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.
You're really not looking closely.
In the beginning they were invading with tanks. Now they send Chinese golf carts and mopeds to the front to power the meat grinder.
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.
what damage do you really think this does to "the West"? the lack of access to cheap Russian energy is the only thing I can think of, and that's a dependency better resolved now than punted to the future. had Europe never grown dependent on it, we might have entirely prevented the current situation to transpire
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.
Also, western brands are losing markets and brand recognition.
IMHO the sanctions should have been for military equipment/weapons and precision tooling only and enforced religiously.
As long as the executive power do not try to subvert the legislative, judicial or, in a more limited way, informative power, we can't call "extremist politics". Which is why i reject the idea that reactionnaries like the RN in France are still fascists as their rethoric against judges and informative power is really tame (they could be lying, making them cryptofascists, but this is subject to personal beliefs and not facts).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Network
[1]"L'Extrême Centre ou le poison français : 1789-2019", Pierre Senna
They destroyed their veterans in the opening gambit. Mowing down unequipped numpties at staggering loss ratios isn’t a problem for Kyiv so long as its ammunition supplies are assured.
> Russians have criminal level of tolerance for lost lives
Russia is an empire. Moscow isn’t sending its children to the front, it’s sending Siberians and Chechens.
The mobilisation was politically difficult for Putin and damaging to Russia. There aren’t that many more Putin can pull off while retaining the public’s favour.
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...
Russia has a moat here, Ukraine and the West can't pull anything of that sort.
Also, the mentality of Russian people or slavs in general is very prone to conspiratorial thinking. They are also very unambitious, only motivated by ideas about glory and don't make long term life plans and assume the role given to them.
Its very weird, the western mindset can't comprehend this. I've been risen in a slavic communist country that used to be aligned with USSR.
To this day I have relatives who are offended by the west despite living in EU, having their life quality depended on the success of EU but root for Russia to win and "show the arrogant west who's the boss". So I don't think that Putin will have human resources problem ever, as long as maintains his image of the tough guy who teaches the west a lesson. Russophilia is also widespread in many countries, even in EU.
It's like India going to the moon at cost that would be considered pocket change in the USA.
Ping me when Ukrainian drones are made by US/European parts and not Chinese.
You’ve made a series of wrong, uncited claims. This is another one. (And the last one I’m responding to. You are not arguing in good faith.)
You called out electric motors. By mass and production volume, China is outstripped by Allied production.
> cheap energy is cool but Russia too has cheap energy
Much less than America production-wise. We’re counting volumes and mass, right?
> like India going to the moon at cost that would be considered pocket change in the USA
You really keep picking terrible examples to spitball on.
The SSLV’s launch cost per kg is over 3x Falcon 9’s [1][2]. American access to space is orders of magnitude cheaper and more extensive than India, Russia and China’s combined, despite massively higher labour costs and design requirements.
That said, India actually got to the Moon. Can’t say as much about Russia [3].
[1] https://www.newspace.im/launchers/isro
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competit...
The West is the moat. Ukraine’s war production is almost entirely in the West.
> I have relatives who are offended by the west despite living in EU, having their life quality depended on the success of EU but root for Russia to win and "show the arrogant west who's the boss
Yeah, sort of like the most-fervent proponents of American doomerism frequently being Americans.
Europe could have cheap energy alternatives if they wanted, but they preferred to rely on cheap Russian natural gas, believing them not to be a rogue state. The attempted invasion of Ukraine has made it obvious this was a terrible miscalculation.
Arguing that Europe should try to restore the status quo ante bellum is not only foolish, senseless, illogical and irrational but dangerous too.
Your profile says you like to argue things that you don't really believe in just to "have a more lively debate". I can only imagine that's what's happening here, because no rational actor would make the sort of concessions to Russia as you argue, particularly after they have proven to be a much, much weaker military power than anticipated.
Check your own biases at the door next time you're looking to engage in intelligent discussion, lest you come across as quibbling in bad faith.
With Russia's death rate and invasion speed (or lack thereof) they will also run out of soldiers before Ukraine.
But it will take time...