For people who oppose sanctions on foreign dictators or leaders who commit humanitarian abuses, what do you suggest?

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Please be fairly specific instead of using a vague "diplomacy...." diplomacy how?

I've seen anti-sanction stuff come up recently and it's like... OK you can have that thought I suppose, but then like... What are your options going to be for a foreign dictator?

For people who oppose sanctions on Venezuela and or Syria, what would you preferred method be for dealing with Maduro and or Assad?

 

[Atisha]

Let the chips fall where they may.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Let the chips fall where they may.

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I mean, OK, but we should at least like think about this for a minute.

Let's say Assad decides in 2021 that since he won the Syrian Civil War, he has the political strength to call for wide scale ethnic cleansing against Sunni Muslims left in Syria.

Should we still just let the chips fall where they may?

 

[Deleted member 8583]

There are different type of sanctions, so it depends. Some hit really hard the general population like general economic sanctions, others target directly the capital of dictators and their family. Both will always have an impact in the general population but the second type is usually lower. I am for the second type of sanctions.

 

[Deleted member 3208]

Let the chips fall where they may.

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So... never? Maduro would stay in power until he died.

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

Most dictators are also kleptocrats. So at least design the sanctions in a way that hurts their bottom line.

But there is also a lot of regions in the world that have been historically fucked and there is no way to unfuck them, for example vast parts of central asia.
There is literally nothing we can do there expect send money to prevent the worst.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Not really opposed to sanctions on dictatorships, however they have to be used in consort with a majority consensus of various other nations, at the UN in regards to the end goal of forcing an entity to the table regarding negotiations to quit.

It cannot be done unilaterally. it can not be done at the whim of a nation who stands to gain and it cannot be on the basis of disposing a democratically elected regime.

Most importantly(to me), they have to be used without hypocrisy. if your going to condemn human rights violations and dictatorships, they cant just be convenient enemies, but also allies who are knowingly engaging in state sanctioned human rights violations as well

That is something the US never does and has no intention of doing as long as the powers stay as they are.

 

[BringBackSonics]

Please be fairly specific instead of using a vague "diplomacy...." diplomacy how?

I've seen anti-sanction stuff come up recently and it's like... OK you can have that thought I suppose, but then like... What are your options going to be for a foreign dictator?

For people who oppose sanctions on Venezuela and or Syria, what would you preferred method be for dealing with Maduro and or Assad?

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Thoughts and prayers /s

Seriously, outside of direct military intervention, sanctions against party elites/military/ogliarchs is the best way to bring them back around. Or give them a soft landing place for exile.

 

[KillLaCam]

Target things that'll actually effect you. Most of these sanctions effect the average person more than anything

 

[Atisha]

I mean, OK, but we should at least like think about this for a minute.

Let's say Assad decides in 2021 that since he won the Syrian Civil War, he has the political strength to call for wide scale ethnic cleansing against Sunni Muslims left in Syria.

Should we still just let the chips fall where they may?

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Ah, a what if?

If we are playing that game, i don't think he would. Whom would it serve? To undermine the establishment? Yeah. No.

Interfering with a foreign dictator is inimical with our collective better interests. See the war in iraq and Et Al.

 

[Menx64]

There are different type of sanctions, so it depends. Some hit really hard the general population like general economic sanctions, others target directly the capital of dictators and their family. Both will always have an impact in the general population but the second type is usually lower. I am for the second type of sanctions.

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Exactly. sanction the guys on charge, not the regular folks.

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

Let the chips fall where they may.

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People like you would have let Hitler go way back when.

 

[Ogodei]

From the literature I read in grad school, sanctions tend not to work. It wasn't the sanctions that ended Apartheid, but a political awakening among South African whites and the National Party in particular backing off from their hardline stances.

As far as regime change goes, only war actually works and we've seen that it can't guarantee a peaceful aftermath.

Now, sanctions could be seen as a moral obligation, as in why should the country support the enrichment of an oppressor class, even if the sanctions are useless or even counterproductive (as some research suggests) to achieving policy goals, there's the moral question of contributing to the enrichment of a terrible system, but from what I remember, they don't work, so there is that argument against them if you're of the mind that government should only enact a law to achieve some tangible end.

