Inkwell Institute
Eurasian Desk
Today I would like to write about the popular technique used to handle our problem states in the world….sanctions.
In the beginning there was Russia and Ukraine……..after much provocation violence broke out…..a referendum was voted on…….and the world got its panties in a twist. The US could not stand by and let Russia dictate the future of Ukraine.
We began with our typical response to a growing situation……..we threatened and then set about putting sanctions into place that would necessarily isolate Russia for not acting like a good guy on the world stage. We then set about convincing Europe to join in our efforts…..did not work out the way we had planned……you see Europe gets about 80% of its natural gas from Russia…..so our European friends were not so quick to jump on the US sanctions bandwagon.
While our sanctions set about making Russia pay for their actions….they, Russia, signed a $400 billion agreement with China for natural gas….oops, that should make our sanctions a little less effective.
You see we employed a tactic from the 19th century to isolate Russia and force them to toe the line……a naive attempt at best. Why?
Russia knew exactly what our response would be to their aggression…..tit is our go to tactic to any type of aggression, anywhere in the world…….our lame attempt at sanctions was just a worthless endeavor…..you see Russia had been trying to cut a deal with China for 10 years and it just made it necessary to ward off the sanctions that the US was trying to impose.
The isolation game we tried was destined to fail…..Russia had all its bases covered and a solution for each problem that US would throw at them.
The US needs to spend some time and find a new more up to date strategy for handling aggression in the 21st century………if not then our foreign policy will remain as impotent as it is today.
As many as would like to blame Obama for his failure as a leader in foreign affairs, the world started taking notice about how America’s role as a world leader changed under Bush II when he took an imperialist role in dealing with Iraq and gave everyone else an ultimatum that they were either for us or against us.
Then when the Republicans in Congress demonstrated how willing they were to hold the U.S. economy hostage on the debt ceiling crisis, a move that would have impacted others around the globe by defaulting on outstanding loans, this act of irresponsibility only heightened and emboldened those like Putin to take steps now that they likely wouldn’t have before a downward spiral occurred. Maybe not but it has to be taken into consideration now in terms of what effect the U.S. now plays in global matters.
Clinton did not help any of the perceptions…….the war hawks will always get their way……it is like we cannot say NO to these frauds…….