The USA has a longer story of military aggressions, that killed far, far, far more people.

Do you think Amazon should stop doing business with the USA, or are you saying you do not believe the international community should hold the USA accountable for their murderous incomprehensible actions around the world?

It's that it's Europe and yes the western democracies have a double standard of looking out for each other and near adjadcencies above other countries needs but that's because there's so much more to lose in terms of institutions that are very hard to build and can unfortunately very quickly be torn down.

The problem with this is that it only gets applied against the enemies of USA and never to USA and friends.

Not to Saudi Arabia, not to USA/UK/France, not to Israel.

Libya, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, etc are not worthy victims (see manufacturing consent).

The war fervor and demand for generating damage against "the others" is at an all time high and is very clearly propaganda.

There's no context (2014 to now, interesting things have been happening in Ukraine) nor desire for peace. It's full on white Vs black and calls for action, not diplomacy.

Those of us who have been following Geopolitcs for a while and remember Iraq and others... Will be way more skeptic than to buy a simplified narrative of us Vs "terrible them".

If the international community wants to hold Russia accountable, it should pressure Western Europe to stop buying Russian gas. Infrastructure companies grandstanding is idiotic.

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas exports has been a major topic of discussion - a search for "Nord Stream 2" might help you get up to date.

Are the existing gas pipelines shut off? Europeans could become the change they want to see and endure a couple of cold years and stop buying gas from places like Russia and Azerbaijan.

I assume you're an American living in a warm climate? I get the sense you don't understand what you're asking for.

Gas isn't just used for heating people. About 20% of Europe's power is generated using gas, and there is not enough spare capacity to compensate for that.

Germany is currently looking to extend the operating life of its nuclear powerplants and will indeed have to consider replacing them despite pledging not to. France and the UK are ahead on this, with the latter investing heavily in small-scale nuclear reactors. The first of those will still take another 10 years to arrive, though.

Even if gas was just for heating buildings, what you're asking for would kill quite a lot of elderly and vulnerable people. In the UK alone, it's estimated that 3000 people die each year due to fuel poverty already, and the UK is far from the coldest country in the region. Europe is not California.

You are of course correct that we should reduce dependence on fossil fuels (Russian or otherwise), and it was a major error of judgement by our leaders (over several decades) to get us into this position, but that cannot be rectified overnight.

I grew up without running water, electricity or heat in the 90s. I've had to read by candlelight, breathed kerosene fumes indoors to stay warm and burned old newspapers to climb up to the 10th floor apartment where we lived in complete darkness. I know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's pure hypocrisy that you want the other side to suffer now, but you want to roll off your reliance on Gazprom on a timescale of a decade as to not be inconvenienced.

We have a goal, but there is a limit to what we'll sacrifice to achieve it. It's no more complex than that, and definitely not hypocrisy.

They aren't holding Russia accountable, they holding Russians accountable and that seems like a terrible thing.

They're not holding Russians accountable, they're hoping that Russians will hold their own government accountable for once. Just, like, for once.

This is also the point of terrorist attacks: that the people will be so outraged when they learn about the terrorists' motives for the attack that they will rise up and "do something" about their government.

Americans can't be this shallow. This is ridiculous. THINK about what you are suggesting with these sanctions regimes. Sanctions are a crime against humanity, too.

Sanctions are not a crime against humanity. Nobody is forced to accept your currency, or to trade with you. Nobody is forced to provide dollar currency to the murderous, lying regime which has invaded Ukraine. Many Russians are supporting this evil war, out of cowardice or ignorance. They should share some of the pain. That may help them to wake up.

When sanctions result in a population starving, or children dying because they don't get medical care because of sanctions, they are crimes against humanity.

>They should share some of the pain.

Such utter totalitarian-authoritarian nonsense. Did 9/11 stop the US from bombing innocent people in the Middle East?

Russia isn’t starving and children aren’t deprived of medical care. As for 9/11, that is a pure red herring.

