I'm not sure holding up the Opium Wars as a golden example of how trade should be a right is making your case. To be clear that was the time the UK fought China so it could sell old-timey OxyContin on the Chinese mainland. That's become quite a blemish on the UK national blemish registry (I call it that because, well, you know, everything in the British Museum and whatnot).
As a fun bit of trivia, one of the main opium traders, Jardine Matheson is still around. Now a British-domiciled Bermuda corporation that, among other things, owns the Mandarin Oriental.
There were a lot of things popular back then that wouldn't be such an easy sell today. Slavery, for one (not in the UK, btw, they'd already ended it by then).
> As a thought experiment, suppose that Russia did not have nukes nor means to retaliate, would you be equally okay with the US bombing Russian cities and killing civilians in numbers equal to those that will starve due to our sanctions?
As an aggressor nation conducting genocide in all but name? Go to town. By "go to town" I mean bomb government and military buildings until they surrender, and avoid civilian casualties at all costs.
How many Russian civilians died btw, as a result of these sanctions?
> What if instead of sanctions or bombing we developed some kind of chemical weapon that increased the population's metabolism such that equal numbers starve. Would that not be seen as completely despicable? Yet the outcome is the same.
The only folks using chemical weapons appear to the the Russians. But I'm sure you know they're broadly banned by the Geneva Convention.
As a fun bit of trivia, one of the main opium traders, Jardine Matheson is still around. Now a British-domiciled Bermuda corporation that, among other things, owns the Mandarin Oriental.
There were a lot of things popular back then that wouldn't be such an easy sell today. Slavery, for one (not in the UK, btw, they'd already ended it by then).
> As a thought experiment, suppose that Russia did not have nukes nor means to retaliate, would you be equally okay with the US bombing Russian cities and killing civilians in numbers equal to those that will starve due to our sanctions?
As an aggressor nation conducting genocide in all but name? Go to town. By "go to town" I mean bomb government and military buildings until they surrender, and avoid civilian casualties at all costs.
How many Russian civilians died btw, as a result of these sanctions?
> What if instead of sanctions or bombing we developed some kind of chemical weapon that increased the population's metabolism such that equal numbers starve. Would that not be seen as completely despicable? Yet the outcome is the same.
The only folks using chemical weapons appear to the the Russians. But I'm sure you know they're broadly banned by the Geneva Convention.