Russian-Ukrainian war containment post
Try to keep the chatter contained here, folks.
Comment if you were here when the Russians dropped a bomb on our servers in Kiev. WE'RE BACK IN ACTION BABY!
Make sure to report comments that're overboard or sus.
Sanctions are economic penalties taken against a country or person, preventing the use of banking systems, trade, access to necessary resources, or other things. Countries will always prioritize resources going to their elite, and deprioritize resources going to the group's they oppress the most, so the only people affected by sanctions will be the most vulnerable classes of people.
Sanctions as a system will always be at least as ineffective as they have shown to be. Sanctions against the US would likely prove to be even more crushing to the working class and allow the elite to extract even more from them, given how little of a shit the US even pretends to give about its citizens.
Diplomacy is the only way. You have to talk to people to convince them to do things.
I'm not American and by no means an expert, but the US was sanctioned by a number of oil nations in the 70s, right? And working people suffered, suddenly being unable to afford gasoline, which is a real necessity in America, while the ruling class didn't even feel it, because they could just squeeze more money out of the working class to compensate and there was no way in hell the military would not have their toys.
Yes. The 70s oil crisis was the result of an economic embargo against the US and Israel during the Arab-Israeli War, which later extended to other countries that supported Israel. And just like you said, it resulted in working class people having extreme difficulty getting and affording gasoline, while the ruling class and government were fully insulated from it.
Oil supply was also mostly balanced out in America with increased usage of domestic and Mexican oil. A sanction on something the US cannot produce or acquire from other sources, such as cheap durable goods or semiconductors, would result in even more significant deleterious effects for the American working class.
Yeah, I thought I remembered that right. I guess I should have replied to the person asking about sanctions against the US instead of to the person explaining it to them. If they really are asking in good faith I feel like pointing to exactly what they suggested having been tried is a good argument.
US sanctions are particularly brutal now because of their increasing use of "secondary sanctions" in which any party, American or not, that is found trading with the sanctioned nation/group is put under the same sanctions as that group. All this does is make the workers even more isolated and at the will of a country's leaders, and while the assumption of sanctions is that the people will rebel when material conditions get bad enough and they are dissatisfied NO ONE EVER REBELS ON THEIR OWN WHEN THE US SAYS THEY ARE GOING TO AT ANY POINT IN HISTORY.
