Russia has halted an unprecedented wartime deal that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed people into poverty.
People are sanctioned, people are unhappy, people protest their government that allowed it to happen. It’s how you put pressure on the leadership of a country. How else would you solve this? You can’t force Russia’s hand in this, but you can make the situation for their people uncomfortable.
The alternative would be to say “Russia pls open the grain corridor again” and I think you can imagine their response.
There’s an abundance of contemporary evidence that shows this doesn’t work but it’s basically a foreign policy meme at this point. We tried this in Iraq and it just ended up killing a bunch of children and had no effect on Saddam’s hold on power.
People are sanctioned, people are unhappy, people protest their government that allowed it to happen. It’s how you put pressure on the leadership of a country.
This doesn’t follow. First of all, no change happens internally in the USA despite its own citizens complaining of material conditions; so to say that people being unhappy and protesting necessarily leads to change is false. Second, every other sentence people say about Russia is calling it “authoritarian”, “dictatorship”, etc: you can’t simultaneously pretend its an authoritarian dictatorship and also that the people protesting have any say in its trajectory.
You can’t force Russia’s hand in this, but you can make the situation for their people uncomfortable.
Which is just wrong. You’re making the everyday civilian uncomfortable. You aren’t doing anything against those who actually make decisions. Instead you’re punishing someone for their nationality, or where they were born or choose to live. It’s punishment for something they didn’t do and it’s not constructive.
The alternative would be to say “Russia pls open the grain corridor again” and I think you can imagine their response.
Sure, I understand that you’re saying Russia isn’t going to just cooperate with requests. But it’s also not going to be any more likely to cooperate because you’ve made the lives of their citizens, or people of Russian ethnicity living on foreign soil, any harder.
In the end this just punishes innocent people and does nothing to achieve the stated goal.
Sanctions have never once shown to lead to regime change. There’s entire books on the effects of sanctions, it can actually serve to strengthen support. The primary effect of sanctions, in every case, is suffering for the regular people.
People are sanctioned, people are unhappy, people protest their government that allowed it to happen. It’s how you put pressure on the leadership of a country. How else would you solve this? You can’t force Russia’s hand in this, but you can make the situation for their people uncomfortable.
The alternative would be to say “Russia pls open the grain corridor again” and I think you can imagine their response.
There’s an abundance of contemporary evidence that shows this doesn’t work but it’s basically a foreign policy meme at this point. We tried this in Iraq and it just ended up killing a bunch of children and had no effect on Saddam’s hold on power.
This doesn’t follow. First of all, no change happens internally in the USA despite its own citizens complaining of material conditions; so to say that people being unhappy and protesting necessarily leads to change is false. Second, every other sentence people say about Russia is calling it “authoritarian”, “dictatorship”, etc: you can’t simultaneously pretend its an authoritarian dictatorship and also that the people protesting have any say in its trajectory.
Which is just wrong. You’re making the everyday civilian uncomfortable. You aren’t doing anything against those who actually make decisions. Instead you’re punishing someone for their nationality, or where they were born or choose to live. It’s punishment for something they didn’t do and it’s not constructive.
Sure, I understand that you’re saying Russia isn’t going to just cooperate with requests. But it’s also not going to be any more likely to cooperate because you’ve made the lives of their citizens, or people of Russian ethnicity living on foreign soil, any harder.
In the end this just punishes innocent people and does nothing to achieve the stated goal.
Sanctions have never once shown to lead to regime change. There’s entire books on the effects of sanctions, it can actually serve to strengthen support. The primary effect of sanctions, in every case, is suffering for the regular people.
When dialogue fails, war follows.
Russia does not seem interested in dialogue whatsoever