Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Suppose I oppose a Coalition of the Willing style invasion of Venezuela on the basis that it would turn into a massive mess, that resources are needed elsewhere, that the various tools available are ineffective for achieving objectives.
That doesn't make me pro-Maduro or pro-Venezuela. Both are bad. It's a very poorly run country exporting all kinds of problems. However, the right tools to fix the problem don't exist and using the wrong tools will make the situation worse. Have sanctions on Venezuela made anything better? No. There's good reason to think they've made things worse, driving up oil prices.
Likewise with Russia. We have tools like sanctions and military action. They don't work or require sacrifices that are not justified by the gains on offer. We shouldn't use them. What have we gotten? Economic problems in Europe, a wrecked and diminishing Ukraine, a lot of angry Russians. All of this was procured at considerable expense. Finland and Sweden were already in the Western camp, so having them in NATO is not terribly helpful.
Since everyone loves their WW2 metaphors with this conflict and 1938 can hardly be avoided in these discussions, let's think about the Stresa Front. The Allied Powers of WW1, Britain, France and Italy were working together. All were agreed that Hitler's Germany was a little too dangerous, they shouldn't be allowed to annex Austria and pursue dangerous revanchist tendencies. Then Italy decided to invade Ethiopia. Britain and France decided that they couldn't stand for this and imposed sanctions on Italy. This did nothing to help the Ethiopians who were ground down and annexed. Italy left the Stresa Front. Mussolini joined up with Hitler, giving him the greenlight to annex Austria and make lots more problems for the Allies.
If we're not willing to fight (and we're not because of Russia's H-bombs) then why go out of our way to cause problems for them? Do we want them to help China as much as possible in a future conflict? Do we want them to shovel heaps of weapons into any future invasions we launch? Do we want them to coup random African countries? The policies we've been pursuing are very unhelpful.
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