Irbis wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:Are you being hypocritical, or are you nuts?
If you can't understand why critical global ranging infrastructure should be free of backseat meddling of a single country I can't help you.
Actually, that part I understand. Here's where I get confused. We have two things that are both true:
1) It is bad for the global financial infrastructure to be totally dependent on the US.
2) Many country
accept dependence on US financial firms- including countries whose public policy makes a big deal about how strong and independent of the US they are, like Russia.
There seems to be a contradiction between (1) and (2). How can it be proper to accept without complaint that people all over the world do business with
US-owned credit companies like VISA and MasterCard... and yet also be proper to blame the US for this state of affairs?
My point is that you can't have it both ways. Russia cannot embrace doing business with US companies when it's convenient, then condemn the US for using that as political leverage against them
when Russia is doing something wrong. That's the entire point of economic sanctions- they hurt, because they're a gesture of "hello, you just offended your major trading partner!"
At the same time, I understand your point. If Country A owns
all the financial infrastructure for
everyone, then that creates a situation where A has disproportionate power over everyone. One might ask "how am I supposed to 'get tough' with my banker?"
So, I think I understand your point. Do you understand mine? See below...
Let me lay my assumptions on the table here.
I'm treating the world as being full of countries that are pretty much equal in principle, although some have more economic and military power than others. To me, this is the basis of the whole Westphalian system: one country may enjoy a position of power, but
all countries have rights. On the other hand, every country is responsible for pursuing its own interests- if your government fails to look out for your interests, you cannot depend on a foreign government to do it for you.
Now, under such a system, if any one country wants to create its own electronic banking system and use that internally,
they can. No one is stopping them. If they want to rely on someone else's system, they can do that too.
But Country X cannot use a system that Country Y created, and then expect to forever be able to treat it as
their property, something that is inalienable to Country X. If X offends Y, then surely at some point Y has a right to say "This thing we keep selling you? We're not selling it to you anymore." And for this purpose it does not matter who X is, or who Y is.
Does that seem fair to you?
If that does seem fair, then the solution to "Country A controls our financial infrastructure!" has to involve the rest of the world actually taking responsibility for creating an infrastructure that does
not depend on Country A. Countries B through Z have plenty of opportunity to do this if they choose. They cannot simply complain about Country A's dominance, in a situation where literally no coercion is being applied and where B through Z could create a parallel infrastructure at any time they chose, simply by doing all the same things Country A already did.
Otherwise, what is Country A supposed to do? Nationalize its own financial sector and stage a free giveaway of the financial companies' stocks so that their ownership becomes evenly distributed throughout the world?
Perhaps the article did not make it clear, but these sanctions are in place because the Russians put troops in the Crimea. Now, I don't know about you, but I consider sanctions to be a fairly reasonable step to take when one nation unilaterally invades another nation's territory and garrisons troops on its soil.
Fine. Do the sanction, then. However, sanctions as defined by international law, not forcing a critical company that happens to be located in USA to walk in lockstep with poorly explained, virtually random sanctions that will fail in their supposed target: punishing people responsible.
Could you go into more detail on what it means to have sanctions that are properly defined by international law? Clearly you know more about the subject than I do.
Exactly how long do such carefully prepared sanctions take to set up, by the way?
Oh, and pray tell, where were sanctions for last 10 unilateral US invasions, then? Some countries are more equal than others?
If other countries choose not to apply sanctions to the US, that is not my fault. If your complaint is that the US is too big and therefore people are afraid to apply sanctions to it... well, exactly what should be done about that?
If you want your country's government to show some courage in dealing with the Americans,
FINE. I would be very happy to see that. But it is not MY responsibility to provide you with a government that has a backbone. That's what your own country's election cycles are for.
The country applying the sanctions "unilaterally cuts off" the target nation from doing business with their people and companies.
To give you better example how it looks from the side, USA had used weight of its navy for 60 years to keep sea lanes open regardless of other countries armed conflicts, supposedly in the name of free trade.
