Hello, you describe president Maduro of Venezuela as a “dictator”, that is completely untrue as he was fairly elected by the Venezuelan people. The USA and its mindless allies would rather have an extreme right wing puppet instead. The murder and mayhem caused to the people of South America over many years by this policy of regime change to fascist puppets carried out by the USA and its allies is a disgrace.
There is no contradiction between admitting someone was elected and calling them a dictator. The test is not whether they were elected, but whether there exists a process by which they could be fairly defeated in a next election. The US should be held to account for its past sins in South America and elsewhere, but if the majority of Venezuelans have no viable democratic path for pursuing a desire to displace Maduro, there is no reason that they should pay the price for our past actions.
There are elections due in 2024 so what you say isn’t true. The “opposition” leader, Juan Guaido is widely accepted to be a stooge of the USA and allies. The pressure put on Maduro and the Venezuelan people has been tremendous yet he has still got huge support the last time I had a dig around for believable data, you can trust none of the msm on Venezuela.
There were elections in 2018 too, Alexander. Some Americans (including me--and I'd guess you as well) are appalled at current attacks on voting integrity in the US, and worry that the process for fair elections will be critically compromised here by 2024. Compare that to Venezuela's process in 2018 or the prospects for it in 2024. If Venezuela's elections constitute a fair and viable path for voters to displace Maduro, then what in the world do we have to worry about here? (I should add a note: I assumed that when you initially said Madura was fairly elected you were referring to the 2013 election; if you actually believe the election of 2018 was fair we disagree by more than I supposed. By "a next election" I meant the one in 2018.)
The fact that Guaidó is a fatally compromised alternative, and now recognized as such, does not alter the nature of Maduro's regime as undemocratic.
You're free to decide that the MSM reports are universally untrue, but that doesn't mean you have valid grounds for determining what sources are believable. (BTW, one of the sources I noticed while looking for recent poll figures was Al Jazeera, but perhaps it joined the MSM in a clandestine move.) You may have expert training, for all I know, but if not, then, I suspect you are like the like the rest of us who pore through the landfill of online "information" searching for items to reclaim, and generally choose ones that go with the décor already furnishing our thinking spaces.
I was referring to the 2013 election, I think, and I have been hunting around on the internet to find a report at the time by the international observers saying it was one of the fairest elections he could remember, I couldn’t find the damn thing. I’m not sure about the elections after that but wonder what would lead to the swing from a fair election to one’s I can’t be sure of. The huge pressure put on Maduro and his government by unreasonable sanctions is bound to take its toll. The extreme right wing may also be be fomenting trouble but it’s so hard to get reliable information. I will go and look up Al Jazeera thanks. I admit to wanting to find what compliments my ideals and been stung a couple of times so I do try to stick with facts as best I can.
What happened between 2013 and 2018 was that as Maduro ran into economic troubles and sizable protests of political arrests, his legislature granted him the power to rule by decree in 2015, the courts first dissolved a growing recall process in 2016, then dissolved the opposition-dominated legislature (the one Guido now leads) and created an alternative legislature in 2017, through an improvised electoral process that somehow resulted in a 100% pro-Maduro membership. That legislature then called another improvised election, crafted to achieve its result--that's the 2018 early election.
I'm not a specialist; I just pay ordinary attention to various news sources as I have time (I'll even grit my teeth and check Fox or Breitbart sometimes), read Wikipedia, and then see if Google searches can help me correct or expand it--and then sometimes I spend a day bothering people with posts. I don't want you to be stung again simply by accepting what I say (not that I think you'll do that). I like Substack columns like Peter's because I learn from the comments--a completely novel experience in the age of online news boards.
Thanks for the link, I will bring Al Jazeera within my compass , I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t paid more attention to before now. In my own wandering on the web I came across this site, https://maydayvictoria.com/?p=434#comments, I have not had time to get an idea of the veracity of the reporting but I’ll see how it goes.
Pushed to give an answer were I to be asked I think the Venezuelan people would be better off with Maduro, I don’t want another Pinochet, Galtieri and the current Brazilian leader. Maduro could well be a dud and not give the people what they deserve so we’ll see.
"... sanctions helped sink Venezuela’s per capita GDP by more than sixty percent between 2017 and 2021, yet the country’s dictator Nicolas Maduro, remains in power."
It ill-becomes a citizen of a country with an electoral college and just two parties, both fanatically capitalist, to complain about a lack of democracy elsewhere.