Maybe they are not currently but they could. Look at Cuba, US sanctions prevent even common medicine and food from being imported. I was on the receiving end of sanction (better say my parents, I was young living with them) in Yugoslavia. Sanctions just produced extreme poverty, hyperinflation and give more reason to bad actors/dictators to appoint even more extreme measures and justifications for them. Guys who are in power can even more easily hold to the power and use force against the populous. Destroying free media and maxing propaganda and sadly average person falls for propaganda if it is fed to him daily. IDK of one good example where sanctions toppled a dictator, Cuba, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc... Not saying nothing should be done, but this wide spread canceling of everything Russian will hurt ordinary people who will be in even less power to do something now.

> Sanctions just produced extreme poverty, hyperinflation and give more reason to bad actors/dictators to appoint even more extreme measures and justifications for them.

No, bad actors/dictators produce extreme poverty and hyperinflation.

> Guys who are in power can even more easily hold to the power and use force against the populous.

Too bad for the populace. Maybe they should have got off their arses and got rid of the bad guys a little earlier, eh?

> Destroying free media and maxing propaganda and sadly average person falls for propaganda if it is fed to him daily.

Do you really think it's sanctions from the West that have turned Russian media into propaganda mouthpieces?

Sanctions helped end apartheid.

Your experience is valid and interesting. Still, unless you’ve got a better alternative, and until sanctions do actually cause those potential harms, I think they are the best weapons we have.

No, but Yemen children are.

So .. Why are we supporting the KSA by shipping it weapons and refuelling their planes, then?

Because we learned that genocide by sanctions is an effective weapon, as per Iraq, Libya, etc. Alongside the children of Yemen, we are directing this same policy at the children of Russia.

This is the point of soft power. Enough pain, and people revolt against the dipshits that earned them the pain.

but if you cause pain to people, aren't you the dipshit?

Not if that people have accepted and are condoning a dictator that is causing even more pain (including to that people themselves); then they are the ultimate dipshits.

what about everyone else?

What about them (us)?

It's not the rest of the world that keeps putting dictators in power in Russia, is it? It's the Russians.

there isn't a single country throught history where the population would be unified in their political opinion, you aren't responsible for actions of your neighbours and there are no justification for using people as tools to hurt economies and states

> there are no justification for using people as tools to hurt economies and states

Yes of course there is: That's the only way to do it. What else do you think economies and states are, if not people?

entitie composed of many things, some of those things are people

Lack of large reaction to Putin's behavior goes through the stomach and smartphone apps of Russians. Remember 1989 and what the stage of famine and cold and lack of basics had to be, for Romanians to finally take the streets and bring Ceaușescu down. Hard! If the Russians can still sit comfortably at home, playing with Amazon, FB and Google, while their Ukrainian brothers are killed, that is no incentive for uprising. So - sorry - but action in this area seems to require a little incentive.

I haven't paid attention to what Google, Amazon, etc. are doing, nor do I particularly care.

NATO, EU, Switzerland and a few others are not trying to hold Russians accountable. They are trying to hit the Russian economy strong and hard to demonstrate that Putin's Russia cannot afford a war against the West. That's after Putin and his representatives articulated several times and in no uncertain terms the threat of a nuclear attack against the West.

Are people going to suffer for it? Absolutely. That's the definition of a war, even if it the West has chosen to use money to wage it, rather than deploying soldiers.

Is it worth it? Time will tell, I suppose.

All I can tell you is that in the past week, I have spent time role-playing/strategizing the entire situation with friends (that's how I evacuate stress, YMMV) and, based on the information I have at hand, I would have done the same if I was playing the West.

Would you support banning all US accounts to hold Biden accountable for attacks in Yemen?

Are you asking me? Pretty sure I didn't advocate for holding anybody accountable.

edit Clarified.

I misunderstood, ethics aside why would you think this is a good strategy? From the cases I remember sanctions are making thing worse, are there any examples of sanctions working out as 'intended'?

Examples of an economic blockade hurting economically a military power?

I would need to double-check, but I'd be surprised if it didn't hurt Napoleon's army, as well as Hitler's and Mussolini's, for instance. I remember that one of the reasons for which the Allies won WWII is that towards the end of the war, the Wehrmacht had considerable difficulties finding fuel for their panzers and logistics and had insufficient ammo for extended fights.

Hurts bystanders, too, of course.

So how does one hold Russia accountable?

By holding Russians accountable for continuing to allow Russia to be a dictatorship.