Hint: if this had not happened, then conflicts such as the Iran-Iraq War would have had considerably more serious consequences
for everyone. And those consequences would be felt by neutral parties not part of the Iran-Iraq War, too. Whereas here, the consequences of the sanctions are being felt by
Russia, the very country which offended in the first place.
As to the idea that this is some sort of bullying, this idea of keeping sea lanes open regardless of other countries' wars... hm. If you want, maybe we could go back to the previous model of open warfare on the high seas that prevailed during the World Wars, or even the Napoleonic Wars. But I don't think you'd actually enjoy that, and I don't think you'd profit from it.
So if we don't want a return to that situation, someone has to do the job of making sure that
neutral parties not part of a dispute can engage in international trade can happen even when there's a war going on. Who's supposed to do that job? Are
you willing to pay for it?
Upholding it justified in US vision many transgressions that would in itself be worth sanctions if anyone else did them. Iran Air Flight 655, anyone?
I do not consider an AEGIS cruiser shooting down an Iranian passenger flight to be justified. The US should have avowed responsibility and apologized (which it did not) and paid reparations (which it did, but not as much as I'd like).
Should the US have received punishment for the action? Yes. Was this punishment administered? No.
While the US is certainly to blame when it does something wrong, it is NOT to blame for other people declining to punish it.
Now, VISA system is almost exact analog of that - but in digital world. USA just used its weight to unilaterally block first people, then companies, then countries from it. It's equivalent to indiscriminate mining in sealanes to maybe get that one ship we want to stop. This goes way beyond any legitimate use of sanctions, especially seeing it's unilateral and not supported by international, say UN authority.
Now see, when the US (by way of VISA) is trying to block individuals or organizations from doing business for arbitrary reasons,
that's wrong. I agree. Unless the individual/organization has been proven to be a criminal, they should be able to trade freely.
Anyone who is not a criminal should be able to trade freely.
But countries do not automatically have that right. Because there is no reliable way to define when a country has become "criminal," we have to leave it up to national governments and coalitions of nations like the EU. Such bodies can identify criminal conduct on a nation's part, and take steps to hold that nation accountable.
Now, it would be
lovely if there were a meaningful way to replace this system with due process. But there is not. Who do we call to handle that? The UN? Realistically the UN will never find Russia's actions in the Ukraine to be grounds for sanctions because, well... Security Council veto. This should be obvious to you.
If we want a world government capable of declaring individual countries outlaw and
only then applying sanctions to them, fine- but no such government exists at the moment and there is no serious plan to create one that would actually work. This should be obvious to you, too.
That's the exact crux of the issue - USA showed how reliable and trustful partner they are and this should be wake up call for everyone else to decouple critical world infrastructure from arbitrary dictature of one country. Not that will happen soon, USA still has too many vassals they can use to block any initiative set up against them, just as they did trying to stop emergence of other petrocurrencies.
What, the US sanctions on Russia? This is laughable.
See, you could identify plenty of reasons why US dominance of financial infrastructure is bad. But you
had to single out the one case where the US is doing exactly what we should wish everyone would do,
including people who want to oppose American power. I wish
everyone would respond to breaches of international law by saying "how can we hold the perpetrator accountable?" Here, the US is trying to hold Russia accountable in a timely, effective way that might actually discourage them from keeping troops in the Crimea- and you proceed to tell me that this is the US being a bully.
For God's sake, do you mean to tell me that it's bullying when the US stops letting its credit card companies do business in Russia, and NOT bullying when Russia
physically invades the Ukraine with soldiers?
This is a bad joke.
Now see, you're identifying two completely different problems here and calling them the same. Wikileaks is not a terrorist or criminal organization, I would argue.
No, it's the exact same issue. One country plays world gendarme while ignoring possibilities of due process (United Nations) and deciding unilaterally what goes.
The difference is that while there IS a due process which can restrain an organization like Wikileaks, there is NOT a due process for restraining Russia. Certainly not the UN.
You do remember the Security Council, right?
