Imagine this scenario: you have a group of friends. You’re not equally close with all of them but you all hang out together and do stuff together and you all get along fine in general. You help each other out with tools and food, you lend each other your cars, you attend each other’s parties, you defend each other against other people who are not part of your group, you might even date each other or each other’s siblings. It’s not always sunshine and roses but you’re generally able to solve most issues that arise by working together. Any differences in opinion can usually be resolved or worked around.

And then one of you starts acting out. They seem to go through some really tough shit. Maybe something happened in their private life that they’re not willing to share. Maybe there’s some serious medical stuff going on. They yell at everybody, antagonise everybody, don’t return the tools they borrow, don’t contribute anything to the biweekly barbecue, and demand that everybody come around every Friday and do work around their house, for free. Because of all the things they did for everybody else in the past or something.

You wouldn’t instantly kick them out of the group, would you? You’d try to reason with them, try to find out what changed, try to help with whatever issue they seem to have, maybe you’d try to sit it out and hope they get better on their own. You’ve been together in this group of friends for a long time and all of you have generally always benefitted from it. Also, you’re still using their streaming account and you’re only halfway through Last of Stranger Thrones.

It’s going to take a while until the people in your friend group, one by one, reach their limit and are ready to tell the person who’s making everybody miserable to fuck off. They’re not going to do it on their own either, they’ll be waiting for everybody else to signal their readiness, because they’re afraid of being singled out of the group. You can only hope that by the time everybody is ready, your houses and cars and families are still intact.

It’s infinitely more complicated on an international scale.