Putin's Revenge

by JASmius

Remember the other day when I discussed how Barack Obama's four months of foot-dragging before even considering real economic sanctions against the Russian Federation's banking and energy sectors for its seizure of Crimea and subversion of Ukraine bore a disquieting resemblance to the interminable time it took for FDR to go for Imperial Japan's gapingly obvious energy jugular by cutting off their oil imports from us, resulting not in Tokyo's reconsidering and retrenchment but in going for broke in the Western Pacific by attacking the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor?

Here's one way Czar Vlad could equivalently retaliate:

Let us imagine one scenario: Russia begins to feel the pressure of the new sanctions. Its U.S. dollar accounts are frozen in New York. The EU also begins to flex its muscle. Russia shuts off all natural gas to Europe, which it can do in literally hours. So there is a significant gas shortage in Europe. Factories in Germany and France shut down within a couple of weeks. Countries like Italy and Spain go into a tailspin within the month.

Russia, which has signed a bilateral currency trade agreement with China, begins to supply natural gas to China and receives its payments in renminbi. The renminbi is now easily traded in London, Luxembourg and Hong Kong. Russia starts buying its needs in euros and Australian dollars when it exchanges its renminbi to other hard currencies.

The sanctions either fail or the United States and EU are forced to beg China to become the King maker and take their side. China will be sitting back, rubbing its hands in glee, watching all these chess pieces fall into place.

Are we beginning to see how economic policy and energy policy and foreign policy are all interconnected?  If we had tapped our domestic energy resources decades ago, both ourselves and the Euros would not be vulnerable to such economic blackmail.  If the U.S. dollar had not been devalued, debased, debauched, and destroyed to prop up the fiction of an "economic recovery" and mask the true magnitude and cost of Barack Obama's towering mountains of debt - and ditto for the EU - we would not be vulnerable to such ready-made economic shocks.  And as Mr. Advani points out, the only reason we even have economic sanctions in the statecraft toolbox at all is because the U.S. dollar is - amazingly - still the global reserve currency.  Which, you'll recall, the Russians and ChiComms have been working, quietly but diligently, to change.  That gambit would, in this scenario, be accelerated to its endgame fruition.  The result?  The EU collapses, the dollar's deposition is complete, the West lies prostrate at Beijing's collective feet, and the Russians start moving into Europe to "pick up the pieces".

Remember how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War in less than a decade without firing a shot?  He did so economically.  That was the Soviet Union's day-glo obvious Achilles heel, and he went right after it.  We now no longer have that advantage, or any other, for that matter, thanks to the Obama Doctrine.  And now we are paying the exorbitant price for it.

And the installments have only begun.