problem with sanctions is that they work best on small countries with non-diversified economies. It is totally possible to strangle economies like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, but each is progressively more difficult to degrade the larger and more sophisticated those economies are. I fear the US has gotten used to applying sanctions at very weak countries and now expect the same results for much stronger ones.
I had read read that the US has sanctions on more than 20 percent of the countries of the world. Clearly most of those never mattered or had a potentially adverse future outcome over decades.
yes indeed, a lot of US foreign policy seems to be on auto-pilot. Cuba for instance, clearly no threat, yet embargo'ed for 60 years. Til what end? No one has any idea.
thats actually basically it. Sanction forever, until regime changes, ideally under a US instrument. Poorest countries simply starve, people have to migrate -Afghanistan, Syria etc - people born years after US invasion will have suffer, no end
I guess the boomerang or blowback effect applies to countries with either/or commodity or human resources. Easy to forget when you sanction and starve poor small countries like Cuba etc. and face no real consequences except for missing out on good cigars.
Except Russia isn’t really a “large country” here - its economy is comparable with Italy, but given its lack of technology and know-how it’s more like Nigeria with nukes.
Wheat, true. It’s questionable if they can still do much in titanium. Neon is mostly Ukraine, Russian rocket engines are pretty much done (they spent everything they inherited from USSR), and hypersonic appear to be a scam.
Here is what they can’t manufacture: electronics. Or planes, or tanks, or even ordinary cars.
Assuming China will want to sell them (and it might not want to; it’s not just Apple that you can’t buy in Russia anymore) - sure. But they doesn’t change the fact that the entire Russian economy is on life support.
In several years time, the US semiconductor industry will go under like the auto industry, the paper industry, the textiles industry, the home components industry, the steel industry, the electronics industry, the home appliance industry, the ....... (you can finish the list for yourself).
All of those new Chinese fabs will be out-competing the older US fabs. And the US is in too much debt to be able to afford the billions (trillions?) required to upgrade its crumbling technological infrastructure.
And all because the Chinese were perfectly happy buying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of semiconductors every year, and those sales to China were banned. Another case of "foot, gun, leg, bang!".
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 51.8 ms ] threadThats why things like this are happening: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/russia-becomes-indias-se...
And wheat, and titanium, and neon, and rocket engines, and metallurgy, and hypersonic technology, and .....
Here is what they can’t manufacture: electronics. Or planes, or tanks, or even ordinary cars.
They'll just buy it from China. Like everyone else does.
All of those new Chinese fabs will be out-competing the older US fabs. And the US is in too much debt to be able to afford the billions (trillions?) required to upgrade its crumbling technological infrastructure.
And all because the Chinese were perfectly happy buying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of semiconductors every year, and those sales to China were banned. Another case of "foot, gun, leg, bang!".