US Sanctions on Russia to have little effect...

[dutch508]

Star Member WarGamer (3,886 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216384550

US Sanctions on Russia to have little effect...

And as I suspected... with Xi's comments today, they're backing Putin and might just escalate the situation with pressure on Taiwan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/us/politics/russia-biden-sanctions-ukraine.html?auth=login-google

The Russian government has spent years trying to reconfigure its budget and finances so that it can withstand further sanctions, efforts that have been aided by high market prices for oil and gas. It has relatively low debt and relies less on loans from foreign entities than it did before 2014. Most importantly, the central bank has accumulated foreign currency reserves of $631 billion, the fourth-largest such reserve in the world.

Some important Russian state-owned enterprises and private companies have actually benefited from U.S. sanctions. Kremlin policies aimed at replacing Western imports with Russian and non-Western products wind up raising the profits of those businesses. And some of Mr. Putin’s allies and their families have done well under the initiatives. One example is Dmitry Patrushev, the minister of agriculture, whose family has become wealthier from new agriculture industry policies, Mr. Gabuev said.

President Xi Jinping of China, who has been strengthening his nation’s ties with Russia, could help Mr. Putin get around some of the sanctions or bolster Russia’s economy with greater energy purchases. When the two leaders met in Beijing at the start of the Winter Olympics, their governments announced a 30-year contract in which China would purchase gas through a new pipeline running across Siberia. Chinese companies might also be able to fill some of the supply chain gaps created by a stoppage in certain U.S. technology exports to Russia, though those companies are unable to replicate more advanced American products.

 

Star Member Beakybird (2,513 posts)

1. Don't the Oligarchs have a lot of real estate in the world's biggest Western cities,

but with hidden ownership? We need to seize those properties!

Mary in S. Carolina (1,006 posts)

8. Yes, and they will be seized.

Mary in S. Carolina (1,006 posts)

3. I disagree

The sanctions are going to do great harm. Russia is going broke and China is loving it.

Star Member WarGamer (3,886 posts)

4. The NYT disagrees with you.

Did you miss the part about the low national debt and the 4th highest reserve bank balance in the world?

The vast majority of wealth in Russia is oil/gas which is flowing freely.


And a reminder, if your profit is X when oil is $40/bb... when oil is $80/bb your profit is NOT just 2X...

It's probably 8-10X

Mary in S. Carolina (1,006 posts)

7. Like I said, I disagree

Russia is broke and they are in a world of trouble. Russia makes less than the state of NY, they have no population and the average salary per year is $5,500 while Putin has 400 billion. They are going to be destroyed.

dsp3000 (273 posts)

11. I would not mind some kind of limited US boots on the ground.

Don't know if that will get me in trouble here but that could stop further bloodshed if Russia sees that the US/NATO is serious about this. At least air support, F35 or Drones, something.

 

[3rd-try]

Seeing as how Biden has dialed back our domestic oil production, we're more dependent on Russia oil these days. That limits how bad we can squeeze them. At least we had the option of providing our own energy when Trump was in office.  Also, we had the option of keeping oil down around $50 per barrel which would help limit Russia's war money. But Biden fixed that as well. Good show.

[DLR Pyro]

dsp3000 (273 posts)

11. I would not mind some kind of limited US boots on the ground.

Don't know if that will get me in trouble here but that could stop further bloodshed if Russia sees that the US/NATO is serious about this. At least air support, F35 or Drones, something.

Chickenhawk

[DLR Pyro]

Seeing as how Biden has dialed back our domestic oil production, we're more dependent on Russia oil these days. That limits how bad we can squeeze them. At least we had the option of providing our own energy when Trump was in office.  Also, we had the option of keeping oil down around $50 per barrel which would help limit Russia's war money. But Biden fixed that as well. Good show.

#LGB!

[67 Rover]

#LGB!

Putin is playing chess and Brandon is playing ants in the pants.

[SVPete]

Star Member WarGamer (3,886 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216384550

US Sanctions on Russia to have little effect...

And as I suspected... with Xi's comments today, they're backing Putin and might just escalate the situation with pressure on Taiwan.

Wow! A DUer with a grasp on the obvious and willing to risk being Alerted, maybe to prepare fellow DU-folk for the possibility of a Biden-disaster in Taiwan.

A little Chinese history ... the island of Taiwan only came under Chinese rule around the end of the Ming Dynasty. It was ruled for some 250 years by the Qing Dynasty, which was ethnic Manchu, not Han Chinese. After being defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1897, China ceded Taiwan to Japan. Japan ruled Taiwan till its surrender in September 1945 (the Aliies did not invade the island). Then in December 1949 it broke from mainland Communist rule. So taking into account my approximations, Mainland China ruled over the island of Taiwan for a cumulative total of about 260 years, only 4 of those years being in the 20th or 21st Century.

To the degree that shared experiences are one of the roots of culture, Taiwan and the mainland have diverged culturally the past 72+ years. The people of Taiwan didn't experience the mass starvation of Mao's "Great Leap Forward". The people of Taiwan didn't experience Mo's attempt to destroy Chinese culture through the "Cultural Revolution". The people of Taiwan didn't experience some of the educational reforms under Mao (a significant change being the introduction of the simplified character set, which simplified teaching reading and writing). A curious non-shared experience is that Taiwan and the mainland both became very educated and very industrial, something Taiwan accomplished without starving several 10s of millions of people.

ChamberBiden looks to be overseeing the dismemberment and gobbling up of Ukraine (remember what happened to the eastern half of Czechoslovakia not ceded to Hitler?). As Star Member WarGamer suggests, ChamberBiden might pull the plug on Taiwan.