Why is seizing property without due process okay when we do it? Is it the same reason that dissenting opinions can’t be heard because they’re dangerous propaganda?
Honestly, I would have thought that the recent nationalisation of Russian oligarchs' assets over much of the Western world would sent thrills down the spines of many, many other wealthy people, no matter their citizenship. Probably it was a shock to them, too, I expect a counter-reaction via media in the coming weeks.
Locke wrote his famous treatises on government especially for cases like this one, i.e. what happens with your property when you fall on the wrong side of the current powers that be? He said that said powers shouldn't confiscate your property, and there are many smart people who have said/written during the last few centuries that that viewpoint stands at the basis of our (Western) civilisation. Interesting times, to say the least.
Later edit: To make things clearer, because I have the impression that people in the West live with the idea that out-here in the former Communist East (from where I'm from) things like nationalisations and all that were done sort of outside the law, hence why doing similar things in the West right now might be ok because it's done under the auspices of the law, I repeat, most of the that stuff was done with the law in hand.
I even wrote/implemented a small personal project [1] based on such a law, the June 1950 nationalisation law. I wanted to see where were located the properties of the Bucharest-based Jewish population that got their properties confiscated (remember, this was after WW2, under a regime that had fought against the Nazis). Of course that the Jews were not implicitly targeted by that law, but they were greatly affected by it (being, on average, a little better-off and more urban compared to the regular Romanian peasant).
[1]http://bucuresti.maglina.ro/nationalizari/ (you have to ignore the GMaps warning, I was too lazy to put anything else in place since their API changes some time ago; also, not sure it works on mobile).
In the USA this is specifically banned by the Constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
It's universally thought as a "bad thing", and more like a "highway robbery" than something citizens actually want.
But when it's the russians, it's suddenly ok.
Is it technically ethical and nice? Maybe not, that can be debated. But I don't see why we should care. Russia's also seizing foreign property as well as invading another country, if you do want to have that ethical argument.
This is how the world works, I don't think we should get bogged down in whether it's technically entirely OK for those poor Russian-govt-linked billionaires to have less yachts. It's in our power, it's in our interest, and that's how the world works.
American oligarchs have total influence over American government. If they allow such thing to happen they are materially responsible for the damage.
Why mexico or canada? Why not for iraq? Afghanistan? Syria? Libya? Yemen? Jugoslavia? Why only for annexation and not for "just bombing" or even occupation, with yes, tanks?
Shelling civillians?
Like bombing a civillian train? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing
A bus? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C5%BEane_bus_bombing
How about escaping refugees? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Albanian_refug...
Or a foreign embassy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...
Civillian tv station? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_the_Radio_Tele...
How about directly custer bombing a city? Twice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C5%A1_cluster_bombing
A hospital? https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans...
So you agree, that if US/NATO doesn't immediately pull out from eg. syria, that switzerland can take away googles property in Zurich?
Because those are different things.
> So you agree, that if US/NATO doesn't immediately pull out from eg. syria, that switzerland can take away googles property in Zurich?
No, I don't agree.
Why don't you agree? Americans occupied a sovereign country, started a war there... why no sanctions against american oligarchs? And if not, why sanctions now against the russians?
Full scale invasion with intent to annex with nearly complete global opposition is different from America going around the world to kill people at their whim, very often with support and acceptance of other nations and occasionally with support of large groups of people in countries America messes up.
Putin invaded two countries and parts of Ukraine already in a predictible pattern. And next ones in line are NATO countries. I guess enough's enough to take action.
Serbs in Yougoslavia tried to do racial cleansing. Ukrainians never had such ideas.
By drawing such overstretched parallels you are no different than Putin supporting Russian now, nazi German after the WWII or Serb after they were stopped.
Putin has a russian minority in ukraine, that was being attacked for a long time now, by groups like Azov (who were globally marker as neonazis just a few months ago, by most mainstream media), and which are now a part of national guard (for the last ~7 years). You cannot call it racial clensing if all the people mentioned are white (serbs, albanians, russians, ukranians), but considering the amount of brown people the americans have killed in the last few decades, it makes you wonder.
