Comment by toyg
5 years ago
This is the first European conflict of the internet era where one side gets economically isolated in a very radical way. A lot of theories about modern economic warfare and its effects, are being tested in the real world - stuff like "Country X cannot wage war because the economic blowback would destroy them". I expect the Chinese are watching it attentively, to name one interested party (eh).
If this strategy works, we might have secured the century for good. If it doesn't, it will feel like the clock has gone back 100 years - and those weren't nice times to be around.
> "Country X cannot wage war because the economic blowback would destroy them"
Note that a common corollary to that is that countries cannot afford to impose sanctions on others because the economic blowback would destroy them (even sanctions against "smaller" countries, due to how global liquidity works). This is more readily acknowledged by academics, and essentially cancels out the whole theory; but for some reason didn't make it into the trickled-down-for-the-masses version.
If Western leaders apply strong sanctions, it's quite likely we'd go back around 90 years, so you won't be far off!
> essentially cancels out the whole theory
Ish. As a country, when you have 30 economic partners, losing one is not the end of the world; whereas losing 25 of them definitely hurts. Obviously that's more difficult the bigger the partner is (e.g. from an European perspective, sanctioning the US would have a much bigger impact than sactioning Russia), so really it's a question of size and proportion more than anything.
Sanctions have worked so wonderfully well against Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, and North Korea …
And this one is so “important” they’re not even willing to cut the gas pipe that runs through the war zone.