So the question is: what does work, short of war? And the answer is probably diplomacy (despite the OP's call here). Whatever group forms the base of support for the regime needs to be convinced that supporting the regime is no longer in its best interests, or the elites of the regime itself need to buy into the idea of reform (as was the case in most of the Warsaw Pact). A better way needs to be demonstrated and then you need to hope that the people behind the regime either force the regime to change or withdraw their support so that it collapses.

 

[Atisha]

So... never? Maduro would stay in power until he died.

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You think it's Maduro who is at the root of the myriad sufferings of people of Venezuela. I believe it is the handiwork of usurpers, who have been at their game for well over two decades.

I'm going to drink your milkshake. - Daniel Plainview

 

[Atisha]

People like you would have let Hitler go way back when.

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Absolutely not. I would have followed my conscience, and gone just like Churchill.

Your equation is hilarous though.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

You think it's Maduro who is at the root of the myriad sufferings of people of Venezuela. I believe it is the handiwork of usurpers, who have been at their game for well over two decades.

I'm going to drink your milkshake. - Daniel Plainview

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What the fuck is happening in this post.

 

[Kirblar]

Exactly. sanction the guys on charge, not the regular folks.

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This is generally what's done nowadays. It's why Russia's sanctions pissed Putin off so much and most of the Venezuela sanctions were similar until the most recent ones aimed at choking off Maduro's remaining internal support in the military.

What the fuck is happening in this post.

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2 decades of pro-Chavez/Maduro propaganda was out on the web for a reason.

 

[Calamari41]

People like you would have let Hitler go way back when.

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I feel like it lessens the legacy of Hitler when you make this comparison.

 

[Kirblar]

I feel like it lessens the legacy of Hitler when you make this comparison.

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There was a very, very strong isolationist movement in the US at the time that didn't want the US involved or accepting refugees. Pearl Harbor forcibly dragged us in. Invoking WWII instead of Hitler is probably the much better thing to specify, just to avoid escalation of the analogy.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I feel like it lessens the legacy of Hitler when you make this comparison.

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I mean, the poster posted this in response to "what should we do if Assad does ethnic cleansing against the rest of the Sunni Muslims left in Syria"

"
Ah, a what if?

If we are playing that game, i don't think he would. Whom would it serve? To undermine the establishment? Yeah. No. Interfering with a foreign dictator is inimical with our collective better interests. See the war in iraq and Et Al. "

Which is incoherent but I think is anti doing anything in the case of widespread genocide?

 

[Calamari41]

There was a very, very strong isolationist movement in the US at the time that didn't want the US involved or accepting refugees. Pearl Harbor forcibly dragged us in. Invoking WWII instead of Hitler is probably the much better thing to specify, just to avoid escalation of the analogy.

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So you think that Venezuela is about to pop off like the Ostfront in the mid 20th century unless we step in?

 

[Atisha]

What the fuck is happening in this post.

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Check out the Wiki on Venezulea / US realations going back to early 2000.

Here's the thing i want to make perfectly clear.

It is a national sin, profoundly so, to be dicking around in the affairs of other nations, for any reason other than real righteousness.

 

[nomis]

 

[Kirblar]

So you think that Venezuela is about to pop off like the Ostfront in the mid 20th century unless we step in?

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No, the point is more that even when thing were THAT bad, we still had a lot of people saying we needed to do absolutely nothing- the circumstances fundamentally don't matter to a lot of people with that mentality, they just want to ostrich up. Military force would be an obviously be a ridiculous notion right now given the circumstances. But "doing nothing" isn't a good option either, because when the opposition comes to you and asks you to freeze Maduro's bank accounts- you will have to make a choice because doing nothing will be neutral, it will be actively making a choice.

 

[nomis]

People like you would have let Hitler go way back when.

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lmao yes I've heard all about maduro's plans for his own thousand year venezuelan reich

gg

very not false equivalence

 

[Calamari41]

No, the point is more that even when thing were THAT bad, we still had a lot of people saying we needed to do absolutely nothing- the circumstances fundamentally don't matter to a lot of people with that mentality, they just want to ostrich up. Military force would be an obviously be a ridiculous notion right now given the circumstances. But "doing nothing" isn't a good option either, because when the opposition comes to you and asks you to freeze Maduro's bank accounts- you will have to make a choice because doing nothing will be neutral, it will be actively making a choice.

