Canceling Putin, Canceling Russians

Reason works with a contractor who lives in small-town Siberia. As Vladimir Putin’s tank convoy rolled toward Kyiv in early March and a flurry of economic sanctions were imposed on Russia by public and private actors, I found myself asking if we could still pay our guy, whether we should do so in bitcoin, and what the consequences might be if we did.

- By Katherine Mangu-Ward. Photo by Mikhali Svetlov

Most of this issue of Reason was already edited when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started, so this is the only place in these pages you’ll see mention of the potentially earth-shattering conflict involving a nuclear nation. (For breaking news, check out reason.com.)

But as this magazine goes to press, the most urgent concern is not whether the U.S. will send troops to the front lines of a foreign war. President Joe Biden has categorically ruled that out under current circumstances, for good reason and to good effect.

Instead, a whole host of other potential interventions—most of them cultural or economic—are forcing global politicians and businesspeople to do an even more complicated moral calculation.

There’s undeniably something inspiring about seeing a global consensus against a violent occupation emerge in real time. But which boycotts, cancellations, and sanctions are defensible and well-targeted against the state actors who are responsible for the attack on Ukraine, and which are overly punitive and possibly counterproductive against ordinary Russians, many of whom don’t support Putin’s actions?

The world taekwondo organization’s decision to withdraw the honorary 9th dan black belt it conferred on Putin in 2013, for instance, is extremely defensible, narrowly targeted, and frankly hilarious. Less clearly worth it is the accompanying edict not to “organise or recognise Taekwondo events in Russia and Belarus.”