- Russia’s yuan reserves are nearly depleted due to Chinese banks’ fear of US sanctions.
- Lenders have urged Russia’s central bank to address the yuan deficit, causing the ruble to drop.
- China’s hesitance stems from US threats of secondary sanctions over Russia’s Ukraine war financing.
How is hurting everyone the point?
To piggyback on @Syntha@sh.itjust.works, the point of sanctions is to create an extreme economic cost to a state as a bargaining chip. Stop doing the thing we don’t like and you get your trade back. Unfortunately, states control the national currency (most of the time), which means anyone who uses that currency also gets hit. There is no way around that.
Politically speaking, a majority of Russians have been utterly disenfranchised from politics, repeating the refrain “I’m not political” like it’s a magic spell that will ward off the consequences of their government. Consequently I’m not that sad about them experiencing a bit of economic hardship. Maybe it’ll help them realize that politics isn’t just for politicians.
Their country, their responsibility.
The Germans learned that lesson the hard way.
Exactly. In any semi-functional democracy the government isn’t some abstract entity you have no power over, and it’s not monolithic either (you have municipal, regional and national levels). You vote for the people in it and they represent you.
Incrimental economical hardships get obfuscated by the state so no one draws a line between that and the war, or if they do, they have 1000+1 reasons why it went this way thanks to propaganda. Until it is a direct shock treatment at some industries, it would be toned down by the effort of local economical institutions. I’m the outlier in buying things in non-chinese services and following western media it seems, and slowing down the YouTube was the first event when I noticed many previously apolitical person to find their ways to circumvent the ban.
The most energized groups are those of recent soldiers and their families, and their protests get shut down fast. It’s genuinely afraid of them. And it feels like the way it would happen.
Maybe. The point of the sanctions isn’t to cause unrest though, as I said, it’s to apply pressure to the state. If it happens to cause some unrest, that’s an unlikely side-benefit.
What can hurt it in your opinion?
Military stuff is out of the picture since they established their trade with CCP and NK for rockets and found their ways to get European chips. They are investigated, but slowly.
My guess is that a lot of ingredients used in their production lines of food are imported, like specific kinds of yeast to make bread and beer or something like that. I wonder if sanctions targeting non-consumer products critical to producing them can lead to long pauses I’d read about in military once some key suppliers got cut off.
Not all rockets are made equally. The NK rockets, artillery barrels and artillery shells are much worse than they could manufacture with western components. A degradation in quality leading to less accuracy which lessens the battlefield impact is still a positive step.
It also means that China can take advantage of Russia to get much more than it could usually get for their gear. China is not helping Russia out of the goodness of it’s heart or some ideological reason. They’re taking advantage.
Interesting question. I have no idea. I’m pretty confident all sanctions so far are for gas, oil, and military/dual-use technology.
Yep, China, and Iran and India and whoever else. Current admin sets the conditions of trade that would scar the economy long after all these senile gambling gramps die. Reparations don’t sound that awful when you consider how much shit they probably promised to or leased from these ‘brotherly’ countries. Even if I happened to be a Z-patriot, I can’t see myself swallowing that.
You are right. And the fact that they scratch the bottom of the barrel like asking NK means they are desperate. Still, not enough supplies to Ukraine to counter that and I want them to have these, as a russian citizen.
No, you’re right, we can’t do anything beyond harsh criticism, no, even that’s too far, what if we hurt some of the genocider’s feelings?
They’re sending their kids into a meat grinder because they hope other people’s kids will feel more pain in that same meat grinder.
I didn’t say that.
How have sanctions changed anything?
China is pulling all their funding from Russia due to sanctions. That’s the article we’re in the comments of.
Chinese businesses. “All” is not true. And what changes will this result in?
Uh, Russia will be too broke to continue funding their war offensive in Ukraine, and then if they try to continue it anyway they’ll be too broke to continue functioning as a nation. That’s kind of the point of sanctions. Did you read the article?
Drop the war, investors return, everyone is happy. If they want to continue the war they better start checking their couch cushions for rubles. That’s what the sanctions are for, that’s what they do. It’s a lever to pull to convince Putin to back off his warmongering without resorting to direct violence against Moscow and, undoubtedly, innocents caught up in it.
Again, when has that occurred? Any examples.
You’re intentionally being obtuse.
That’s one way to avoid answering the question I suppose.
There is no other way
If people are gonna down vote at least have the guts to propose a different option. Down voting doesn’t change reality.
What examples of sanctions on a country have seen change? Regime, attitudes, or the like.
The goal is to make the cost of waging war increasingly painful to pay. There is no other way to effectively do this than to target the entire country.
Off the top my head, the sanctions on Iran were pretty effective to get them to negotiate the nuclear deal. Until Trump tore that one up, that is.
I understand what sanctions are supposed to achieve, but I would like examples of when that has actually happened.
Edit my comment to add the Iran example
That’s one reduction in sanctions example, which does not stand to this day and has seen the country distancing itself further than ever.
You asked for an example of a country changing its attitude, that is what happened in Iran to negotiate the nuclear deal. Now you are moving the goal posts and claiming that it wasn’t sufficiently successful in the long run. That may well be, but it has nothing to do with the presence or absence of sanctions.
I also want to point out that sanctions often work far more subtly than what you imagine. If six months from now, Ukraine and Russia engage in successful peace talks, sanctions will certainly have played a role in shifting Russia’s position closer to that of Ukraine, but on the surface it will be impossible to tell by how much.
Sure, I said it was one example, I just added context afterwards. I also asked for examples, not just one which has seen zero other impact except hurting the citizens.
No need to guess about what might happen, we can look at past sanctions instead.
The alternative is usually waiting until the other side goes too far and you have to go to war.
Though in Russia’s case, that would take 5 minutes before they bombed their own kremlin by mistake.
I’m interested in examples not hypotheticals.
Hitler, the Sudatenland, WW2.
Do you mean the lack of sanctions was responsible for WWII? Quite hard to see what sanctions could have been put in place without globalisation as we see it today.
The lack of response was responsible for WW2.
So maybe the true lesson is that we need to get even more involved on the ground in Ukraine.
Who else will march the street in protest?
Do you have examples of sanctions resulting in protests which have changed something for the better?
Edit: six downvotes and no responses; if the answer in your head, feel free to post instead.