Best reader comment of the week

Comment taken from this Moon of Alabama thread:

The Wondersome Effects Of Weapon Sales And Sanctions

In a world where everything is interconnected – economics, industrial production and global political competition – it becomes exceedingly difficult to use foreign policy instruments like weapon sales to proxies or sanctions. There will nearly always be some unforeseen backlash coming in an unexpected area that will hurt.

The European sanction policies against Russia may be the prime example for this. But hostile U.S. policies towards China may, over time, cause much more damage. Not to China but the U.S. and its desired policy aims themselves

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/the-wondersome-effects-of-weapon-deals-and-sanctions.html#comments


Reader comment below:

Classic response from an attacker confronting someone schooled in Judo. They are unable to conceive of the possibility that their own strength and momentum will be used against them.
Until the moment they are on the floor, begging for relief, they assume their energy, strength & force can only flow one way.

This is the exact moment in history the Empire is experiencing regarding its use of both financial and/or trade/commodity sanctions. Whilst Russia’s fine on Google is currently symbolic (and has a certain trolling beauty of its own*), the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s sanctions on American defence contractors will definitely have an impact on the NATO war machine & its ability to wage the kind of war it likes on the territory of Ukraine.

Of course, the battery drone supply lines will eventually be recalibrated & rerouted, but the principle has been proved. I imagine Russia and China have spent a long time running simulations on the impact of financial/economic/trade counter-sanctions & shadow/parallel systems like the proposed BRICS currency & financial exchange structures.

How Russia and China will ultimately implement more comprehensive counter-sanctions remains to be seen, but one approach could be the use of the salami-style methodology beloved of the West.

 

*”The virtually unpronounceable penalty amounts to $20 decillion — or around $20 billion trillion trillion. That dwarfs the size of the global economy.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/31/tech/google-fines-russia/index.html

 

Posted by: FakeBelieve | Nov 1 2024 13:21 utc | 21