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Comment by grujicd | Hacker News Reader

These people also have no idea, except abstract one, how it is to live in authoritarian country, when access to non-government news is hard or impossible, and even saying your opinion can be dangerous.

As someone who was on the receiving end of sanctions in ex-yu, despite being antiwar and going to protests, I can’t ever support wide sanctions which affect all people. Years we were under sanctions were the worst years of my life. The worst thing is they harm oposition and make regime stronger. Government can tell “the world hates us, and those who want to colaborate with west are traitors and you should not vote for them”, and that’s easy sell to population directly suffering from sanctions.

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You oppose sanctions. Do you support a global nuclear exchange? Sometimes bad things are necessary to forestall worse things.

The stark reality of Mutually Assured Destruction is that America will turn Russia, its military, its cities, its dirt into radioactive glass if they launch their nuclear weapons. Look at this reality in the face and then decide if you still oppose sanctions.

Most sanctions have inverse effect of strengthening the authoritharian government. Maybe if you have free press and strong oposition you can use sanctions to turn population against governemnt. However, my experience of suffering under combination of sanctions and authorian government is that dictatorship gets stronger in these cases. I would even support sanctions in the 90-ties against Serbia if they increased our chances of overthrowing Milosevic. But they didn’t, quite the oposite. He only went after NATO bombing and defacto loosing all wars Serbia participated in.

It looks to me sanctions are implemented as a punishment, as a feel good move, as “we have to do something”. What’s the realistic end goal of blocking internet access, or software, or Visa/MC/Apple pay to Russia? Does it help a goal of overthrowing Putin, or strengthening his case? “We have to do something” is not a good reason if there are no positive effects, but there are negative ones.

A weak, underfed population whose military cannot keep its vehicles in working order isn’t going to be invading its neighbors with any degree of success.

That sounds humanitarian...

I'd rather have Russians starved to death than other countries invaded by them.

On balance, considering the broader picture, I would also agree it's humanitarian.

I suppose you were being sarcastic, but put away your snide and come up with actual better suggestions!

Addendum: Look at Russia's conventional military on display in this conflict. Reliant on undertrained conscripts, poor discipline, poor planning. If NATO imposes a "no-fly" zone over Ukraine, Putin has no where to turn except to his nuclear deterrence forces. He has no dry powder except for his estimated 6000 nuclear weapons.

"Backed into a corner" is a phrase that is tossed around too easily these days. NATO does not want to force him into that corner with a "no-fly" zone over Ukraine. Brutal, backbreaking sanctions and the loss of support of a brainwashed public is the current alternative. I am certain that there are even harsher options in the pipeline. For example, cutting off oil and gas purchases, and sacrificing Western economies in an era of record high inflation. In my opinion, NATO will gladly make that trade to keep Putin from abandoning MAD.

I wouldn't discard part bad management, part deliberate passive-aggressive boycott against the war by military people.

You don't want to shoot your relatives in another country and you are afraid to meet the same fate as your general killed from a long distance because crazy politician in power had a tantrum?.

The solution is simple: Some pieces in your tank broke, you turn in the wrong direction and get stuck in a marsh, or gasoline vanish mysteriously overnight and you are stuck out of the war until a replacement arrives with the spare parts.

This can lasts for several weeks or months if you must buy it in another countries and nobody is selling you. Or can need to fill a lot of bureaucracy to just take if from another tank and send it to the front (and then you have 2 tanks out of service instead one). When you finally arrive to the fight there is a lot less of enemies to deal with.

With the advantage that you didn't deserted and don't fear retaliation. You can blame the tank maker or any other that is lower in the food chain. It was not your fault.

Agreed. It would be ideal if the Russian military refused to escalate further.

>Do you support a global nuclear exchange? Sometimes bad things are necessary to forestall worse things.

Who said sanctions would "forestall" that?

The strategic apparatus of NATO, the folks that have been studying this issue since the Cold War, have said it by doing it ("actions speak louder than words"). With 73k karma, I'm confident in asserting that you've been around enough to know that NATO has a playbook for this and is working through it. Or how did you think they not only settled on a course of action but gained consensus so quickly?

>The strategic apparatus of NATO, the folks that have been studying this issue since the Cold War, have said it by doing it

So, let's trust the "brains" of a Cold War apparatus for western dominance, involved in tons of wars, destabilization of governments, and so on, when it comes to how to get world peace...

For 70 years, MAD has deterred the use of nuclear weapons. NATO both deters and is deterred under this framework, and they have been serious enough to keep things peaceful for 70 years.

I don’t think that you understand that the world that you live in is founded on this one fact, and that these “wars, destabilizations, and so on” are but the limited moves available to a board that it otherwise locked down.

You don’t understand the world state, so you’re mad when wars happen, but you cannot compare even large conflicts like Ukraine to a NATO/Russia or NATO/China conflict. It is in a completely different class.

In the context of a NATO/Russia conflict, nuclear weapons are the weapon of choice, while conventional armies are effectively clean up and a way to annoy at your opponent.

So, yes, let’s trust NATO and we could trust the USSR’s Politburo, and the CCP. We thought we could trust Putin, but now we’re not so sure.

> These people also have no idea, except abstract one, how it is to live in authoritarian country, when access to non-government news is hard or impossible, and even saying your opinion can be dangerous.

Many Polish people still remember communism. I was born in communism. And we still support sanctions.

Tell us what do you propose as an alternative to the sanctions.

Frankly, I don't know. I'm just sharing my experience and opinion that sanctions don't help.

It's quite possible that there's nothing at all that can be done right now, apart from humanitarian help. No matter how much we wanted the war to stop. At least if we're only looking at options that don't lead to worse outcomes.

The time to prevent this was probably years ago. But I'm far from geopolitics expert, I can just speculate lake enyone else.

If you propose no alternative, you propose doing nothing. In this scenario russia takes everything outside of NATO and Chinese influence. And by "takes" I mean hundreds of millions of civilians killed, with a faster rate than currently, because if we show russia we're too soft to react, there's really nothing demotivating putin, or whoever comes after him, to do anything he wants.

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