UK pussies out on tough action on Russia. No trade sanctions allowed.
63 replies, posted
[QUOTE=pkhzor;44118691]What are the Russians going to eat/wear once everyone stops trading with them? Last I checked AK47s aren't edible.[/QUOTE]
The stock and and front handguard are. Assuming they haven't been wood stained that is...
And by edible, I mean it'll go in your stomach and probably at the worst cause severe constipation and internal splinters along with some internal bleeding... But hey, something-that-our-ancestors-at-one-point-attempted-to-eat food is food.
[QUOTE=Jsm;44118766]Key phrasing in the document is the talk of the current time, it could change in the future. Also, as nothing has been mentioned about this document it could have just been advice that one minister was going to give or something.[/QUOTE]
True, key words like "for now" and "should" imply that this document is just advice and is not set on stone, might be that nothing comes from this.
[QUOTE=lifehole;44118786]I would hardly say this is destabilizing europe. Maybe if they're invading the entirety of the Ukraine and then the rest of eastern europe, but them taking Crimea is not worth cutting off the resources russia proliferates throughout the rest of it.
Russia's being a bully, yes, but in the globalised world of today, cutting off trade with a country as massive as russia would be a move you'd make against a murderer, not a bully.
What I'm trying to say is, it would hurt us as much as it would hurt them.[/QUOTE]
People in Europe used to think that invasions and occupations were a thing of the past... but okay.
Russia needs to be taken down a peg, they can have the trade deals back when they've realized they can't act like this in Europe.
[QUOTE=NoDachi;44118830]People in Europe used to think that invasions and occupations were a thing of the past... but okay.
Russia needs to be taken down a peg, they can have the trade deals back when they've realized they can't act like this in Europe.[/QUOTE]
This. Any nation who acts like this must be punished, economical sanctions make the most sense in the 21st century.
[QUOTE=lifehole;44118701]Do you really think politicians are all people with the concern for the good of all humanity in mind? Politics is a business. They aren't really thinking about 'pulling the weaves of humanity' here.[/QUOTE]
No, they aren't. The way some of them act I question whether they're people at all. But they pretend to be people anyway with their "acting talents", and considering that they are supposed to NOT pull against the common weave of our species, their disregard for the greater good pretty much blows their cover. Hell, prioritizing profit higher than general human well-being blows one's cover pretty bloody hardcore.
If you're trying to be a person, an actual being as opposed to just an animal, you should uphold the values of being and personage rather than fall back on selfish aspirations. Except if your selfish aspirations merely extend to seeking that neurochemical high from being a good person that helps others, for even if you're doing it just to feel good about yourself, it's not that bad since you're benefiting humanity in the process.
Regardless, politicians like these do kinda break their illusion of personage and being with this kind of behaviour, which I suspect may be more cowardice than some deeper malevolence. I can't see most of them agreeing with what Russia is doing at the moment, but they don't have the stones to contribute towards shaming and inconveniencing Russia because it'd inconvenience Britan as well. But even if we inconvenience ourselves a little to inconvenience Russia a little, it all adds up with multiple nations doing the same thing, sort of like "death by a thousand cuts", or more aptly "crippling by a hundred sanctions".
[QUOTE=Jsm;44118856]This. Any nation who acts like this must be punished, economical sanctions make the most sense in the 21st century.[/QUOTE]
Except in a near autocracy like Russia that spews out propaganda every day on their news channels, economic sanctions are only going to make the poorest people in Russia starve while giving the rich who won't be affected the means to rally people to their cause "in self defense" of the west pulling trade agreements back.
The argument is that economic sanctions will hurt us too but, won't every other solution for this hurt both sides anyway? Hell, doing nothing will hurt us more than Russia in the long run.
We do nothing and we lose credibility for dealing with issues like this while Russia becomes a bigger threat because they see their actions go unpunished.
[QUOTE=NoDachi;44118830]People in Europe used to think that invasions and occupations were a thing of the past... but okay.
