Prior to Putin’s reckless gamble in Ukraine, Covid 19 was enough trouble on its own – creating devastating adverse economic impact. Russia/Ukraine, irrespective of what you feel, what you know and on whose side your sentiments tilted, you cannot claim to know how this will end for the entire human race; not only United States, Allies and Russia!
Apart from Russia bombing civilians, and attendant deaths, sanctions & counter-sanctions may plunge the world into a spiral economic crisis, food & pharmaceutical shortage, leading to more deaths, and an eventual world war we are avoiding. Sanctions imposed on Russia are reflecting on the world without yet serious Russia’s reciprocity.
However, none of the sanctioners have been able to adequately mitigate the financial resonant effects of the economic warfare targeted at Russia in their home country and globally. One thing everyone must understand is that nobody has done an impact assessment on sanctions on Russia – a global recession/depression might result. Global fuel balance sits right on top of world’s delicate distribution of the type of crude oil and the logistics demands of moving it to where its needed; who is buying what, who is selling what. The world is beginning to wake up to these grayish world economic equilibria facts.
No United States president will be re-elected with $10/gallon gasoline. So Biden will do everything; including a rapprochement with Iran and Venezuela, to prevent that from happening.
Long story short, its counterintuitive for NATO to think its possible to absolutely isolate a country from the rest of the world, especially Russia, which in principle, is the landlord of the International Space Station (ISS). They still jointly use ISS while they have seized Chelsea.
America’s shark’s capitalism is the reason why its sanctions have been impotent, playing Judas and Jesus, same time. It does not take long for net resultant effect of this sanctions to cancel out, as global demand and supply shift towards equilibrium without him (Putin) lifting a finger in retaliation.
Russia has been sanctioned like there is no tomorrow, but Russia is not Iran, it is a key player in the global economy – and as usual, Africans will suffer the most. We are going to see the impact of the Russia/Ukraine war on food security in Africa and some parts of the world a few months down the line. The impact on wheat & fertilizer in Africa? Well, that your problem, not Biden’s and his western allies.
These sanctions only make sense and are justifiable, if they don’t have debilitating ripple effect elsewhere.