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At what point is it our right to meddle to that extent with another nation when 81-86% of the public of that nation don't want you to?

I'm assuming those poll numbers posted above are accurate. If they're not, consider it a hypothetical question.

 

[Avinash117]

From the literature I read in grad school, sanctions tend not to work. It wasn't the sanctions that ended Apartheid, but a political awakening among South African whites and the National Party in particular backing off from their hardline stances.

As far as regime change goes, only war actually works and we've seen that it can't guarantee a peaceful aftermath.

Now, sanctions could be seen as a moral obligation, as in why should the country support the enrichment of an oppressor class, even if the sanctions are useless or even counterproductive (as some research suggests) to achieving policy goals, there's the moral question of contributing to the enrichment of a terrible system, but from what I remember, they don't work, so there is that argument against them if you're of the mind that government should only enact a law to achieve some tangible end.

So the question is: what does work, short of war? And the answer is probably diplomacy (despite the OP's call here). Whatever group forms the base of support for the regime needs to be convinced that supporting the regime is no longer in its best interests, or the elites of the regime itself need to buy into the idea of reform (as was the case in most of the Warsaw Pact). A better way needs to be demonstrated and then you need to hope that the people behind the regime either force the regime to change or withdraw their support so that it collapses.

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The last part seems very circumstantial. It would seem that there needs to be a significant good reason for the supporters of regime( the ones that have the power) to turn against the government. If there isn't going to be any type of pressure that is going to be applied to the regime what reason should they lesson to a foreign power? They would only think about abandoning the regime for internal reasons and not external since there isn't any pressure being used against them. Again, a lot of factors that would need to go your way.

 

[ahoyhoy]

I can't think of any other actions a state can take against another state besides sanctions and war.

You can criticize sanctions for being too severe or not directed at the bad actors, but I don't know how you can say that the world has an obligation to protect people in sovereign nations without either sanctions or invasion.

 

[julia crawford]

Well a good first step is reinforcing your embassies and assisting and accelerating the process of allowing people to leave the country/acquire foreign citizenship. Including working with neighbouring countries to assist people escaping by land.

 

[Kirblar]

At what point is it our right to meddle to that extent with another nation when 81-86% of the public of that nation don't want you to?

I'm assuming those poll numbers posted above are accurate. If they're not, consider it a hypothetical question.

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Generally when the second tweet on the timeline of the guy who wrote it is an RT complaining about "Russian fearmongering" I'm not going to be trusting the source's framing. (That being said those numbers being high would make sense both from a "please don't invade us" perspective on the former and "no one likes sanctions on their own country ever" on the latter.)

That said, yes, when things get very bad to the point where military intervention is inevitable, that number is going to generally be irrelevant what that country thinks of intervention because it means you're going to war and generally at that point you don't really give a shit what they think. But again, that would be an absolutely ridiculous notion given current circumstances.

 

[MeaningOfKarma]

At what point is it our right to meddle to that extent with another nation when 81-86% of the public of that nation don't want you to?

I'm assuming those poll numbers posted above are accurate. If they're not, consider it a hypothetical question.

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This is the part where I ask you if you'd be OK with not doing anything about Israelis bulldozing Palestinian homes because 80% of Israelis don't want to be interfered with

 

[Avinash117]

At what point is it our right to meddle to that extent with another nation when 81-86% of the public of that nation don't want you to?

I'm assuming those poll numbers posted above are accurate. If they're not, consider it a hypothetical question.

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I think it highly depends on multitude of factors. The vast majority of the people may not what any assistance, the ones that are affect most by the regime might want help, around half the population might want so form of assistance but not military , etc. It is really dependent on the country and what is happening in it. If Russia starts entrenching itself in Ukraine I could see a sizeable to majority of the Ukrainians wanting some form of direct and indirect assistance that is not just diplomacy.

 

[Deleted member 32561]

Not really opposed to sanctions on dictatorships, however they have to be used in consort with a majority consensus of various other nations, at the UN in regards to the end goal of forcing an entity to the table regarding negotiations to quit.

