alt Hacker NewsWhy? If the objective is to weaken a regime, and the sanctions strengthen it, why should you help your “enemy”?
The classic mistake here is to consider that dictatorships are like democracies—they aren't, and their power structure is different and more resilient to economic shocks. Even Bachar Al-Assad, who was much weaker, took 13 years to leave power.
At some point, one should question if wide sanctions targeted at increasing the suffering of the civilian population are really worth it.
Replies
- Economic growth slows down under sanction.
- removing their leverage over you is also good.
Even if regime will not change, it will be weaker
Is there evidence sanctions strengthen a regime? With Russia at war right now, sanctions do indeed seem to be helping Ukraine with Russia having a budget crisis.
Russia is actively and directly at war with Ukraine. Russian tax dollars fund that war with Ukraine.
Sanctions on Russia are us not funding the war on Ukraine.
Your assumption here is that, since sanctions strengthen the regime, not having sanctions weakens the regime, which is not logical.
Not having sanctions potentially strengthens a regime more than sanctions do, embeds them in the global geopolitical/cultural/economic stage, normalises their behaviour, and goes against a lot of people's deontology.
Look at Israel: no sanctions, strong Zio regime, majority of US/German pop supported the "self-defense" argument for decades, complete normalisation of Palestinian genocide until the horror reached an unbearable threshold. Etc., etc.
Yes, sanctions are far from perfect, but I strongly believe that a world with Israel santioned would have been a much better place for everyone, including the Israelis (from having to contend with their ideology).
Edit: I'm also aware that my argument is not perfect either. For example, I wouldn't qualify what Cuba has or what Iraq had as sanctions in the sense that I'm talking about: these are to my eyes an economic war of aggression by the US/West. What I'm defending is sanctions on fascist and ethonationalist global/regional superpowers that are engaging in large-scale horror. But I'm aware how leaky my definition is.