Id just like to point out that the Cuban aristocracy before the revolution relied on the sale of sugar cane to the U.S. so much so that when they redirected their product to the ussr it practically started the trade embargo.
Further still it seems as though Putin has shrugged off sanctions so…
This about sums up how Putin feels right now.
Have sanctions EVER worked? Maybe South Africa? And even then it took over a decade, I think.
Putin just announced that gas prices for Europe are going to be raised.
(From a different German article: “After EU sanctions: Moscow announces higher energy prices for Europe. Russia reacted sharply to the sanctions of the West: The Kremlin threatens Europeans with higher energy prices. Even Western banks are said to fear negative consequences. […] The EU and Germany cover around a third of their energy needs from Russian sources”, and yes, I obviously ran that through google translate)
Which means, bottom line, my gas bill will go up. So I guess sanctions do work. Just maybe not the way they originally intended them to.
…soooo that means I’m gonna start chopping wood to prepare for the coming winter.
Which is why this notion of placing sanctions on Russia of all countries is a laughable idea at best.
Seriously, Russia could just as easily put sanctions on the US and it’d accomplish the exact same thing (i.e. we’d just do something petty like jack up the price of coal and proceed to not give a fuck).
Of course, sanctions, getting the collective UN to shake their heads in disapproval, and arming an entire region with surplus weapons (which isn’t liable to work given that we’re talking about a country the size of the northern half of the largest continent in the world with better tech than the crap we’d try to sell it) are pretty much the entire US foreign affairs playbook (well those plus invasions and assassinations, but we only do the former if the country is small and oil rich and shhh, don’t tell Putin about the latter).
The only thing that the US can actually do beyond the above is to wait until it becomes obvious that Russia’s looking to start World War 3 at which point the US can tell Russia it can either A) have Cold War 2, B) have World War 3, or C) knock it off.