It cannot be done unilaterally. it can not be done at the whim of a nation who stands to gain and it cannot be on the basis of disposing a democratically elected regime.

Most importantly(to me), they have to be used without hypocrisy. if your going to condemn human rights violations and dictatorships, they cant just be convenient enemies, but also allies who are knowingly engaging in state sanctioned human rights violations as well

That is something the US never does and has no intention of doing as long as the powers stay as they are.

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This.

If the US had the intention of helping Venezuela get back on it's feet and let it's people decide it's future similar to how MacArthur handled Japan post WW2, THAT'S one thing.

But we don't. The US government doesn't actually give a shit about the Venezuelan people at all. It gives a shit about access to oil and having footholds in foreign regions. US action against Maduro or Chavez has always been motivated by greed and power, not by the crimes against their people. We've seen what the US does to these targets. Iraq and Afghanistan are fucking warzones still.

If we actually cared about humanitarian action, we'd be sanctioning and threatening military action against Saudi Arabia, but since they're willing to give us oil, we don't give a shit.

I hope Maduro gets ousted, by talk or by action. But it can't be spearheaded by the US. This sort of thing is exactly what the UN exists for.

Edit:

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This is based on a poll done by Hinterlaces, which is an intelligence gathering organization directly tied to TeleSur, the Venezuelan government news organization which essentially runs pro-Chavista/Maduro propaganda. I'd take it with a grain of salt. Just a heads up.

 

[Inuhanyou]

This.

If the US had the intention of helping Venezuela get back on it's feet and let it's people decide it's future similar to how MacArthur handled Japan post WW2, THAT'S one thing.

But we don't. The US government doesn't actually give a shit about the Venezuelan people at all. It gives a shit about access to oil and having footholds in foreign regions. US action against Maduro or Chavez has always been motivated by greed and power, not by the crimes against their people. We've seen what the US does to these targets. Iraq and Afghanistan are fucking warzones still.

If we actually cared about humanitarian action, we'd be sanctioning and threatening military action against Saudi Arabia, but since they're willing to give us oil, we don't give a shit.

I hope Maduro gets ousted, by talk or by action. But it can't be spearheaded by the US. This sort of thing is exactly what the UN exists for.

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110%. That's the same reason we're enemies with Iran, the same reason a ton of countries in latin america are fucked up, and of course, the middle east can count in this as well. These places all have their problems to begin with, but our imperialism has made things far worse and complex a situation, and put us directly in the line of fire in regards to anything that happens in these areas.

 

[lmcfigs]

It depends on what the sanctions are doing. But it seems contradictory to say that you care about people suffering in a country and support policies that intentionally worsens their suffering.

 

[Armaros]

Im just reading long posts that end up reading as "thoughts and prayers"

 

[Ogodei]

The last part seems very circumstantial. It would seem that there needs to be a significant good reason for the supporters of regime( the ones that have the power) to turn against the government. If there isn't going to be any type of pressure that is going to be applied to the regime what reason should they lesson to a foreign power? They would only think about abandoning the regime for internal reasons and not external since there isn't any pressure being used against them. Again, a lot of factors that would need to go your way.

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The thing about dictatorships is that they often carry the seeds of their own destruction. They are typically designed to extract wealth from the country, and the dictatorship's alignment with their "base" is a marriage of convenience. If the wealthy prop up a military strongman, they may turn on that strongman when the strongman realizes that the most wealth to be had is in taking from those same wealthy elites.

For the Bolshevik dictatorships, the destruction came from the somewhat good intentions of the leadership. Seeking to revitalize their countries they had to embrace programs of economic openness, and then political openness to enforce that, and so destruction. For something like the South Korean military dictatorship, the bourgeois professionals who had backed it later allied with pro-democratic forces to take it down.

A dictatorship typically needs a raison d'etre. There was some sort of call to action that brought it about, and as that reason expires incentive for change comes around when the dictatorship's natural weaknesses (that is, inability to change and massive corruption) come to light. It's one of the reasons you could argue that North Korea and Cuba survived while all of their brethren fell or transformed beyond recognition (like China and Vietnam). The embargo on Cuba is for the Cuban people an ever-present reminder of why they went for Castro in the first place, they can see the capitalist forces that continue to impoverish them and still turn to the Communists. The state of perpetual armistice in the Korean peninsula does the same for North Korea.

