Moral Issues 1 Are economic sanctions an effective means of punishing a rogue regime?

[FromTheSouth]

Recently, the US has been pushing for economic sanctions against Iran as punishment for their continued attempt to produce nuclear weapons. Economic sanctions have consistently been used to punish the governments of rogue nations. The problem is that these sanctions rarely punish the leaders of these nations, they only punish the people.

On the other hand, what options are there? We can't just go around starting wars across the world to deal with asshole dictators. We can't sit idly by and let it happen either.

Are sanctions the best alternative? Is there a better plan? Should we be more aggressive?

 

[BladeRunner]

Economic sanctions will not work. Right now, many of the people of Iran do not like Ahmadinejad. There's more and more pressure against him by the general public. And the more he reacts with police state measures, the worse it makes him look, thus the opposition keeps getting bigger, louder, and angrier.

But if we do economic sanctions it gives the people a reason to rally around Ahmadinejad. He'll say that everyone is out to get Iran and destroy it's people and he's it's only hope. If you want all of the Iranian people to suffer horribly and hate our guts, then do it. Otherwise, we're making a big ass mistake.

I'm an "America first" kind of guy. I think every time we've gotten involved in the middle east's ridiculous problems we haven't benefited one bit. I'm sick of getting the blame for everything wrong with the world because either "America isn't doing enough" or "America wants to police everybody!". You just can't win. So leave well enough alone, and look after your own.

Instead of economic sanctions, I say we give money secretly to those groups who are against Ahmadinejad. I say we help those who want democracy for their people. This way, the people of Iran are doing the changes that are needed, and it doesn't make America look like a bully with a big stick.

 

[Razor]

Are sanctions the best alternative? Is there a better plan?

When you take into consideration that we most often send humanitarian aid to the countries we're sanctioning, I don't see the problem. Let's take North Korea for example.

Arkansas makes a shit ton of rice. You know where it goes? Not to American mouths. It gets put on a plane and sent to places all around the world. Including North Korea.

The North Korean people eat Arkansan rice and have a good time with their horribly paying jobs and wacky dictator. Their dictator spends time making money off of his non-existent economy by selling atomic secrets and weapons. He then uses that money to buy himself luxury items. Guess what he's telling his people in the mean time?

"I know you're hungry. Eat grass to fill yourselves up. You're hungry because of the evil Americas and South Korea."

Of course, he says this as he eats a steak in his solid gold Bentley.

The fact of the matter is, we feed his citizens. The only problems we give the North Korean dictator when we impose sanctions is that he can't get as much beer for himself.

While that sounds ineffective, we don't have much more of a choice.

Should we be more aggressive?

More aggressive? Like how? World War II aggressive, or Crusades aggressive?

We can't go around invading everyone we don't like. That's how we end up with two wars in the Middle East and trillions of dollars in debt that we spent on weapons and propping up economies (including our own).

You think we're being accused of being an empire on a crusade against Muslims now? Just wait if we get more aggressive. We will have everyone who is just barely our ally now burning down our walls.

The World politic is a slippery slope. If you take one misstep, you slide 20 years in the wrong direction. We barely have our footing back after 8 years of "We'll nuke you bitches." We can't go running after the next new Communist Islamic radical dictator. It won't work. We'll end up on the wrong end of the world's guns.

 

[Tastycles]

Economic sanctions don't really work in terms of regime change, but there isn't any other option. What happens with trade blockades means that there isn't a possibility for a dictator to consolidate publically. If Iran could show its populace all of the weapons that it has, it would invoke national pride. Howeer, if they have to take everything through the back door, then they can't flaunt it. As a result, dictatorships remain in power, but are less of a threat, which from the outside looking in is all that matters really.

There's no way anyone can afford to depose each dictator one by one because all that would happen is you would enter into perpetual war, which really isn't a good thing. It's not perfect, but if there was anything better, someone would have thought about it by now.