Washington has countered with sanctions aimed at crashing Russia's economy, and Moscow has further countered by crippling the Visa-MasterCard stranglehold on clearing financial transactions, and may form a new strategic anti-Western alliance with Beijing. Russia's non-military "nuclear" option is to demand that Europe purchase its natural gas in gold or some other non-USD or Euro (USD-linked) medium. If the Petrodollar is crashed, our own economy could be ruined. The stakes are getting progressively higher.
Economic sanctions are acts of war, just short of physical violence. The purpose of sanctions is to hurt just enough to achieve a desired political outcome, but not to hurt so much as to provoke a military response. That is a fine line to draw, and a dangerous one with a hostile alliance encircling the borders of its adversary. I can't help but recall how Fred Thompson's character declared in The Hunt for Red October, "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."
“This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”
Which is what I have been saying, all along.
We have an agitator, not a leader, running our show. And he is so far out of his depth (and the depth of the mions around him) that the likelihood of a major screwup grows with each passing day.
There are a LOT of forces at work here, and the Ukes are just the latest victims of it, like the Tunisians, the Libyans, the Egyptians, etc....