Russia needs to be taken down a peg, they can have the trade deals back when they've realized they can't act like this in Europe.[/QUOTE]
Too damn right. Should probably consider this with China if it weren't for the fact the Dragon is curled around a big basket that millions if not billions of chickens have put their eggs into, a fact it knows and uses to get away with all manners of nonsense since nobody wants to risk getting torched when they want to move their eggs to a less serpent-guarded nest. Except maybe Cluckles the Brave, but god-only-knows who that cocky fowl would turn out to be.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;44118908]Except in a near autocracy like Russia that spews out propaganda every day on their news channels, economic sanctions are only going to make the poorest people in Russia starve while giving the rich who won't be affected the means to rally people to their cause "in self defense" of the west pulling trade agreements back.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but recently I'm seeing quite an innovative stance the EU and west are taking. They're blocking off the big shot oligarchs money accounts and travel visas.They said so, but still no evidence it's been done.Quite a bunch of russian and ukrainian oligarchs had fortunes stored in austria&switzerland, summer lodges in the french alps and so on.
The sanctions are also used to cut off the country from getting foreign tech for instance. at the rate technology advances, you'd be quite backwards in terms of your tech in a year or so.
In a way, I feel like this is somewhat premeditated, with the resurection of an energy- independent europe and US thanks to shale extraction.
All it would take is some idiot with a hunting rifle to spark this whole thing
[QUOTE=godfatherk;44118945]Yeah, but recently I'm seeing quite an innovative stance the EU and west are taking. They're blocking off the big shot oligarchs money accounts and travel visas.They said so, but still no evidence it's been done.Quite a bunch of russian and ukrainian oligarchs had fortunes stored in austria&switzerland, summer lodges in the french alps and so on.
The sanctions are also used to cut off the country from getting foreign tech for instance. at the rate technology advances, you'd be quite backwards in terms of your tech in a year or so.
In a way, I feel like this is somewhat premeditated, with the resurection of an energy- independent europe and US thanks to shale extraction.[/QUOTE]
When you're a corrupt politician at the head of a massive country with a massive military, I doubt they're worried about their foreign investments in the long run.
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;44118954]All it would take is some idiot with a hunting rifle to spark this whole thing[/QUOTE]
It's not hard to fake an incident like that. You don't even need proof that it happened. US started the war on vietnam on events that are prooven false in nowadays history books.
obama is probably arranging things right now but when he gets the EU and NATO countries and everyone else to agree, he should give russia an altimatum,
get out of crimea, or we'll crush your economy
we can totally crash the russian economy right now, and if we get enough world partners in on it, china will back out like what happened with syria, they don't want to get involved with something this big at the moment
[QUOTE=NoDachi;44118830]People in Europe used to think that invasions and occupations were a thing of the past... but okay.
Russia needs to be taken down a peg, they can have the trade deals back when they've realized they can't act like this in Europe.[/QUOTE]
I completely agree, but I am curious about the economic viability of cutting trade deals with russia on the Europe side of things. It will most likely hurt russia, but it would also hurt europe. Is it worth hurting both to punish one?
[QUOTE=godfatherk;44118987]It's not hard to fake an incident like that. You don't even need proof that it happened. US started the war on vietnam on events that are prooven false in nowadays history books.[/QUOTE]
eh we didn't really start a war in vietnam, we sent in troops to help out the french in the 1950s then it kinda escalated from there
you're refering to the tonkien bay incident which was used to justify a surge in vietnam, ya in modern times it turned out rumsfelt trumped up evidence to invade iraq but the difference here is that we're not dealing with a north korea, an isolated blocked off nation, we have active survalence on the ground and journalists who are going up to the "front" and reporting from sevastopol
[QUOTE=Sableye;44119007]obama is probably arranging things right now but when he gets the EU and NATO countries and everyone else to agree, he should give russia an altimatum,
get out of crimea, or we'll crush your economy
we can totally crash the russian economy right now, and if we get enough world partners in on it, china will back out like what happened with syria, they don't want to get involved with something this big at the moment[/QUOTE]
The only people that will suffer from an economic collapse in Russia is the poorest people, not those in power.
And what happens when a country gets into economic turmoil? Nationalists pop out, and with the economic collapse due to the works of foreigners, they'll gain a lot of support.
[QUOTE=lifehole;44119030]I completely agree, but I am curious about the economic viability of cutting trade deals with russia on the Europe side of things. It will most likely hurt russia, but it would also hurt europe. Is it worth hurting both to punish one?[/QUOTE]
It would be fine since it's been trading with practically everyone on the planet for a long time now.On the other hand, Russia is hugely dependent on europe.As I was saying earlier, the nr 1 trade partner of Russia is Netherlands.
