Necks and Nostrils: The Murderous Folly of the New Cold War

[KoKo]

Because Putin is odious, we can pretend that what Washington has done and is doing in Ukraine is not odious.


Necks and Nostrils: The Murderous Folly of the New Cold War

By Chris Floyd

---snip---
Barack Obama's economic strangulation of Russia is another example. As in all other cases of war-by-sanctions, these measures will not harm the elites in Russia nor cause the people to rise up as one and overthrow Putin. It only strengthens him politically -- and allows him to paint the legitimate opposition to his authoritarian rule as "unpatriotic," at best, or "traitors" or "foreign agents" at worst. (This dreary dynamic should be thoroughly familiar to anyone who has dissented even mildly against American policy over the last, oh, 100 years or so.) The only people who will suffer from Obama's sanctions will be the most vulnerable -- physically, financially, politically.

In any case, if the Russian state actually does collapse under the pressure of sanctions and their economic destructiveness, it will almost certainly not be replaced by the liberal, open, tolerant, democratic, secular opposition that still bravely takes to the streets to protest Putin's rule. That was not the case in Iraq. It was not the case in Libya. It was not the case in Afghanistan, where the Americans and Saudis colluded in the destruction of secular government and the creation of the international jihadi movement. It will certainly not be the case in Syria. In the event of a sanctions-led downfall in Russia, the result will very likely be a regime even worse than Putin's -- one even more unstable, xenophobic, nationalistic, even more repressive and violent at home, more bellicose and unpredictable abroad. Or else there could be chaos and collapse on the Syrian or Libyan scale -- with nuclear weapons in the mix.

Yet far from reconsidering the policy of maximum pressure on Russia (that is to say, economic warfare whose main victims will be ordinary Russians -- and the ordinary Europeans who will suffer if the Russian economy is destroyed; as Smith says: "you cannot shove the world's No. 8 economy into the gutter and expect it to land there alone&quot , Obama keeps doubling down on the strategy. What's more, he keeps bragging about the damage he is doing to ordinary Russian people by economic warfare.

He did again in his State of the Union address, boasting with a Bush-like swagger, "Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters. That's how American leads." This followed a statement of such staggering, breathtaking, jaw-dropping hypocrisy that it almost surpasses comprehension. Describing his New Cold War policies, Obama actually said:

"We're upholding the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small."

More of an interesting read at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40804.htm

[marble falls]

1. Putin has brought this all down on Russia, and has continued lieing about Russian troops....

in Ukraine. This article reeks of R/T propaganda and outright lies. There is all sorts of video documentation of Russian artillery firing on civilians and targeting and killing women and children, and all sorts of sightings of Russian soldiers on Ukrainian soil in direct face of Russian lies and denials.

[polly7]

2. K&R. Thank you, KoKo. nt.