The electoral college was the first modern version of democratic national election. It has only rarely factored into presidential results and it applies only to two offices. The two-party system is de facto and can be ended by voters at any time. "Fanatically capitalist" is a strange term to use for a country with social security, labor unions, Medicare, antitrust laws, and a huge inhibiting regulatory apparatus.
I'd like to see the electoral college abolished. I think the barriers to entry of new parties are far too high, due mostly to a practically unrestricted campaign/party finance system. I think capitalist markets are deeply misregulated, antitrust almost illusory, and unions under siege. But I also believe that most of these features are generally supported, to my dismay, by a majority of Americans (or near enough that even without the electoral college, candidates straying far from current norms could not win national elections). Democracy can yield plenty of bad outcomes. It's still democracy, and the means for changing policies lies in the ballot box. (Which is precisely why fighting battles on marginal things like mail-in/early voting actually matters.)
You can call a dog a cat. It's still a dog. The USA does not have much to be proud of. I refer you to the well-known 2014 study by Gilens & Page on the USA's so-called democracy which concluded: "Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts,” the authors write. And if “policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans,” as they found, “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
"Seriously threatened" sounds right to me. I don't mean to understate the danger of our political finance system, reinforced by relentless lobbying. Together they blur the roles of legislation and fundraising. But potential solutions lie within the sphere of political advocacy, activism, and the ballot. If the "American public" determines it wants to have more influence on policy outcomes, it has the tools available to accomplish that end within the system that exists.
You can call the American political system a dog if you want, but it has nothing in common with dogs like Russia or the PRC, and US citizens have perfectly good standing to call them out, or to call out Venezuela, for that matter. Maduro rules by decree based on an election outcome no independent observing organizations judged legitimate, while polls indicate a sustained support level under 20%. There is nothing illegitimate about a US citizen calling him out as undemocratic. (The fact that our own former Maduro-wannabe took that position doesn't mean it's wrong).
Sending the message "we no longer have democratic standing in the world" seems to me a good way to drown out the crucial message that we need to take active steps right now to avoid losing that standing. The overstatement of the former acts to discredit the latter. And it serves no one to tell the world that American citizens will no longer be calling out autocrats because the democratic failings in the US mean that we must stay silent in shame until we figure out a way to correct them.
The real problem that sanctions cannot fix is this: the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely avoidable. It's the ultimate result of a US foreign policy fixated on boxing Russia into a corner in the vain hope that it would submit to the mighty US, a great game played out in Eurasia. I get that any nation's foreign policy wants to advance that nation's interest, but a realistic foreign policy must consider the possible outcomes of implementing any agenda. It beggars the imagination that the US, knowing that Russia drew a red line with Ukraine admission into NATO, did not consider the likelihood that Russia would ultimately respond with military force to the US's repeated pressure to cleave Ukraine from Russia and align it with the West, with the door wide open for NATO admission. Reality has now smacked this country in the face, and sanctions are a last hail mary attempt to salvage another foreign policy blunder rooted in hubris instead of reality. The US doesn't have a clue what sanctions will accomplish, they are a placeholder until the country comes to grips with the hard reality of what it must concede to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. It's no longer a unipolar US world, and the sooner we accept that reality, the better off all of us will be.
I'm puzzled why the options presented are simply to impose sanctions or lift them. As I understand it, the US and its allies have imposed an unprecedentedly broad array of sanctions. Why can't President Biden announce that certain, specified sanctions will be lifted upon Ukraine and Russia reaching an agreement that results in an effective cease fire, but that other sanctions will remain in place until Russia withdraws fully, up to and including (depending on what the Ukraine government deems in its best interests) restoration of the status quo ante. (A reasonable modification would be status quo ante with a guarantee for a neutrally-monitored referendum in Crimea, which might well lead to a de jure shift that aligns with the existing de facto one.)
With the enormous leverage that unprecedented sanctions provides, I don't see any reason the allies must trade it all on a best-available-now basis, when Ukraine is negotiating with a loaded gun already firing at its head.
