Globalization did not deter. But it has punished, which may deter XI.
Posted by John Reed on
Globalization was supposed to prevent wars like Ukraine. Massive amounts of international trade would make the nations too dependent on each other. Leaders would realize this and if they started to do unneighborly things like invade another country. Staff would point out all the trade and finance ramifications and the leaders would say, “Oh, I didn’t realize all those problems. I guess I can’t do what I wanted to do.”
.
The globalization benefit needs to be restated from “prevents” to “prevents or punishes.”
.
Dictators like XI and Putin think they can do to the world what they do to dissenters in their own country: totally dominate them. They apparently believe this because the West is out of sight and out of mind from the bunker of the dictator.
.
In this case, Putin concluded Biden was weak and incompetent. Quite correct. Actually, Biden is likely even weaker and more incompetent that Putin thought.
.
But that has turned out to be irrelevant. The world also saw that Biden was weak and incompetent and instantaneously ignored him.
.
Biden’s sanctions have a bunch of wimpy exemptions for Russia and its oil. But the de facto sanctions are not Biden’s. They are the much tougher SELF-SANCTIONS imposed by the entire world and all its component groups: governments, non-profits, business people, individual volunteers, normally neutral countries, banks, investors.
.
Hannity and others on Fox keep railing about our continuing to buy Russian oil. They love that story. It is a lie.
.
True, Biden’s wimpy sanctions allow it, but the oil industry, which was not ordered to stop buying, stopped in spite of the lack of a Biden order. Even the profit-oriented, Democrat demon oil villains have more character than Biden.
.
Putin assumed some of NATO’s 30 veto-possessing embers would have a no pissing-off Russia policy no matter what he did. He could not have been more wrong. Indeed, it appears that as a result of this, the 30-member NATO that he has always hated will get two or three new members: Sweden, Finland, and Ukraine.
.
Not only did the 30-member NATO unify against him, so did the 27-member EU which are not all NATO members. So did several neutral nations: Switzerland, Sweden, Monaco, and 141 members of the 193 General Assembly members. Russia was joined by Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria in voting against the resolution. Thirty-five members, including China, abstained.
.
High tech, shipping, banking, investment, stock markets, insurance and every other industry that touches Russia has self sanctioned that country.
.
Russia defaulted on its federal government bonds on August 13, 1998. That was a disaster that took them decades to overcome. Putin was rewarded with the presidency for his handling of the economy then.
.
Now he has made a massive, nearly boundless economic mistake like the one that his predecessor made. There is a saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” That logic will not be applied to post-war Russia meaning it will take MORE than 24 years to recover from it.
.
Globalization did NOT PREVENT Putin from doing this. But it sure as hell landed on him like a ton a bricks when he did it. Without globalization, all the stuff he is getting hit without now would not have worked.
.
Globalization has not worked in this case as a preventive for the first a**hole who did this and he may lose his dictatorship over it and that would likely have a SALUTARY EFFECT on other dictators who were considering using force to take over a peaceful neighbor.
.
It HAS worked as PUNISHMENT which may work as DETERRENCE in the future. God bless globalization.
Share this post
0 comment