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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

I was watching a mainstream news report (I'll try to find it and edit my comment) where the host and the guest were talking about the impact of economic sanctions. They said it's not intended to stop Russia, but to inflict pain on the citizens, so that they citizens will turn against leadership.

In that moment, it really clicked for me how much normal people are pawns to be used in much larger games. And there apparently is no morality when dealing with pawns, unless it is convenient.

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> They said it's not intended to stop Russia, but to inflict pain on the citizens, so that they citizens will turn against leadership.

Which country has it ever worked out on? Cuba? Venezuela? North Korea?

None of them have turned on their dictators. Rather, they are living life in misery. What is worse is they have been not just cut off monetarily from the rest of the World, the dictators have made sure to censor all content coming into the country. So they have no idea (or worse: false propaganda) of what is going on outside their territory.

I haven't seen sanctions actually work in even one case (will be happy to correct myself if there has been a case where sanctions actually worked). Where people fought back against the dictator and established democratic rule. Even if there were popular uprisings it has lead to establishment of even more autocratic rulers or worse, control by militias/warlords or terror groups.

South Africa[0]?

"Economic sanctions against South Africa placed a significant pressure on the government that helped to end apartheid."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...

Sanctions would work indirectly in the sense that the people would support regime change even if they can't bring it about themselves, if it means sanctions will be lifted and their standard of living will get better.

I don't think in any of the countries you list there's popular support of the leadership.

Romania, Libya? Tzar Russia?

Libya didn't work. NATO had to do it militarily. As for Romania, it had nothing to do with sanctions, and that's the same for the Tsars.

> [Cuba citizens] are living life in misery.

Cuba has higher life expectancy and a lower infant mortality rate than the USA. I think it is a mistake to lump it in with Venezuela or North Korea.

Cuba/NK are much smaller countries. For Venezuela, it insured the country cannot function properly. Russia is huge. Russia becoming the next Venezuela will trigger a sequence of events that will lead to its de-fragmentation into smaller states. (ie: Chechnya will probably go rogue)

That's how war (hard diplomacy) works as well.

World leaders don't get into an octagon and duke it out to see who controls what territory. They send normal people (soldiers) to go acquire it for them. Occasionally the soldiers capture/kill a world leader but usually they reach some kind of (conditional/unconditional) agreement before that point. But the soldiers are not world leaders themselves anyways.

Soldiers are fair game to me, because they often choose to participate. Normal working people are just trying to survive, and destroying their lives in the hopes of influencing their country's leadership is on a different level. I get that it's war and war isn't fair, but my point is that war clearly reveals the underlying classes of people and how they're treated.

Ukraine is under general mobilization now. So no choice whatsoever. Even in volunteer armies one cannot ignore social economic pressure. Usualy the low grunt, those that do the killing and dying, are just poor bastards. On both sides. I read a comment not long ago: Simple soldiers on both sides have more in common with each other than their leadership. That very much true. Are aoldiers, and other combatants legitimate targets? Yes. Does it make their losses and casualties any less tragic? No.

Zelensky and Poroshenko are carrying rifles into battle as we are posting comments on this thread.

I find that hard to believe. do you have a reference?

They're both in Kyiv, during an interview earlier today Poroshenko asked the west for more help and talked about the steadfastness of his resistance group, which he is fighting with, during the interview he showed off his rifle:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/02/25/petro-poroshenko...

I recall seeing an image of Zelensky carrying a rifle and wearing tactical gear but can't find it, maybe I misremembered that. He is in Kyiv though, unless he shot this video and left immediately: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/world/europe/ukraine-zele...

OK, that makes more sense. I guess you were just using figurative language. I believe that they are in Kyiv, and armed, and interacting with the troops. Fighting in battle would be a whole different story. It would certainly be brave, but unadvisable for Zelensky to be spending time in firefights instead of doing his job.

Any broad sanctions will always affect the poorest more than the richest.

Modern warfare also affects poor people more than it affects the rich — children of Russian oligarchs are off in New York and London, not fighting on the battlefields.

But the sanctions are very much meant to stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and to disintentivise Russia from invading other sovereign nations. Only Russians can stop this aggression.

With all due respect Russian people are the only ones who can stop Putin.

That's my point. The ruling class is free to exploit, manipulate, and abuse the working class, up until they're really needed for something important, like bailing out banks, or pressuring another country's government. I guarantee we all share more in common with the working class from different cultures than we do with our own ruling class.

I would submit that most of the commenters in this forum have more to do with the ruling class than with the working class. (The median personal income in the US is about $36,000/year. (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N))

1) Having more money than the median doesn't put in you in the ruling class. 2) How does the proportion of HN users that are ruling vs working class add to the conversation about not abusing the working class?

If the US citizens can't improve their own govt and get them to stop neverending wars, I think it's a tall order to expect citizens in a dictatorship to do it. Point isn't US bad -- point is, no easy way to affect change other than revolution which too ends up with bigger tyrants..

I don't think the suggestion is to wait for the next election... revolutions are a thing too, and happened in Russia several times already.

Yes I'm suggesting mass protests against the invasion and demand for his resignation.

Ukraine complying with Russia would also stop Putin from attacking Ukraine.

Complying means losing their sovereignty to a foreign autocrat who literally has a list of people he intends to kill.

Well, a) they are literally the only ones who can do anything about Putin's regime, and b) they are paying taxes, no? Those taxes pay for the Russian military. Destroying a country's economy is just about the only way to stop a modern nation's military.

Oh, and c) are there any other knobs to adjust Russian foreign policy?

a) I am unconvinced that they have any more direct power over their leadership than any other country's citizens do. Is this naive? b) We all know that taxes are involuntary. You make it sound like the Russian people are complicit in this attack. c) There isn't always a knob to turn when someone does something that you don't like. A bully can sometimes take someone's lunch. There doesn't seem to be unified international response, so this is what happens. The best I've heard is "let's hurt their citizens and see if it helps."

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