The article can be found here.
So, what happens now? Russia decided to retaliate against our actions. We released a sanction against some of the Russian government officials, so they decided to do the same to us. They released their own sanction saying that certain officials of our government could not come into Russia. They also released a statement about how they feel about what we did. They degrade our actions, and say that we took them from "the arsenal of the past," and many things like that.
I do not have the full information, so I do not automatically want to jump in and declare Russia is terrible for saying and doing what they did. However, the fact that they actually did that is what frightens me. How many times have we seen siblings get in fights and do things just to spite the other sibling, no matter where the injustice was committed? Did any of them end well? I think that the emotions of everyone need to cool down so that there are no explosions (pardon the pun) because of the conflict going on in Ukraine right now.
Your sibling analogy (and the tweets from John McCain and John Boehner) made me chuckle. Countries and politicians behaving as such I think is a very apt description.
ReplyDeleteRussia is probably in-the-right more-so than we are here. A majority of Crimeans wanted to join Russia, so Russia sees itself as essentially right. Moreover, other Global powers, such as the U.S., have attempted to install or prop-up governments friendly to themselves without the extra step of voting even taking place (Iraq, Afghanistan, virtually all U.S. incursions in Central and South America, Cambodia in the 1980's i.e. Pol Pot, etc.). So, either a ironic double-standard exists or Russia is clearly in the right.
I agree with your comments Tanner. It seems like each action the US or Russia takes will elicit a response from the other. The US needs to be careful in this situation, but also should not back down to Russia.
ReplyDeleteI'm becoming more and more isolationist. Maybe I'll defect to a country that lives what it preaches, like Switzerland. If they finally got involved in something, the world might take the issue a little more seriously, or, at least, they would think that Switzerland finally snapped. I think our lack of credibility in this issue reflects the need for a little more domestic foreign-relation continuity.
ReplyDeleteWe see how America gets into everyone's business, and how other countries are not necessarily fans of this. Russia has a right to a response, because what we did is not necessarily right either. I agree with Noah. Let's all move to Switzerland.
ReplyDeleteSimple Sanctions are not enough. We need to attack them, and fatally wound the Russian Economy. Billions of dollars are being cashed out of the Moscow Exchange and I think trillions more needs to be pulled out of the already troubled Russian economy as we repair our emerging markets sector.
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