Also, the Dollar and Euro can have effect on the Russian economy and tracked for intelligence only if they are used.
I wonder if this will be considered a great blunder, looking back in few years.
Forcing worlds most energy and minerals rich country doing business with most industry rich country, what could go wrong?
Same way Britain wasn’t shooting itself in the foot blockading Nazi Germany, or the West by refusing to trade with the USSR.
> Forcing worlds most energy and minerals rich country doing business with most industry rich country, what could go wrong?
Post-Soviet Russia as an independent power has been an unmitigated disaster. China is America’s geopolitical rival, but at least it’s rational. Moscow as a Chinese suzerainty is likely a better configuration than it as a sovereign power.
(Also, it’s clear China isn’t willing to let its financial system be sanctioned simply to trade with the likes of Russia.)
With less variety, slower and at higher cost [1]. And they’re not getting much of the high-tech kit [2]. (The Germans also had blockade runners. Everyone does. That doesn’t make a blockade less onerous.)
Russian natural gas sales have also cratered; Beijing is leveraging its position as a monopsony to demand price concessions [3].
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/out-stock-assessing-impact-san...
[2] https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-impact-of-s...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-china-gas-pip...
Stuff getting expensive is no different than the west really. Slightly worse living standards can destroy the western democracies as they shift to extremist politics but has no effect on Russian leadership.
They’re fighting like a ragtag African army, not a modern combined-arms one. Their latest air-defence systems which they once peddled for half a billion dollars each are being taken out by old American kit. The front lines barely budged while Ukraine was rationing arms; Russia is quite literally liquidating its economy and demography for Pyrrhic gains. We are watching the voluntary disassembly of a regional power.
> Stuff getting expensive is no different than the west
There is a massive difference between eggs becoming more expensive and not being able to access modern chip fabrication.
> Slightly worse living standards can destroy the western democracies as they shift to extremist politics but has no effect on Russian leadership
This was the Nazis’ hypothesis. In the end, Britain was able to shift to a more-extreme war footing earlier and more forcefully.
Putin has made this claim, but goes out of his way to insulate the Moscow elite from the effects of the war. The history of democracies in war is generally that they’re far more resilient than strongmen.
Everything is made in China, the factories are there even if the west holds rights and patents etc. The west is services heavy but there's little this expertise can do anything about blowing up people and vehicles.
American manufacturing is at an all-time high [1]. Are you conflating manufacturing employment with power?
> if China stops selling tiny electric motors the drone warfare will be lost as the west can't produce this stuff
Uh, I’m fairly deep into drone manufacturing in America. This is multi-level nonsense.
One: you’re confusing quadcopters with military drones, whose motors aren’t tiny and often aren’t motors but turbofans.
Two: we produce lots of electric motors and turbofans. In the case of the former, not at China’s scale, though far more autonomously (and thus easier to scale up if needed). In the case of the latter, far better and similarly quickly after adjusting for effective yield.
Is USA capable of producing huge number of electric motors? Other "not profitable enough to produce here" stuff?
Remember how the west wasn't able to deliver enough artillery shells simply because it can't produce enough? Now it might be ramping up in the shells department but there's so many things that the west can't make anymore in large quantities.
You’ve made a series of wrong, uncited claims. This is another one.
> Is USA capable of producing huge number of electric motors?
Siemens is the world’s largest manufacturer of electric motors. They have massive plants in Germany, Ohio and Missouri [1][2]. Toshiba, the second largest, in Houston and Canada [3]. ABB, third largest, with plants across 8 states, directed from Arkansas, as well as in India [4].
China has cheaper labour and laxer environmental laws than America. But we have some of the world’s cheapest and most-abundant energy. Motor manufacturing isn’t dirty or labour intensive. I’m not sure where your obsession with electric motors comes from, because it’s an example of Allied manufacturing vastly outstripping China.
> Remember how the west wasn't able to deliver enough artillery shells simply because it can't produce enough?
Yes, in part because we want to maintain reserves. We matched Ukraine’s military budget to the entirety of Russia’s [5]. As a side project.
[1] https://www.siemens.com/us/en/company/about/siemens-in-the-u...
[2] https://www.siemens.com/us/en/products/drives/electric-motor...
[3] https://www.toshiba.com/tic/inside-toshiba/manufacturing-ser...
[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABB_Motors_and_Mechanical
[5] https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence-and-security/news/w...