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America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

economist.com

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Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#211

Post by baybal2 »

stephen_g wrote: post #133
baybal2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece was fiasco for Euro. It's a lesson learned now, and ECB will hold binge spenders on a leash. UK can leave EU, Greece or Eastern Europe can not.

It’s more that the Euro has been a fiasco for Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain... It’s fundamentally problematic to have a single exchange rate between countries with different inflation rates, balances of trade, etc. - because you can’t have an exchange rate that works for everyone and the value can’t move between the other economies to balance out the differences. The only way around that (apart from going to sepa…

Very easy to do, and that's actually what ECB is now doing as I understood.

They now enforce the limit of how much debt a country can sell, and at what terms much more rigorously

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#212

Post by lispm »

kmlx wrote: post #195
lispm wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expansion is not over. There are still european countries wanting to join. Btw., the UK (especially Boris Johnson) was a proponent of more countries joining the EU. France never wanted the UK in the EU in the first place. Maybe they were right? The UK was boykotting deeper EU integration on political, economical and defense levels, so after the UK leaving we may expect to see some progress. Boykotting Russia ever…

the UK was one of many countries objecting to the current form of the EU. this will not go away with one member leaving. the EU is expecting another round of new participants in 2025. and the countries are the likes of Macedonia and Serbia. of course the EU politicians are already arguing about this, since the last expansion was a small disaster: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/eu-en... persona…

Major EU reforms, which were blocked by the UK, for example.

Good relations with Russia is in the interest of the EU countries.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#213

Post by lispm »

bloodm wrote: post #206
lispm wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no contract about it. Tanks? Not sure that this is our biggest concern right now.

Nato Membership is a contract. Yes, Indeed. tanks are not the biggest problem. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/21/pepe-escobar-you-say-y... PS: "Germany is only one of 19 NATO members that have not met the 2% GDP spending goal set at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales."

and the contract says nothing about what you claim.

PS. : the spending goal is in the future: 2025. It‘s also a political goal, not a contract.

And the current data can be seen here:

https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_...

Look at the numbers, they are vastly different from what you claim.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#214

Post by jayd16 »

logicchains wrote: post #136
jayd16 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no global government so there's no global court. The global/international level is considered anarchy.

Anarchy means no ruler, not no rules.

The concept is about the lack of a governing body that can enforce "rules". By definition "rules" (as in laws) cannot exist without a ruler (as in one who can enforce laws).

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#215

Post by hopia »

baybal2 wrote: post #92
headcanon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States' main geopolitical imperative is to maintain global hegemony. Part of this is ensuring regional powers are either allied (in the case of NATO countries or Saudi Arabia) or contained (in the case of Russia and Iran). It is a fundamental rule of Geopolitics that every country assert itself to the best of its abilities with the strengths they have. One of Russia's biggest strengths is natural resources…

"United States have no geopolitical strategy, but a lot of self proclaimed geopolitical strategists." I once have heard this position from US ambassador in Kazakhstan on a private reception event. The guy told people he expected a visit to a *stan country to be like a visit to a warzone. He was learning martial arts, hostage negotiation, and been mentored by multiple self proclaimed experts on "warlord politics" of t…

Didn't we go through the whole Cold War because of the conflicts in geopolitical interests between the West and the USSR states?

Today's Russia seems more assertive again with their geopolitical interests.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#216

Post by vbezhenar »

linkregister wrote: post #94
baybal2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"United States have no geopolitical strategy, but a lot of self proclaimed geopolitical strategists." I once have heard this position from US ambassador in Kazakhstan on a private reception event. The guy told people he expected a visit to a *stan country to be like a visit to a warzone. He was learning martial arts, hostage negotiation, and been mentored by multiple self proclaimed experts on "warlord politics" of t…

> Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions. The people of Georgia, Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine would beg to differ.

Russia feels that Crimea and eastern Ukraine is actually part of Russia. It was separated at paper, but it wasn't separated in souls. So you can expect further conquests of Ukraine parts, until there's no more people in the remaining Ukraine parts who identify themselves as part of Russian culture. And probably those who remain will just be conquered by Poland and that's about it.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#217

Post by thatcat »

d0mine wrote: post #210
HenryBemis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I cannot Reply to brnt's post so I am using 1 lvl higher. My favourite examples are ancient Greece, Rome, ancient Mongolia, etc. Cherry picking moments in time to redefine borders is dangerous to say the least. Give the Italians half Europe and Near East? Give Greece everything from South Italy (Magna Grecian) all the way to Afghanistan? Crimea was part of Russia, true. Give Italy what it had first and then we w…

How many people speak Greek in Crimea? How many are native Russian speakers?

So, people speak English many places and the UK doesn't have any right to control those areas.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#218

Post by baybal2 »

phs318u wrote: post #183
baybal2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"United States have no geopolitical strategy, but a lot of self proclaimed geopolitical strategists." I once have heard this position from US ambassador in Kazakhstan on a private reception event. The guy told people he expected a visit to a *stan country to be like a visit to a warzone. He was learning martial arts, hostage negotiation, and been mentored by multiple self proclaimed experts on "warlord politics" of t…

> Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions. Are you sure about that? https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/1990s-manifesto-outlini...

I heard and read the text, that's an "elders of zion" level tinfoil.

If readers are ok cherry picking from his work, and go on, they should also argue his points that there be a stealthy Russian amphibious landing on US soil, and Russian agents flooding US with "psychotronic agent" to steer US elections...

The guy just puts a shopping list of all obvious nasty things that could happen to the West, and call it a strategy. Few things from that coming true, does not mean them acting on this as a guiding policy.

Continuing the parallel with Danish: yes, Vikings main interest with British Islands was loot and plunder, but they were not dumb to the level where they make invading the British harder for themselves. When given a chance, they would thoroughly mess up British political arrangements with all means available to them.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#219

Post by hopia »

igravious wrote: post #89
headcanon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States' main geopolitical imperative is to maintain global hegemony. Part of this is ensuring regional powers are either allied (in the case of NATO countries or Saudi Arabia) or contained (in the case of Russia and Iran). It is a fundamental rule of Geopolitics that every country assert itself to the best of its abilities with the strengths they have. One of Russia's biggest strengths is natural resources…

> Russia may attempt to assert itself to a greater extent in the next few decades, possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. This is in the book that forecasts that Japan will attack the US in 2050 except that it'll be all space-borne battlestars and lasers and hypersonic weapons. Among other preposterous scenarios. Riiiight. > It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil an…

It's really not so far-fetched to think Russia would annex a Baltic state sometime in the future. They've shown they have the capability and political will to annex similarly prepared countries' territories.

It all boils down to what they believe NATO's response would be.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#220

Post by hkt »

d0mine wrote: post #210
HenryBemis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I cannot Reply to brnt's post so I am using 1 lvl higher. My favourite examples are ancient Greece, Rome, ancient Mongolia, etc. Cherry picking moments in time to redefine borders is dangerous to say the least. Give the Italians half Europe and Near East? Give Greece everything from South Italy (Magna Grecian) all the way to Afghanistan? Crimea was part of Russia, true. Give Italy what it had first and then we w…

How many people speak Greek in Crimea? How many are native Russian speakers?

People speaking a language is not a useful way of choosing your borders. Otherwise most of Latin America can revert to Spanish control, the US can be annexed by the UK, countries like Morocco can be colonies of the French again. The fact is that spreading your language is a basic element of empire building. The fact that Crimea, Ukraine etc have so many Russian speakers reflects their past.
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