Sanctions against Russia Are the Lockdowns of 2022
Putin's military continues to encircle Kyiv. To date, thankfully, America and its NATO allies have held off pleas from Zelenskyy to enforce a no-fly zone, which would risk the eruption of a world war.
So instead, along with supplying arms, intel, and—potentially—runways and planes to Ukraine, the focus of the West has been economic warfare.
What is not clear is whether the West is prepared to deal with the actual consequences of this approach.
What began with targeted sanctions on the Russian leaders and oligarchs has expanded to cutting off Russian banks from SWIFT, broad attacks on Russian industries, and now complete bans on Russian oil and other exports by some NATO countries.
Moreover, Western corporations have reinforced these policies by indiscriminately banning Russian customers .
This coordinate blanket canceling of Russia is not a tool crafted by the necessity of the situation, but rather a new application of the form of warfare that the West has become the most comfortable with.
America's weaponization of the dollar-backed financial system and is increasingly used against 'domestic enemies', but began against North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela.
Bungling Biden is now begging the latter two for oil.
Unfortunately for the West, Vladimir Putin is far shrewder than bungling Biden and his hapless handlers.
Russia is not only a major energy provider to global—and, in particular, European—markets but is a globally important exporter of wheat, fertilizer, metals, and other strategically important resources.
To add to the stupidity of the bungling Biden regime, the bunglers failed to anticipate the refusal of other global powers—including India, Brazil, Mexico, and China—to follow their lead.
None of this should be particularly surprising.
Red China's interest in using Russia as a foil against American global hegemony has been clearly illustrated for decades. Nations like India, Brazil, and Mexico have seen the rise of nationalist political parties that echoe Putin's critiques of the globalist West.
Already Putin has demonstrated a willingness to wield his natural resources as a wedge to pull traditionally subversive global actors away from America's leadership.
Meanwhile, Russian nationalists have celebrated the West's economic response to the Ukraine invasion, identifying the possibility of shifting consumer trends away from America- and Europe-based companies toward Eurasian products.
As a result, it is precisely the Russians that are the most culturally aligned with the West that are the most penalized by the American response to Putin's actions.
While the West has made vividly clear its sense of moral self-righteousness it is less obvious whether there is any way to deal with the shock back home.
In America, gas has already hit all-time highs, while the cost of food, energy, and other vital resources is following. In response, the bungling Bidenites have lectured Americans on the virtues of electric vehicles and other forms of "green energy."
Not even Tesla's Elon Musk believes this line.
Ultimately any attempts by Western governments to soothe the feelings of their citizens depend upon convincing them that the very same "experts" who told them Bidenflation was "transitory" is intellectually equipped to handle this deepening crisis.
https://mises.org/power-market/sanctions-against-russia-are-lockdowns-2022