Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanw444 | Hacker News Reader

I'm beginning to wonder if financially crippling the entire nation (and all of its innocent civilians) was the correct alternative to fighting. Possibly just as bad. Gonna have a lot of people starving, homeless, and in poor health. Putin will re-align the remaining pieces of the economy to focus on the war effort, and the Russian elites.

View on HN

Fighting might have meant nuclear war. How is that preferable?

Oh come on. MAD is a well-understood notion, and has been since the cold war. If the various Soviet leaders weren't insane enough to initiate it, why would Putin? Nobody wants nuclear war. It's a bluff.

> Possibly just as bad.

No, it's much worse. Collective Punishment is a globally-recognized war crime:

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docindex/v2...

The US and the EU are flagrantly violating the Geneva Convention and everyone I know is cheering it on. Absolutely sickening.

That's an interesting perspective. So you would say any economic disincentive used against a country is a violation because the population is impacted by the economic pains? Are reparations a violation of the same in your mind?

It seems any/many actions taken against an adversary will have knock-on effects of the population of the adversary, whether financial/economic or militaristic.

Does the focused nature of the sanctions thus far not change your calculus? Or is it SWIFT only that you're referring to? What about: banning private Russian flights from air space throughout Europe; FedEx refusing to make deliveries to Russia; Arming Ukraine to enable a quagmire, costing the Russian government several billions per day to sustain their effort, and harming their economic position; even broad and impactful tariffs could be seen as a Collective Punishment?

I'm having a hard time determining what actions are not a violation of the Collective Punishment ban under your generous interpretation, short of direct military conflict. I don't think incentivizing hot war was the intention of those rules. My understanding was that they are meant to apply to POWs and noncombatants under rule of a warring party.

This is a ridiculous comment. Putin started an unprovoked war against a country of 40 million. He's using the full power of the Russian state in this war and has access to nuclear weapons. He's currently engaged in indiscriminate shelling of civilians[1] (how's that for collective punishment).

What's your alternative to sanctions? Do nothing? Move NATO troops into Ukraine and start WWIII?

[1] https://www.axios.com/kharkiv-russia-ukraine-invasion-civili...

"on account of the acts of individuals for which it cannot be regarded as collectively responsible"

which is up for debate in this instance. I don't agree with you.

I do think the literal bombing of residences and hospitals, false flag operations, wearing the enemy's uniform, etc. etc. all constitute provable warcrimes which should be investigated. Not that I want to devolve into whataboutism, which I realize I'm skirting close to.

> which is up for debate in this instance

It's not up for debate. The Russian army acts on behalf of Russia. Therefore the whole of Russia is collectively responsible for the actions of the Russian army.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com