https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/business/france-bank-raid...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-the-first-time-the-fed-is-l...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/inflation-hit-germany-m...
Every civilized nation in the world has ongoing economic turmoil right now.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/fed-emergency-lending-ban...
Also the war itself puts a strong damper on international commerce. We had basically been operating in a mostly peaceful world where war was limited to US/China/Russia busting up isolated third world countries. But Russia launching a full state-on-state genocide is a severe departure from that time of relative peace in most of the world.
Now we get to test the hypothesis that nations who trade with one another are disincentivized from going to war, and are about to find out how big that incentive really is.
I know we've gotten into the habit of redefining words whenever it suits us, but at some point doesn't it muddy the waters if we just make shit up?
Dictionary.com: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group
Merriam Webster: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
Would you care to find me a source with a definition that doesn't apply?
Many Native American tribes disappeared this way, for example. They weren't murdered to the last person. Instead, they were put into conditions that lead to their irreversible decline.
Despite being against the (2nd) US invasion of Iraq since before it happened, I've never personally felt the need to apply the label genocide (estimates of 300k violent deaths and 1M excess deaths notwithstanding). But I am very much willing to admit this may be a result of biased US propaganda that seeks to justify that war and downplay the atrocities, regardless of my not buying into the overarching narrative.
But if you yourself find the definition of genocide appropriate to the second US invasion of Iraq, or any other US military action, then please make the arguments to apply it! I'm not playing some game of "which country's unprovoked war is worse", but rather condemning it all.
And that's just in the last 20 years. I could also make a case in Syria and Libya as well but that would require first convincing you that our CIA/State Dept. were up to their usual tricks which I suspect would be a waste of our time. And let's not forget our role in this whole Ukrainian boondoggle going back to at least 2014 with funding & fomenting the coup/revolution that gave Putin his "justification" to annex Crimea.
Then we sit back as moral arbiters and want the whole world to still pretend we are always the good guys.
Good news, no convincing needed! I do agree with you that the US government is continually meddling in foreign countries, and I agree that this is a bad thing.
> the coup/revolution that gave Putin his "justification" to annex Crimea.
But here is where you lose me. Even to the extent that the US supported pro-western political movements in Ukraine, it still does not justify overt war by Russia. Russia was surely playing the influence game as well, and ultimately lost. Losing that game doesn't justify escalating to the next level, especially when that next level is full on war of attacking civilian infrastructure and razing cities.
This doesn't require guesswork, our own intelligence agencies have stated this as the likely outcome for decades.
Yes, it also stepped in to stop genocide where it could (and waited too long, if you ask me). Even by the highest estimates, the whole 78-day aerial warfare campaign killed less people than several atrocities commited during Yugoslav wars did in a single day, and the campaign brought a lasting peace to the region.
> NATO keeps closing the circle tighter and tighter around Russia.
Yes, that's why until Russia invaded Ukraine, NATO countries in Europe kept cutting military budgets, reducing troop numbers, disbanding units, closing military bases, selling off equipment. All a fiendish plot to encircle Russia!
> I know we’ve gotten into the habit of redefining words whenever it suits us, but at some point doesn’t it muddy the waters if we just make shit up?
Yes, which is why people need to stop trying to excuse the actions of forces practicing what is exactly genocide as defined in international law by making shit up in the form of a more limited definition that is restricted only to mass direct extermination.
From the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Also, is Russia's invasion of Ukraine demonstrably worse or less justified than our invasion of Iraq?
I’m pretty sure I didn’t, I don’t know if you did.
> Also, is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrably worse or less justified than our invasion of Iraq?
I don’t really care, since I’ve argued that the decision-makers responsible for the latter should be arrested and tried for war crimes and the crime of aggression.