Are you seriously trying to justify what is happening right now in the Ukraine by existance of small nationalistic groups not condemned by the Ukrainian government? Anything that this fringe nazi group did, Russian soldiers are doing on a country wide scale as we speak.
And yes. Approval of parts of invaded population matters. That's one of the reasons world didn't react strongly to annexation of Crimea. And large groups of Afghanis were in favor of US bombing Taliban.
And also yes. Allies matter. Even the moral allies.
And sure, you can imagine a world in which EU and UK support Putin in the invasion of Ukraine for entirely selfish reasons with Ukraine being as innocent as it really is. It wouldn't be good then.
But if Ukraine built death camps for their Russian population. Allying with Putin to put a stop to that would be good.
However we do not live in any of those worlds. In ours Ukraine just wants to be a country and a nation they were always striving to be, despite being repeatedly crushed by the Russian heel and murdered by millions. And the west is supporting that ambition despite the great cost to its economy that is the result of cutting outselves off from Russia exports. We are doing it for both moral and selfish reasons. Because people and their actions are nuanced like that
It's never as simple as "it's ok when we do it".
I'm very sorry that you are struggling with this world to the point of turning you into a tube for clear aggressors.
I mean... that "small nationalistic group" became a part of the official national guard, so it has support from the government itself. What exactly did eg. Afghanistan do, that attacking it was "good"?
> And also yes. Allies matter. Even the moral allies.
Oh yes... if your friends say it's ok to bomb some random country, that makes it OK?
> But if Ukraine built death camps for their Russian population. Allying with Putin to put a stop to that would be good.
Afghanistan had death camps? Yugoslavia did? Iraq? Lybia?
> However we do not live in any of those worlds. In ours Ukraine just wants to be a country and a nation they were always striving to be, despite being repeatedly crushed by the Russian heel and murdered by millions. And the west is supporting that ambition despite the great cost to its economy that is the result of cutting outselves off from Russia exports. We are doing it for both moral and selfish reasons. Because people and their actions are nuanced like that
Yes, so did every other middle eastern country strive to be a normal, peaceful country... sadly most of them have been attacked by americans, some more than once.
America had no real reason to attack eg. afghanistan, but they did. Because you find americans to be allies/friends, you support them at that, even though they basically destroyed the country in the same way as putin is doing now. And same for many middle eastern, south american etc. countries, that were attacked by americans. Putin is atleast using the same excuse america used when they attacked yugoslavia. America couldn't even plant "weapons of mass destruction" in the second iraq war, but that faked excuse was enough to attack a sovereign country.
America has been destroying countries for decades now, for same egoistic reasons putin has now. They have destroyed many buildings, killed many people, army and civillian, children and old people, destroyed infrastructure, etc., and the destroyed/killed numbers are a still lot higher than russias, even with this war now.
I have no idea, how lying about weapons of mass destruction can be a good reason for you, to attack a country on the other end of the world, and than act as if you're better than putin.
Out of military involvements I support only the one in former Yougoslavia because it prevented genocide and ended the hostilities.
When you are comparing Putin to someone you can compare him to Serbs. Because similarities are many. And current support of Putin comming from some Serbs only proves that they are spiritually similar in their nationalist ambitions towards their neighbors.
When it comes to everything else America did in middle east and elsewhere I think it had a huge negative effect. That it was unjustified, immoral and instigated just for the economic benefit of US military industrial complex under the false pretenses.
However since US military budget is what it is and there are other strong global players that might act up in the future (Russia, China) the countries of the world couldn't really seriously impact USA.
However USA deserved to loose every bit of global good will and moral standing that they lost due to their actions.
But nothing USA did puts Russia in any better light. Existance of one murderer doesn't make the other murderer less worthy of contempt and punitive action.
You may cry 'hypocrites' all you want but we live in the real world in which because we can't go after one murderer, because he's too powerful, doesn't mean we just let all the murderes free pass just to be consistent.
Be anti-american all you want. It doesn't mean you have to be pro Putin.
To be honest I myself would prefer Anerica sat this one out just because of their lack of moral standing and history of direct mythicized conflict with Soviet Union.
I think Europe should wipe Russian hardware from Ukraine using just European equipment.