[blueash]

Commerce between nations, even unfriendly nations, helps tie people together and make it more difficult to risk conflict. That's a good thing. McDonald's received the ok to enter the Soviet Union, under communism, in 1988 during the final year of Reagan and opened in 1990, during Bush one.

In 1974, under Nixon, Pepsi became the first American company to manufacture in the USSR. Russia is Pepsi's second largest market after the USA.

We are economically tied to Russia, and China, and there is no undoing those connections without severe financial disruption. Americans will not be pleased if Putin decides to retaliate for our economic sanctions with his own by nationalizing/confiscating all American investments and infrastructure in Russia. This is why our sanctions have been narrowly and specifically targeted at people/oligarchs and particular carefully selected financial institutions and sectors [any export that has military use such as lasers, semiconductors etc] in Russia, not the nation as a whole. Our allies in Europe and elsewhere have imposed similar sanctions, working with our allies is effective in international politics.

The result of these focused responses has been a crash in the Russian stock market and in the value of its currency. There really is no need to ask McDonald's to shut down, nor Pepsi. The Russian people can decide whether to support an American company's product just like we can decide whether to buy Russian products.