Russia invaded because it believed that the status quo was moving inexorably toward Ukraine in NATO. The Kiev government was making no attempt for a path to Donbass autonomy, specified in the Minsk II agreement, in fact it was putting more military pressure on the breakaway provinces with the ultimate goal of folding them into the central government structure. Once unification happened, NATO membership was possible. Given that the majority of people in the region speak and identify as Russian, and the brutal treatment that Russian-speaking people there had gotten from the Kiev government and it's out of control militias, Russia was not going to give up the Donbass. Russia intends to take the Donbass, and it's not going to give it back, same with Crimea. I believe, according to polls I have read, that any referendum in either region will favor alliance with Russia. They do not want to be a part of a Ukrainian government that has brutalized their people. Accept that, and the rest of Ukraine as a neutral country that cannot join any military alliance, and a deal can be reached.
Mike, You have accepted as true a narrative that Russia has constructed. I believe it includes elements that are valid but is largely false.
The evidence I have seen does not indicate any likelihood of a majority in the entirety of either portion of the Donbass; I believe you are confusing the enclaves in each region near the border with Russia for the entirety of the regions. Those enclaves, where separatists have gained power through force, may now favor unification with Russia, but the Russian war aims have never distinguished those informal regions from the far larger, formal jurisdictions. Nor would the precedent of small, ethnically diverse border regions being pried away through force be positive, any more than was true for the Sudetenland in 1938. I agree that Russia would prevail in a referendum in the Crimea, and I expect the US and Ukraine to be prepared for that outcome, once a monitored procedure is followed. I don't think "nationality trumps everything" would hold for voters in the Donbass regions, and I'm surprised at the easy way people are willing to reduce their conception of people distant from them to ethnic-nationalist caricatures. As for stories of brutality in the Donbass since 2014, if you think you've got an inside line on objective reporting, you're welcome to believe what you want. I'm agnostic on that one.
As for the arguments about NATO, I shared concern about NATO overreach on the usual grounds. I do not believe NATO admission was likely for Ukraine for the foreseeable future--there actually was no upside to NATO, in my view. (EU membership was quite a different prospect.) The reason the issue stayed alive was because of Ukraine's desire to be protected from Russian aggression, not a 21st century NATO desire for further expansion. The justification for Ukraine's fear is no longer in doubt. NATO would have done better to discourage Ukraine's appeal more actively, in my view, but bear in mind that there is no symmetry between suboptimal diplomacy on one side and the reality of aggressive threat, followed by its deployment on the other.
I do not think that fear of NATO is, in fact, what motivated this war on Russia's part, though it was a contributing factor and a great pretext. I believe the goal is a positive one: the re-expansion of Russia's borders, Russia's own Manifest Destiny. (Think about the judgment we now pass on our own history in that regard.) President Putin has told us, and I can't imagine why we would not believe him. I expect that you, like me, would deplore this behavior in the case of the US and its neighbors (the Cuban case is the clearest example). We would, because that's the judgment it deserves.
Ukraine is a sovereign state, comparable in population to Spain, much larger than Canada. I can see no justification on any basis other than power and fear to dictate to Ukrainians whether they can be armed or choose military allies as they see fit. If the world is ok with Russia usurping the sovereignty of Ukraine (and Belarus, and Georgia, and so on into the Baltics) then we can expect to hear no further gripes about naked US power expansion to the south (or north), and East and Southeast Asian peoples need to acknowledge that their political futures are China's to determine. (I once read a novel that shared that vision.) Once we start down that path, it's going to be increasingly hard not to continue. I had thought, though, that we were nearing a consensus that the military subjugation of imperialism had been an immoral adventure that we had learned to reject.
A fantastic, enlightening piece. I wonder, don’t the sanctions also affect the Middle East nations who import Russian wheat, basically relying on it for survival? In which case, that area could become more destabilized? Or is that more a result of the invasion itself?
I find it odd that Professor Beinart objects to sanctions on the Russian people while proposing Zionist sanctions on goods made in the West Bank. Yes, we know of the double standard vis-a-vis Israel in the international liberal agenda. Never mind.
Moving on to the crux of the issue will this help or hurt the Ukraine war? The reality is that Putin miscalculated, and he is likely to face regime change from within as a result, as every Russian leader since 1900 has experienced. This happened after Afghanistan, Cuba and you can keep going back in time. The sanctions job is to simply reinforce and hasten this decision among the generals who have been embarrassed by Putin and his gang and lay bare the Russian army whose funding has been diverted to Putin's cronies.
Hello, you describe president Maduro of Venezuela as a “dictator”, that is completely untrue as he was fairly elected by the Venezuelan people. The USA and its mindless allies would rather have an extreme right wing puppet instead. The murder and mayhem caused to the people of South America over many years by this policy of regime change to fascist puppets carried out by the USA and its allies is a disgrace.
