Sanctions don’t work. Ask Cuba.
As Pasternak put it in Dr. Zhivago, Russians have a “cursed capacity for suffering.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if Sanctions on Russia end up hurting regular Americans more than Russia.
Isn’t Russia a nation today due to the U. S. taking a hard
line in the 1980s?
It would seem that someone forgot something along the way.
Maybe Biden and the Globalists are trying to dent something other than Russian ...
Big difference between most Russians and most Ukrainians west of the Dneiper.The former celebrate the crushing of nazis. The latter mourn the defeat of the nazis
Nor will it....
This is a country that spans how many time zones?
Has more natural resources than can be counted....
Russia can self sustain if it desires to.
If one of the4 folks who’s been allowed to be super wealthy by their connections to Putin complains too loudly that Putin is costing him a fortune, they will simply disappear.
False allegation that anyone wants to escalate into an air war. It already is an air war, with the Russians having air superiority. Supplying MIGs to Ukrainian pilots and wishing them good luck is not escalation, or involving the US, but how proxy wars are fought. Take off in Germany. Land in Moldavia. Have Ukraine pilots take custody. Done and done.
But back to the topic. Western sanctions did not cause the Soviet Union to collapse. Afghanistan, Chernobyl, and the impracticability of communism did it. But sanctions and containment did help speed its demise along. They will perhaps speed the end of the war along, and some of the Russian people themselves are risking beatings and imprisonment to protest the war. This isn’t about Russian resolve, but Putin’s ability to prosecute the war despite everything. Sanctions are putting a dent in that ability, whatever his personal resolve is.
The Russians are always determined when they want to seize more territory. They don’t care many poor hapless conscripts they expend to do it.
Wait ... besides AOC (in a blind squirrel moment) WHAT Democrats oppose this as a risk of World War Three???
(I'm pretty sure it's not Biden, because he does whatever he is told. But there seems to be some nemeless, faceless adviser holding Biden back.)
[Russia lost 23 million in the Second War and still celebrates its victory over Nazism every year.]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
Neither condition holds true in Ukraine. So desertion, mutiny and outright defection are all options.
Assuming official Russian casualties are true - 500 in 1 week - 500 is 1/2 the average Russian KIA in Afghanistan for an entire year. I suspect Putin is going to run into serious problems taking casualty numbers at ~25x its reported Afghan War rate per week with half the Russian population that it had during the Afghan campaign. All those single son families are gonna be screaming bloody murder.
When you compare Afghanistan to Vietnam, it’s remarkable how much less punishment in body count terms the Russians were able to take before hitting their uncle point. The official Russian KIA number in Afghanistan was 13,000 over about 10 years, which is roughly 1/5 the US number in Vietnam. When you think about the coercive powers of the totalitarian Soviet state vs the anything goes milieu of 60’s and 70’s America - it’s amazing the US hung in there so long.
Modern economies don’t work they same way as older economies. You can’t compared the two. It would be like saying detonation an EMP over a city 100 years ago had minimal impact, so detonation one over a modern city today would also have the same limited impact.
“The Democrats oppose this as a risk of World War Three.”
LOL!!!
The people have been inured to outside sanctions, when they had to become self-sufficient because of deprivation by the Soviet Russia.
It’s well known that sanctions usually don’t work. IIRC, Jefferson’s Embargo in 1812...destroyed our economy.
Any evidence of that, or should we just refer to my Tagline?
What did work to soften up the Ruskies was Levi’s and Coca Cola, which our leftist overlords just declared verboten. Oh well I’m sure forcing a Russia-China alliance won’t come back to bite us in the ass. After all Putin is an evil, mad, moronic devil and we need to punish him for ‘murica or something.
“ celebrates its victory over Nazism every year.”
*************
As in the Wagner Group? Sarc…//
This is not about Russian resolve. It’s all about Putin’s resolve.
And, until the Russian people see him for the tyrant he truly is, it will be bloody and ugly.