Cutting off Russia from western trade means cutting russia from 80-90% of it's trade. It would sink like a rock faster than they can rebuild their economy for domestic consumption.
[editline]4th March 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;44119073]The only people that will suffer from an economic collapse in Russia is the poorest people, not those in power.
And what happens when a country gets into economic turmoil? Nationalists pop out, and with the economic collapse due to the works of foreigners, they'll gain a lot of support.[/QUOTE]
lol i thought what you see now in russia was nationalism. you can proove me wrong, but with arguments please.
[QUOTE=lifehole;44119030]I completely agree, but I am curious about the economic viability of cutting trade deals with russia on the Europe side of things. It will most likely hurt russia, but it would also hurt europe. Is it worth hurting both to punish one?[/QUOTE]
But that's the thing, you can't really do much in a situation like this in a globalized world that won't hurt both sides, war would hurt both, sanctions would hurt both and doing nothing hurts us.
Our economy can always adapt, start new trades with other countries to recover what we lost from Russia, maybe not all of it but some.
Also I think Russia would be hurt more. While we're just cutting trades with one country, Russia would be cut trades with a lot of countries.
[editline]4th March 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;44119073]The only people that will suffer from an economic collapse in Russia is the poorest people, not those in power.
And what happens when a country gets into economic turmoil? Nationalists pop out, and with the economic collapse due to the works of foreigners, they'll gain a lot of support.[/QUOTE]
Usually if there's economic turmoil the people turn against the government, especially if the government brought this economic turmoil on themselves.
Russia isn't a propaganda-filled shithole like NK either, Russians know their government started this and that any sanctions will be due to them.
[QUOTE=lifehole;44119030]I completely agree, but I am curious about the economic viability of cutting trade deals with russia on the Europe side of things. It will most likely hurt russia, but it would also hurt europe. Is it worth hurting both to punish one?[/QUOTE]
The way I see it, like I mentioned before, would be that it'd hurt each of the individual countries individually (yeah great structuring I know) to not trade with Russia, but collectively the individual damage against Russia would be greater than the individual damage against any one of the participants.
But actually we should be "taking stock" of the situation to see how badly the trade sanctions would hurt us. Aside from the whole money thing, what does Russia have to offer? What goods, resources and services does the Russian "Federation" provide to Europe and the world? Fossil fuels is one thing, I guess, though we potentially have other sources in that regard like Canada and Norway and Saudi Arabia. There were also those Mi-17 helicopters delivered recently, but I think some European countries have the ability to manufacture their own helicopters which they could sell to others.
Hmmm, what else is there... Siberian timber, but we could probably import that from America or whatever substantial sustained forests we have "west of the curtain"... They apparently have the fourth-largest fishing industry in the world, but that's still behind China, Japan and America, so the parts of Europe bordered by the Atlantic and Mediterranean could probably do without Russian seafood...
Anyone else know any significant exports they have?
[QUOTE=ironman17;44119195]The way I see it, like I mentioned before, would be that it'd hurt each of the individual countries individually (yeah great structuring I know) to not trade with Russia, but collectively the individual damage against Russia would be greater than the individual damage against any one of the participants.
But actually we should be "taking stock" of the situation to see how badly the trade sanctions would hurt us. Aside from the whole money thing, what does Russia have to offer? What goods, resources and services does the Russian "Federation" provide to Europe and the world? Fossil fuels is one thing, I guess, though we potentially have other sources in that regard like Canada and Norway and Saudi Arabia. There were also those Mi-17 helicopters delivered recently, but I think some European countries have the ability to manufacture their own helicopters which they could sell to others.
Hmmm, what else is there... Siberian timber, but we could probably import that from America or whatever substantial sustained forests we have "west of the curtain"... They apparently have the fourth-largest fishing industry in the world, but that's still behind China, Japan and America, so the parts of Europe bordered by the Atlantic and Mediterranean could probably do without Russian seafood...
Anyone else know any significant exports they have?[/QUOTE]
I doubt thinking of Russia as a single entity really is the way to go here in seeking to "hurt it". Seriously damaging Russia's economy is just going to make people in there starve, people that really have no issues with you, Ukraine or anyone else in the world.