There is no contradiction between admitting someone was elected and calling them a dictator. The test is not whether they were elected, but whether there exists a process by which they could be fairly defeated in a next election. The US should be held to account for its past sins in South America and elsewhere, but if the majority of Venezuelans have no viable democratic path for pursuing a desire to displace Maduro, there is no reason that they should pay the price for our past actions.
There are elections due in 2024 so what you say isn’t true. The “opposition” leader, Juan Guaido is widely accepted to be a stooge of the USA and allies. The pressure put on Maduro and the Venezuelan people has been tremendous yet he has still got huge support the last time I had a dig around for believable data, you can trust none of the msm on Venezuela.
There were elections in 2018 too, Alexander. Some Americans (including me--and I'd guess you as well) are appalled at current attacks on voting integrity in the US, and worry that the process for fair elections will be critically compromised here by 2024. Compare that to Venezuela's process in 2018 or the prospects for it in 2024. If Venezuela's elections constitute a fair and viable path for voters to displace Maduro, then what in the world do we have to worry about here? (I should add a note: I assumed that when you initially said Madura was fairly elected you were referring to the 2013 election; if you actually believe the election of 2018 was fair we disagree by more than I supposed. By "a next election" I meant the one in 2018.)
The fact that Guaidó is a fatally compromised alternative, and now recognized as such, does not alter the nature of Maduro's regime as undemocratic.
You're free to decide that the MSM reports are universally untrue, but that doesn't mean you have valid grounds for determining what sources are believable. (BTW, one of the sources I noticed while looking for recent poll figures was Al Jazeera, but perhaps it joined the MSM in a clandestine move.) You may have expert training, for all I know, but if not, then, I suspect you are like the like the rest of us who pore through the landfill of online "information" searching for items to reclaim, and generally choose ones that go with the décor already furnishing our thinking spaces.
I was referring to the 2013 election, I think, and I have been hunting around on the internet to find a report at the time by the international observers saying it was one of the fairest elections he could remember, I couldn’t find the damn thing. I’m not sure about the elections after that but wonder what would lead to the swing from a fair election to one’s I can’t be sure of. The huge pressure put on Maduro and his government by unreasonable sanctions is bound to take its toll. The extreme right wing may also be be fomenting trouble but it’s so hard to get reliable information. I will go and look up Al Jazeera thanks. I admit to wanting to find what compliments my ideals and been stung a couple of times so I do try to stick with facts as best I can.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply, Alexander. Here's the Al Jazeera link I was reading:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/11/out-of-options-venezuela-opposition-struggles-to-unseat-maduro
What happened between 2013 and 2018 was that as Maduro ran into economic troubles and sizable protests of political arrests, his legislature granted him the power to rule by decree in 2015, the courts first dissolved a growing recall process in 2016, then dissolved the opposition-dominated legislature (the one Guido now leads) and created an alternative legislature in 2017, through an improvised electoral process that somehow resulted in a 100% pro-Maduro membership. That legislature then called another improvised election, crafted to achieve its result--that's the 2018 early election.
I'm not a specialist; I just pay ordinary attention to various news sources as I have time (I'll even grit my teeth and check Fox or Breitbart sometimes), read Wikipedia, and then see if Google searches can help me correct or expand it--and then sometimes I spend a day bothering people with posts. I don't want you to be stung again simply by accepting what I say (not that I think you'll do that). I like Substack columns like Peter's because I learn from the comments--a completely novel experience in the age of online news boards.
Thanks for the link, I will bring Al Jazeera within my compass , I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t paid more attention to before now. In my own wandering on the web I came across this site, https://maydayvictoria.com/?p=434#comments, I have not had time to get an idea of the veracity of the reporting but I’ll see how it goes.
Pushed to give an answer were I to be asked I think the Venezuelan people would be better off with Maduro, I don’t want another Pinochet, Galtieri and the current Brazilian leader. Maduro could well be a dud and not give the people what they deserve so we’ll see.
"... sanctions helped sink Venezuela’s per capita GDP by more than sixty percent between 2017 and 2021, yet the country’s dictator Nicolas Maduro, remains in power."
It ill-becomes a citizen of a country with an electoral college and just two parties, both fanatically capitalist, to complain about a lack of democracy elsewhere.
