No. of Recommendations: 12
The current sanctions regime isn't imposing enough economic harm on Russia to affect what they're doing.
Yes, it is. As pointed out upthread, Russia's rapidly approaching the point where it's burned through all their foreign currency reserves and reached unsustainable levels of debt. The sanctions force Russia to finance their war operations primarily through consuming their reserves and borrowing - and that can't go on forever.
I'm 100% willing to try to inflict as much economic harm as possible on Russia. I think that secondary sanctions in the form of embargo-level tariffs will not inflict economic harm on Russia, and indeed will have the unintended consequence of helping them out. If you tell China and India it's either us or Russia, they'll both choose to continue getting their energy from Russia - and being completely cut off from us means that they'll have no choice but to continue to integrate their own economies together. Which makes things worse for the war.
Perhaps. But there's now a security guarantee on the table, and the Ukrainians would have a potentially big upgrade in terms of lethality that the Russians wouldn't be able to match.
The security "guarantee" is worthless. Do you think that a pledge from the United States to militarily intervene against Russia in Ukraine - especially from this President, who never honors past pledges if he believes that America's current interests require anything different? If the U.S. is unwilling to abide the current conflict, and our limited contribution of just weapons and funding, does anyone really think that Trump (or any future MAGA President like Vance if he wins in 2028) would actually send in U.S. troops then?
Which again begs the question: are YOU willing to
-Impose painful sanctions on Russia's business partners
-Involve US troops directly
It sounds like 'no' to both.
That's right. I think Ukraine's on the path to victory. Painful sanctions on Russia's business partners will be counterproductive and end up making the situation worse, and involving U.S. troops directly makes the situation far too dangerous by risking changing this into a global (rather than a regional) military theater. Neither of those things would help, and neither of them are necessary.
