, that's the point of the sanctions
Sanctions are a good method, but there's a difference between causing economic pain and financial hardship to oligarchs, and building deepening resentment of the West in the average Russian.
There's a danger too, of forcing the Russian's hand.
Export Control Act in 1940 was meant to starve what seemed like a potentially hostile Imperial Japan.
But US embargoes of the raw resources Japan depended on to fuel its conquest of Asia also made our fleet at Pearl Harbor a target.
He has to know:
I do believe that the final outcome of this crisis should be reached on the basis of an accommodation, and that the fundamental framework for such an accommodation is the application to Ukraine of the same arrangements that have provided for stability and peace for a number of decades now between Russia and Finland. Ukraine should be free to choose its political identity, its political philosophy, and institutionalize it by closer links with Europe. But at the same time, Russia should be assured credibly that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. I still think this is the formula for a solution.
When he says that Ukraine should be free to determine its own identity, but not join NATO, that if he's drawing a comparison to Finland - - Ukraine's territorial integrity will have to be respected, just like Finlands.
That means Russian troops withdrawing.
That means no more People's Republic of Donbass.
That means Crimea and Sevastopol fly Blue and Yellow colors.
He has to know that if he's saying that, and he has to know it means Russian withdrawal.
There aren't that many things that will force a Russian withdrawal, besides economic accommodation and the threat of war.
Wait, what? What's this mean?
His family wasn't just an anonymous one in Poland.
They were part of the elite; he was born into the Polish political class before the Nazis and the Soviets destroyed his Father's nation.
The Nazis were firebombed at Dresden, slaughtered on the Eastern front, humiliated at Normandy and hanged in Nuremburg.
The Soviet Union was made party to the continued oppression by the West's accommodation of its interests in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ApSE6mgHE#t=4m44s
I'm not saying he's been scarred or something, or that he's irrational. I just think his personal history may influence in a way that has to be thought of.
He's not a super hawk - - but he does believe that powerful nations can create results in a deliberate way and that it is up to them to do it.
I'm just growing a little tired of the US being asked, implicitly or otherwise, to do this over and over and over again.