The electoral college was the first modern version of democratic national election. It has only rarely factored into presidential results and it applies only to two offices. The two-party system is de facto and can be ended by voters at any time. "Fanatically capitalist" is a strange term to use for a country with social security, labor unions, Medicare, antitrust laws, and a huge inhibiting regulatory apparatus.
I'd like to see the electoral college abolished. I think the barriers to entry of new parties are far too high, due mostly to a practically unrestricted campaign/party finance system. I think capitalist markets are deeply misregulated, antitrust almost illusory, and unions under siege. But I also believe that most of these features are generally supported, to my dismay, by a majority of Americans (or near enough that even without the electoral college, candidates straying far from current norms could not win national elections). Democracy can yield plenty of bad outcomes. It's still democracy, and the means for changing policies lies in the ballot box. (Which is precisely why fighting battles on marginal things like mail-in/early voting actually matters.)
You can call a dog a cat. It's still a dog. The USA does not have much to be proud of. I refer you to the well-known 2014 study by Gilens & Page on the USA's so-called democracy which concluded: "Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts,” the authors write. And if “policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans,” as they found, “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
"Seriously threatened" sounds right to me. I don't mean to understate the danger of our political finance system, reinforced by relentless lobbying. Together they blur the roles of legislation and fundraising. But potential solutions lie within the sphere of political advocacy, activism, and the ballot. If the "American public" determines it wants to have more influence on policy outcomes, it has the tools available to accomplish that end within the system that exists.
You can call the American political system a dog if you want, but it has nothing in common with dogs like Russia or the PRC, and US citizens have perfectly good standing to call them out, or to call out Venezuela, for that matter. Maduro rules by decree based on an election outcome no independent observing organizations judged legitimate, while polls indicate a sustained support level under 20%. There is nothing illegitimate about a US citizen calling him out as undemocratic. (The fact that our own former Maduro-wannabe took that position doesn't mean it's wrong).
Sending the message "we no longer have democratic standing in the world" seems to me a good way to drown out the crucial message that we need to take active steps right now to avoid losing that standing. The overstatement of the former acts to discredit the latter. And it serves no one to tell the world that American citizens will no longer be calling out autocrats because the democratic failings in the US mean that we must stay silent in shame until we figure out a way to correct them.
Thanks again, Peter, for insightful and wise commentary. You are a mensch.
For once, I fully agree with Peter
The real problem that sanctions cannot fix is this: the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely avoidable. It's the ultimate result of a US foreign policy fixated on boxing Russia into a corner in the vain hope that it would submit to the mighty US, a great game played out in Eurasia. I get that any nation's foreign policy wants to advance that nation's interest, but a realistic foreign policy must consider the possible outcomes of implementing any agenda. It beggars the imagination that the US, knowing that Russia drew a red line with Ukraine admission into NATO, did not consider the likelihood that Russia would ultimately respond with military force to the US's repeated pressure to cleave Ukraine from Russia and align it with the West, with the door wide open for NATO admission. Reality has now smacked this country in the face, and sanctions are a last hail mary attempt to salvage another foreign policy blunder rooted in hubris instead of reality. The US doesn't have a clue what sanctions will accomplish, they are a placeholder until the country comes to grips with the hard reality of what it must concede to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. It's no longer a unipolar US world, and the sooner we accept that reality, the better off all of us will be.
I'm puzzled why the options presented are simply to impose sanctions or lift them. As I understand it, the US and its allies have imposed an unprecedentedly broad array of sanctions. Why can't President Biden announce that certain, specified sanctions will be lifted upon Ukraine and Russia reaching an agreement that results in an effective cease fire, but that other sanctions will remain in place until Russia withdraws fully, up to and including (depending on what the Ukraine government deems in its best interests) restoration of the status quo ante. (A reasonable modification would be status quo ante with a guarantee for a neutrally-monitored referendum in Crimea, which might well lead to a de jure shift that aligns with the existing de facto one.)
With the enormous leverage that unprecedented sanctions provides, I don't see any reason the allies must trade it all on a best-available-now basis, when Ukraine is negotiating with a loaded gun already firing at its head.
