And yes, in the short term it will hurt us but in the longer term you are disarming the influence of a bad actor with the added benefit of incentivizing cleaner energy and perhaps more efficient means of transportation.
We had Turkey a NATO member buy cheap fuel from ISIS in the past.
Russia is going nowhere. They are not NK. Consequences are never one sided, in a conflict, the other side gets a vote too.
I have to take issue with this assumption. We've used such tactics against a number of previous bad actors, and yet those actors keep coming. The latest round (in this case against Russia) certainly wasn't a surprise about the sanctions, yes?
So again, back to my OP...Exactly how effective can we expect these sanctions to be if Russia knew they were coming and that threat didn't deter them? Who is actually feeling more pain?
The arc of my point is simple...Putin had a plan and we (and The West) led with our chin. What's our solution? "Print" more money? Let's not be naive, there are economic consequences to that here.
So if everyone loses, not just Russia, and relatively The West has more to lose, where is the pain for Russia?