It's not arrogance to try and sanction a country for an illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine that has killed so many innocent people so far. If Russia wants sanctions to cease, all it has to do is stop invading their neighbour and killing Ukrainian citizens. It could stop that today.
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This is a hugely reductive statement and not even on-topic.
Surrounding Russia with NATO allies was also illegal, immoral, and would obviously lead to this outcome, which is what they wanted because now the military industrial complex profits hugely as they siphon gobs of tax dollars and offload a bunch of product they don't even want.
The sanctions combined with COVID protocol crippled established supply lines and the global economy. It was absolutely arrogance to think sanctions were going to work. Completely backfired and fucked everyone over, especially Europe.
I'm sorry, I just can't agree that Russia is justified in causing nearly a million deaths and injuries (of both Ukrainians and Russians) because it was worried Ukraine wanted to join NATO after Russia annexed Crimea.
Literally nothing on the geo-political scale is justifiable.
Seriously can you name even one truly good thing that any leader of any country has done for the people in the last five years? Who gives a shit about Ukraine? Why Ukraine and not literally every other country facing the exact same atrocities? Because that's what the puppet show wants us to look at.
You know what I just can't agree with? People who take a stance of unquestionable moral authority as if they've somehow figured out the solve of a highly nuanced geo-political issue. That isn't insight; it's propaganda.
I totally get that geo-politics is extremely complicated and there is so much that I could never understand and so much information that I'd never get access to...
... but from the information I do have, I believe I can make some moral judgements on events that happen - and I'm happy to update those judgements as new information comes in.
Bombing a children's hospital - seems very bad. I'm not sure if there is a ton of new information that I could receive that might make me change my mind to agree it was a good idea.
Whereas, say, authorizing FEMA to help rescue people from a natural disaster - seems very good.
So if all the geo-political actions are on a spectrum from very bad to very good, then Russia invading Ukraine seems very bad to me, especially since they could stop at any time and it's likely impoverishing Russia itself. If I found out Ukraine was killing Russian civilians and Russia had tried everything else to get them to stop, then that would change my mind about the situation.
I care about Ukraine because I have friends from there, I care about Palestine because I have friends from there and friends from Israel. I care about the political environment in Venezuela because so many on Hive have written about it. I care about the atrocities within China, but I honestly don't know that much about it all. I'm aware there are conflicts in Africa, but I honestly don't know much about them.
I think the use of economic sanctions against another country can be good if it dissuades violence or war, it's a better alternative between the two - but I also understand sanctions can, and have, be used immorally - which is terrible.
Leaders do good things for people all the time. I truly appreciate when leaders support transitioning renewable technologies. I think in the USA, capping insulin prices to $35 could be literally life-saving for US citizens. I don't personally know much about it or anyone affected by it, but from what I know it seems good. I'm sure I could list a bunch of other good things if pressed and could research a heap, but this response is way too long already.
Good point but circling back to sanctions:
You believe there should be a centralized agent that can control the rails of public infrastructure to get what they want? This is a very anti-crypto pro-imperialist stance, which I find odd.
It's the same logic behind a criminal getting off on a charge on a technicality. Innocent until proven guilty. It's more important for everyone to be treated fairly on an equal playing field than it is to bend and break the rules to punish.
Ah, I'm absolutely definitely no expert but I haven't been viewing SWIFT as a centralized agent. I mean, it is in that everything goes through it, but it's not in that its a cooperative of 10 countries... so I've kind of always viewed it as a non-profit-driven community project. I personally haven't had a problem with SWIFT cutting off Russia's access to the network because I imagined most, if not all, of the member countries would have imposed their individual sanctions anyway (so I assumed it was just very efficient) - but now that I'm typing that out that might have been the wrong way to look at it.
As an XRP fan, I'm absolutely onboard for an alternative to SWIFT, especially one that is more efficient and less expensive. If a grass-roots Russian civilian project was building crypto infrastructure to help civilians get resources I'd be all for it, but I can't really get excited about the Russian government developing a CBDC to get around sanctions so they can get more weapons to bomb Ukrainian civilians in their homes.
I'm really excited about crypto to make people's lives better, especially where they are underserved by corporations and governments, but I think it's also important to call out where it has the potential for harm as well, as I do think it does in this case.
Regurgitating Kremlin propaganda talking points again. Defense cooperation against Russia is an existential question for Eastern Europeans. That you're drawing an equivalence between Russia's genocidal war of choice and NATO membership of EE is idiotic. No one will be attacking a country with thousands of strategic nukes. EE has seen many rounds of forced Russification (even Poland), mass deportation and murder under Russian occupation in history.
The sanctions are actually working, which can be seen in the high inflation in Russia necessitating the current 18% key interest rate of the Russian central bank. The Russian private sector is dying. Small businesses are being killed by the high interest rate. Most of the large multinationals have left slowly crippling even Russia's oil industry. And Gazprom went from being a crown jewel to a loss maker last year. Resources are being poured into the military and the military industry. Maintaining the war effort is diminishing all the rainy day funds and reserves Russia has. The Russian military industrial complex is highly dependent on imports and the sanctions are making the imports much more expensive. Secondary sanctions are causing even some Chinese banks not to deal with Russia.
Europe has done remarkably well all things considered. The price of natural gas is the same as before the sanctions. Letting Russia rearm would be a mortal danger to Europe because the Russian leadership is perfectly willing to have millions of its citizens killed. You're totally clueless when it comes to Russia and EE. For Russia, the economy and the well-being of its citizens always take a back seat to imperialism.