come down hard on the U.S. for the invasion of Iraq. Sanctions at a minimum. I don’t recall the bombing of Libya. Must have happened during those years when I didn’t have a TV.
Qualify for what? Sanctions?
Clarify for us please:
Are you trying to argue that we should NOT be putting sanctions on Russia for their invasion of Ukraine, because the US has done similar actions in the past? So therefore, we should just stand by and watch Ukraine get invaded?
Or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing?
Final serious question: Are you in favor of Putin’s goals and policies?
The folk who say the West should simply take over Russian assets now. Would they have objected if other nations had taken over US assets then?
Assets should be put into a trust until such time as Russia leaves Ukraine.
If Russia had done the same with US assets during the Iraq invasion, I would have had no problem with that. It’s an economic non-military response to a military action that a country disagrees with.
I don’t think there were many US oligarch millionaires with investments and property in Russia at the time of the Iraq invasion though. Not many US billionaires sending their kids to Russian schools.
No, I am not in favor of Putin’s goals and politics. Not sure what I might have posted that would’ve given anyone that impression.
Thank you for that direct response. I wonder how many Americans would have agreed with you. And not just Russia - it could’ve been any nation that disagreed with US policy seizing US assets. I’m no expert in economics, but I imagine such a system would pose significant challenges for international business.
IMO, the use of military - and the threat of the use of military - are one form of foreign policy. Nothing more or less. Economic sanctions, cyberwar, and countless other actions could kill more people and harm a state more than a cruise missile.
For those who support such seizure, I foresee insurmountable difficulty defining what is and what is not a military action warranting the seizure of another state’s assets.
I assume you mean for Iraq. The trouble with comparisons such as this is that they don’t really align. In Iraq’s case, you have the point that Iraq had invaded another country recently, and lost to a UN combined force, and as part of their ceasefire were to refrain from military actions in their own borders (specifically against the Kurds and against Shia tribes). This was part of the ceasefire terms. Leaving aside the WMD debacle, there was a UN resolution against Iraq for violations of their ceasefire terms that the US used as a fig leaf to justify its invasion. There is nothing similar in this Ukraine invasion. Ukraine didn’t invade a neighboring country, nor was it under any sort of UN blacklist or violating any sort of ceasefire terms. If anything, it was Russia who was under a cloud for their previous adventure in taking Crimea and their continued support of the rebels in the breakaway regions.
Then you have the reality of realpolitik. Simply, there is very little chance, especially during the second Gulf War, that anyone who was a power could or would have tried direct sanctions against the US. Most of the countries who could do that were either on the US’s side either actively or passively, or just wouldn’t have dared. Even today such sanctions against the US would be hard and would probably have extreme global effects. I mean, think about the tap-dancing being done wrt Russian sanctions, and how even now they aren’t all out. And Russia is a 3rd tier economy these days.
That said, in principle, sure…the US would object if someone seized their assets in the same way Russian assets have been seized in selective instances.
My dream is: FIFA not only kicks out Russia, but awards Ukraine an automatic qualification berth to the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
So you are basically saying that might makes right? The US had the might to arm twist the UN into agreeing, and you wave away the WMD lie? How is that lie qualitatively different than any of Putin’s.
Realpolitik simply provides that we could act with impunity? Nice to be the biggest bully on the block.
I am not supporting Russia’s most recent adventurism. I’m simply observing that all manner of states have committed all manner of violence when they thought it would add up to their ultimate advantage. Talk about other nations deciding to seize the acting nation’s assets just strikes me as so unworkable and undesireable as to be silly.
What I REALY dislike is the thought of taking measures - that don’t really inconvenience us. Hell - we can give them arms. That’s a different budget line. But don’t raise ours prices or depress our stock prices (too much).
I would favor drastic measures - and sucking up the costs involved. Isolate the Russians as on as many fronts possible. Of course, other nations would bear more of the brunt than the US, and such actions would drive Russia further into China’s orbit. No clean answer.
Strategically, this gives the oligarchs the greatest motive to rebel. If you just take their stuff and thumb your nose at them, they’ve lost everything whether Putin stays in power or leaves, so he might as well stay in power.
You seem to be arguing in Putin’s favor that we should not be harming Russia’s economy, simply because they invaded a neighboring country for no reason, other than Putin wanted it.
I think we should be using every lever we can to pressure Putin to leave Ukraine. One of these levers is to cause as much pain as possible to the Russian billionaires who enjoy buying Western businesses, homes and sports teams. They can have an outsized influence on Putin from the inside.
Just because the US has been a bad actor in the past, doesn’t mean the world shouldn’t take action against Russia now. Many nations have been bad actors at some point, but we should still take the right path now if we can.
I do not want to justify the Iraq war. That said, Saddam Hussein was already a bad actor in ways that the Ukraine isn’t. That made it easier for the US to get the world on our side when we went to do our foolish, deadly, expensive adventure there.
I’ll just add that if the United States should ever follow Trump’s recent advice, and consider Canada to be an evil dictatorship that justifies invasion… based on one man’s loopy and irrational thinking…
And sends in massive amounts of tanks, planes and soldiers to occupy and overthrow the government…
I would REALLY hope that all countries in the world would put an economic embargo on the US that would be incredibly harsh. It’s literally the least they could do.
He already had classified Canada as a security threat for tariff reasons.
I think it’s Canada who is dangerous – you’ve amassed like 90% of your population within 100 miles of our border (stolen, roughly, from the movie Canadian Bacon).
Well, certainly that’s part of it. Sorry, but were you unaware of this? But part of it is that the two situations aren’t analogous, and the US worked within the system (via the UN) while Russia…hasn’t and didn’t. Sanctions against Putin are pretty much a no-brainer…the only real thought is how much and how hard. Sanctions against the US for Iraq would have been pretty dubious since a lot of the countries who could have done this was on our side in this, at least initially…or sanctions from them would have been more token than meaningful.
I get that you don’t like any of this and are pissed off about Iraq and the fact that Russia is getting hammered while the US skated away scot-free. I see you don’t support Russia, and this is more an intellectual exercise for you in right and wrong and how some parties get hammered while others don’t.
I agree, though understand that most of the sanction measures we COULD take but aren’t are because of more than a bit of ‘inconvenience’ to our European allies. We work with them and have to be guided by them in this stuff, especially since this affects them a hell of a lot more than it affects us. One of the reasons that we seemingly get away with stuff while Russia and others don’t is that very tendency to work with them, and the fact that our alliance system is so strong. It’s one of the worst things about Trump, as our alliance system is the heart of US power, globally.
Please feel free to point out anywhere in this thread or elsewhere that I argued any such thing.
My opposition to the widespread seizure of assets in no way suggests we ought not harm Russia’s economy. Instead, I think my suggestion might be MORE aggressive than others, as I support taking steps that will cost us as well. Instead, much of the discussion seems to be - how can we claim to take economic sanctions, but have as little if any disruption to our fat happy lives.
Hell, I’d start off by ripping up that NORD 2.