This isn't to say you should coddle dictatorships either, but programs of systemic isolation can create a sense of fear that brings them towards the regime when they otherwise would consider going against them.

Short of full military intervention to overthrow the regime directly, losing a war is often effective. Losing a war (or getting deadlocked in a stalemate in Greece's case) ended dictatorships in Argentina and Greece. The regime needs to prove its inability to address a crisis.

 

[Masoyama]

You think it's Maduro who is at the root of the myriad sufferings of people of Venezuela. I believe it is the handiwork of usurpers, who have been at their game for well over two decades.

I'm going to drink your milkshake. - Daniel Plainview

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Absolutely not. I would have followed my conscience, and gone just like Churchill.

Your equation is hilarous though.

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Ah yes, lets leave Maduro alone and follow the example of the true hero of international restraint - Winston Churchill.

 

[Opto]

Globally, sanctions are good when actually motivated by a sense of justice, but given that countries (US COUGH COUGH) often want something economically in return for regime change. Targeted sanctions to reduce harm to a population not at fault for their leadership is a good, albeit slow, process. It doesn't mean complete success however, and while the idea of force is appealing to bring swift freedom to a country, without it being a defensive measure, we're just repeating a pattern of worsening the situation.

 

[samoyed]

China showed a good example of how you can microtarget aggressive economic actions to hit a particular social bloc. If typical US sanctions had this kind of precision people would feel a lot better about them.

Currently, the US allows for way too much collateral damage in their sanctions, which cause people to reasonably think "is this really going to help?".

 

[Freakzilla]

The answer lies within the ability of a country to prevent even one of its citizens to go hungry, homeless, or without access to medical care.

 

[Ichthyosaurus]

The answer lies within the ability of a country to prevent even one of its citizens to go hungry, homeless, or without access to medical care.

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Several countries have dealt with issues like that which have gone into full blown civil war, and they still needed outside intervention to prevent it being a slaughter. Not every country can solve their issues internally by themselves, many times it ends up in their defeat. This is why in the First Gulf War the rebels were dependent on HW supporting them, without that they got slaughtered, as well as Trump leaving the Kurds to get purged by Turkey in Syria.

 

[Atisha]

Ah yes, lets leave Maduro alone and follow the example of the true hero of international restraint - Winston Churchill.

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I view Churchill as a dignitary making hard decisions in absurd circumstances for the wellbeing of the proletariat, and nothing other.

 

[Kirblar]

I view Churchill as a dignitary making hard decisions in absurd circumstances for the wellbeing of the proletariat, and nothing other.

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You really need to brush up on your pre-WWII Churchill knowledge.

 

[Atisha]

The answer lies within the ability of a country to prevent even one of its citizens to go hungry, homeless, or without access to medical care.

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Then these United States should address thier problems here before dictating the Whiles of another country.

 

[Atisha]

You really need to brush up on your pre-WWII Churchill knowledge.

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Obsequious. Please do tell.

 

[Kitad]

From the literature I read in grad school, sanctions tend not to work. It wasn't the sanctions that ended Apartheid, but a political awakening among South African whites and the National Party in particular backing off from their hardline stances.

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Couldn't it be possible that sanctions that were threatening the whites bottom line helped with their sudden political "awakening"?

 

[Ogodei]

Couldn't it be possible that sanctions that were threatening the whites bottom line helped with their sudden political "awakening"?

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It has been a hella long time and I wish I could remember the literature, but its point was pretty clear that it did not have a clear causal impact.

 

[Mr. Fantastic]

It's easy for people with no skin in the game, typing away from their computers in their first world country to act sanctimonious about this shit. Makes me ill.

 

[Masoyama]

I view Churchill as a dignitary making hard decisions in absurd circumstances for the wellbeing of the proletariat, and nothing other.

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That is a hilarious position to defend. Churchill was a war monster that cause the starvation of many Indians and was an avid defender of gassing uncivilized people like the Pakistani, Afghans and the Boers.