It isn’t because of charity that Russia holds those bonds. If they sell them all at once, as they would have to in order to cause an impact, they would lose tens of billions of dollars. And we would have to spend tens of billions of dollars to buy our own bonds in response. Financial attrition, and they will lose.
Only China and Japan can dump enough bonds to collapse our currency, and it would be like MAD economically; doing it would also collapse their own economies.
Russia’s debt is 8%.
Ours is 100%, and growing fast.
Russia is closer to China diplomatically than we are. If the Chinese agree to participate, even a bit, the panic alone from the markets would create chaos.
Russia set to become China’s primary energy supplier within the next 5 years. The Eastern pipelines are already open to Vladivostok, with the last segments to China under construction now. They have Europe over a barrel, as well, unless the Euros suddenly decide that coal-fired power plants, coal gasification is cool again, and the carbon nonsense goes away.
They have a strong hand, and they know it, especially dealing with Radical Dems who want to raise the price of evil energy, not lower it.
No, they can’t defeat us militarily. But thanks to our stupidity, they may not have to.