It just so happens that the US enacted its sanctions a little sooner than Europe- I fail to see why that's a problem.
Gee, because USA does little trade with Russia, so the sanctions are almost completely toothless...
If the US does so little business with Russia, and if its sanctions are so toothless, then
why are you complaining about those sanctions? I thought the "crux of the problem" was that having the US-owned credit card companies stop doing business with Russia was terribly inconvenient for Russians.
But if it's a terrible inconvenience for them when US corporations stop dealing with them... how can you say that US sanctions directly against Russia are "toothless?" That doesn't make any sense.
Tell me, do you believe in sanctions as a tool of international diplomacy, and as a way to try and apply pressure to aggressive nations short of going to war?
Yes. Civilized sanctions, not creating cyber-industry complex that can be turned against everyone in the world on moments notice.
OK, then let me ask you another question, inspired by your response to the first question. Yes or no.
We observe that the US does indeed have a very large complex of global financial and data-handling firms that effectively control much of the world's digital infrastructure.
Do you think this reflects an act of malice on the US's part?
Yes, or no.
Look at this:
US tech giants knew of NSA data collection
The senior lawyer for the National Security Agency stated on Wednesday that US technology companies were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data...
It's exactly as legal as VISA issue - it's one sided dictature not overseen by any judicial or parliamentary system. The fact it was used against someone a lot of people don't like on very flimsy pretext doesn't change the whole thing is utter disgrace to supposed rule of law and basic freedoms.
Countries that have no wish to be the US's enemy (most of the world, in other words) have
every right to complain that the US is spying on them. Private citizens throughout the world in all countries have
every right to complain that the US is spying on them. Fine.
But the only link between the spying and VISA/Mastercard being used as instruments of sanction is that both are routed through the US government.
We can agree that the US government should stop spying on the ordinary people of all nations, and stop using its access to various information-service companies to spy on people.
But your fear of the US digital-security-industrial complex seems to reach beyond that; your concern seems to be that such a thing exists at all. Which forces me to ask my yes-or-no question again:
Do you think it an act of malice on the US's part that there is such a US monopoly on information services?
Do you oppose imperialism in general, or do you only oppose imperialism when it's the US acting imperial?
I oppose imperialism, yes. However, unlike US supporters I am not a total hypocrite who believes stuff done by USA and UE is always right, and since I didn't protest Kosovo or Iraq war, I won't go out of my way to protest lesser transgressions by everyone else. You know, 'speck in someone else's eye, log in your own'? Why would I be criticizing just Putin when I see US and EU leaders being best buds with the likes of Aliyev, Niyazov, or Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa?
And so pursuant to this, you reserve your criticism for Obama, with occasional slivers of it for people like Merkel who keep submitting quietly to US abuses... while having very little of it left for Putin, or for that matter Aliyev, Niyazov, and al Khalifa.
This strikes me as deeply hypocritical and foolish on your part, and if you have any sense of irony at all you'll be able to understand why.
I will say this: USA, right now, is far larger threat to global economy or human rights that whatever Russia can do. And I say it from a city very close to actual Russian border. It's US based big companies that try to spy on and force governments all over the world to destroy human rights in the name of their profits. Russia's influence on my account, work rights, freedoms etc. is far less than what 99 headed NSA-Safe Harbor-Prism-VISA-MilInd-Corporations-White House hydra does, so yes, I will oppose it regardless of break and circuses thrown to mask that.
And you pick the specific occasion when Russia physically invades another country with armed soldiers to identify this.
See, I'm not even arguing with your sense of target priority here. I'm arguing with your
timing. It's ridiculous to me that you would think THIS, this sanction directly against a country that committed a specific act of aggression, is somehow 'the perfect example' of why America is bad and Russia is not-so-bad.
If you wish to present that argument
in general fine. But if you think this incident is evidence for that argument...
To me, that signals that you have become so firmly anti-American that you wouldn't even
notice if America started doing the right thing. Or if someone else started doing the wrong thing. In which case your opinion is of no more value than any other stopped clock.