Russia invaded because it believed that the status quo was moving inexorably toward Ukraine in NATO. The Kiev government was making no attempt for a path to Donbass autonomy, specified in the Minsk II agreement, in fact it was putting more military pressure on the breakaway provinces with the ultimate goal of folding them into the central government structure. Once unification happened, NATO membership was possible. Given that the majority of people in the region speak and identify as Russian, and the brutal treatment that Russian-speaking people there had gotten from the Kiev government and it's out of control militias, Russia was not going to give up the Donbass. Russia intends to take the Donbass, and it's not going to give it back, same with Crimea. I believe, according to polls I have read, that any referendum in either region will favor alliance with Russia. They do not want to be a part of a Ukrainian government that has brutalized their people. Accept that, and the rest of Ukraine as a neutral country that cannot join any military alliance, and a deal can be reached.
Mike, You have accepted as true a narrative that Russia has constructed. I believe it includes elements that are valid but is largely false.
The evidence I have seen does not indicate any likelihood of a majority in the entirety of either portion of the Donbass; I believe you are confusing the enclaves in each region near the border with Russia for the entirety of the regions. Those enclaves, where separatists have gained power through force, may now favor unification with Russia, but the Russian war aims have never distinguished those informal regions from the far larger, formal jurisdictions. Nor would the precedent of small, ethnically diverse border regions being pried away through force be positive, any more than was true for the Sudetenland in 1938. I agree that Russia would prevail in a referendum in the Crimea, and I expect the US and Ukraine to be prepared for that outcome, once a monitored procedure is followed. I don't think "nationality trumps everything" would hold for voters in the Donbass regions, and I'm surprised at the easy way people are willing to reduce their conception of people distant from them to ethnic-nationalist caricatures. As for stories of brutality in the Donbass since 2014, if you think you've got an inside line on objective reporting, you're welcome to believe what you want. I'm agnostic on that one.
As for the arguments about NATO, I shared concern about NATO overreach on the usual grounds. I do not believe NATO admission was likely for Ukraine for the foreseeable future--there actually was no upside to NATO, in my view. (EU membership was quite a different prospect.) The reason the issue stayed alive was because of Ukraine's desire to be protected from Russian aggression, not a 21st century NATO desire for further expansion. The justification for Ukraine's fear is no longer in doubt. NATO would have done better to discourage Ukraine's appeal more actively, in my view, but bear in mind that there is no symmetry between suboptimal diplomacy on one side and the reality of aggressive threat, followed by its deployment on the other.
I do not think that fear of NATO is, in fact, what motivated this war on Russia's part, though it was a contributing factor and a great pretext. I believe the goal is a positive one: the re-expansion of Russia's borders, Russia's own Manifest Destiny. (Think about the judgment we now pass on our own history in that regard.) President Putin has told us, and I can't imagine why we would not believe him. I expect that you, like me, would deplore this behavior in the case of the US and its neighbors (the Cuban case is the clearest example). We would, because that's the judgment it deserves.
Ukraine is a sovereign state, comparable in population to Spain, much larger than Canada. I can see no justification on any basis other than power and fear to dictate to Ukrainians whether they can be armed or choose military allies as they see fit. If the world is ok with Russia usurping the sovereignty of Ukraine (and Belarus, and Georgia, and so on into the Baltics) then we can expect to hear no further gripes about naked US power expansion to the south (or north), and East and Southeast Asian peoples need to acknowledge that their political futures are China's to determine. (I once read a novel that shared that vision.) Once we start down that path, it's going to be increasingly hard not to continue. I had thought, though, that we were nearing a consensus that the military subjugation of imperialism had been an immoral adventure that we had learned to reject.
A fantastic, enlightening piece. I wonder, don’t the sanctions also affect the Middle East nations who import Russian wheat, basically relying on it for survival? In which case, that area could become more destabilized? Or is that more a result of the invasion itself?
Thanks. I worry about the effects of war + sanctions in the global south but i haven't found that much on the subject so far
I find it odd that Professor Beinart objects to sanctions on the Russian people while proposing Zionist sanctions on goods made in the West Bank. Yes, we know of the double standard vis-a-vis Israel in the international liberal agenda. Never mind.
Moving on to the crux of the issue will this help or hurt the Ukraine war? The reality is that Putin miscalculated, and he is likely to face regime change from within as a result, as every Russian leader since 1900 has experienced. This happened after Afghanistan, Cuba and you can keep going back in time. The sanctions job is to simply reinforce and hasten this decision among the generals who have been embarrassed by Putin and his gang and lay bare the Russian army whose funding has been diverted to Putin's cronies.
Did you read the piece? I said I support sanctions on Russia. By the way, on double standards https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/the-double-standards-fallacy?s=w
My apologies I stand corrected.