And they get punished because...why? Putin really didn't win his position through popular election. And Putin won't lose his power because these people become more poor and desperate.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;44119073]The only people that will suffer from an economic collapse in Russia is the poorest people, not those in power.
And what happens when a country gets into economic turmoil? Nationalists pop out, and with the economic collapse due to the works of foreigners, they'll gain a lot of support.[/QUOTE]
Except you're completely forgetting that Russia, like much of Eastern Europe is ran by an oligarch business political elite.
They do not like losing money, and have a huge influence in politics.
So eh hem, stop sounding like a broken record~ and start pretending you actually know what you're talking about.
just like: [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26277970[/url]
if you allow a country like Russia do this, a terrible and almost irreversible precedent will be set. Oh wait, but we already have.
Vietnam,Cambodia, Isreal,Congo, East Timor, West Paupua, Panama, etc
We have a long history of ignoring horrible atrocities and wars right next to us, I can't say the Ukraine will make a difference, Russia will take Crimea and then NATO and Russia will agree to divide it or something.
It's like the appeasement all over again.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/4l5HECD.jpg[/IMG]
Apparently the Rouble is hitting a record low, the U.K. though I'm kind of surprised they didn't take harder action wow.
[QUOTE=PulpedFiction;44118493]Britain's hands, much like most of the rest of the world, are tied at the moment. There's not much any of us can do without risking an escalation that nobody wants. Yes, the situation in Ukraine sucks at the moment but jumping the gun will get us nowhere. Besides, it's not like Russia's going to listen at this point.[/QUOTE]
That hasn't stopped the rest of the West from kicking Russia's economy in the balls. Dunno if you're aware but just the threat of sanctions and private enterprise pulling out of Russia has caused the Ruble to absolutely plummet. London could very easily join in with the rest of the world and take action, but instead they're just being paper tigers.
My personal theory as to why is that either A: London is afraid of losing all that oh-so-cheap Russian natural gas or B: there's an awful lot of Rubles floating around inside Westminster Palace. Could be both, who knows.
[QUOTE=TestECull;44122029]That hasn't stopped the rest of the West from kicking Russia's economy in the balls. Dunno if you're aware but just the threat of sanctions and private enterprise pulling out of Russia has caused the Ruble to absolutely plummet. London could very easily join in with the rest of the world and take action, but instead they're just being paper tigers.
My personal theory as to why is that either A: London is afraid of losing all that oh-so-cheap Russian natural gas or B: there's an awful lot of Rubles floating around inside Westminster Palace. Could be both, who knows.[/QUOTE]
I'll find source once I'm on a desk top computer.
UK doesn't rely on Russian gas.
[QUOTE=Sableye;44119007]obama is probably arranging things right now but when he gets the EU and NATO countries and everyone else to agree, he should give russia an altimatum,
get out of crimea, or we'll crush your economy
we can totally crash the russian economy right now, and if we get enough world partners in on it, china will back out like what happened with syria, they don't want to get involved with something this big at the moment[/QUOTE]
I highly doubt China wants a say in this, they always just want to sit on the sideline and watch
What is it with politicians being photographed showing documents.
[QUOTE=ironman17;44119195]But actually we should be "taking stock" of the situation to see how badly the trade sanctions would hurt us. Aside from the whole money thing, what does Russia have to offer? What goods, resources and services does the Russian "Federation" provide to Europe and the world? Fossil fuels is one thing, I guess, though we potentially have other sources in that regard like Canada and Norway and Saudi Arabia. There were also those Mi-17 helicopters delivered recently, but I think some European countries have the ability to manufacture their own helicopters which they could sell to others.
Hmmm, what else is there... Siberian timber, but we could probably import that from America or whatever substantial sustained forests we have "west of the curtain"... They apparently have the fourth-largest fishing industry in the world, but that's still behind China, Japan and America, so the parts of Europe bordered by the Atlantic and Mediterranean could probably do without Russian seafood...
Anyone else know any significant exports they have?[/QUOTE]
Russia's biggest export is Oil & Natural Gas. According to Wiki, in 2007, 38.7% of the European Union's natural gas total imports and 24.3% of consumed natural gas originated from Russia. Russia also exports a lot of nickel, steel, aluminium and other minerals.
Russia exports a lot of stuff, but it's mostly all raw materials.
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