I want to talk about my personal responsibilities during this war—and perhaps yours, too.
As missiles rain down on Kiev and Kharkov, I have been thinking about what level of economic sanctions is right with respect to Russia and I don’t see the point of keeping any in reserve. Sanctions won’t change behavior—they rarely are enough for that; they are, at this point, means of determining how many weapons Russia will build. Precision strikes of the kind that Russia is conducting are highly militarily effective and also very expensive.
The West should not be funding Russia's weapons.
It isn’t up to me to decide the Western policy in this matter, of course. But it is up to me to determine how I and my companies act. The actions of a country are composed of the actions of its citizens. We are, of course, a negligibly tiny fraction of the overall economy, but nonetheless, my businesses employ a handful of people in Russia. Sending money there makes no further sense. I am going to begin to consider alternatives for these folks. I hope that most of them will be able to get out to the free world.
I would like to urge others to consider their moral responsibilities.
If you live in Russia, your economic and life output benefits Putin. You might have a Ukrainian flag on your avatar, but your taxes fund Putin’s invasion force, and your children, subject to draft and liable to work for the state directly or indirectly, are fodder for the rising Leviathan. It does help if you speak out, but consider also how you act. If you act contrary to what you say, your words are hollow. Your very participation in the Russian economy is what fuels it. Russian economy’s external output is energy and metals. And these come packaged into warheads.
I have seen this in the Soviet Union: people telling themselves they don’t “support” something, then doing their part in implementing it. How can you say you don’t support something when you’re the one doing it? In the Soviet Union, the cost of taking the high road was very high. You could not simply leave. If you wanted to avoid being a part of the machine, you essentially had to spend your very life resisting the machine, or at least become a refusenik or find another marginal position in society. Today, the situation is different. Those who don’t want to live in Russia can easily move elsewhere, improving their life in the process.
If you don’t live in Russia, but you send money there—through job creation, family transfers, or energy purchases in Europe—consider that the money ultimately fuels the war machine. If you support sanctions, you can and should start acting as though the sanctions are already in place. If you cannot go 100%, at least do something.