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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

#301

Post by lispm »

rayiner wrote: post #300
lispm wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you claim that there is a contract which binds NATO countries to spend 2% of their budget on military and that only Germany is not spending 2%. Everything of that is wrong, There is no contract. The goal of 2% is set for 2025, not now. Currently a bunch of countries spend less than 2%. And: large parts of the US military spending is completely unrelated to NATO. Next you need to ask yourself if these approximat…

Your comparison is fatally flawed. If someone declared that the US/Europe doesn’t need to spend so much on social welfare or transit, because Russia and China spend much less in nominal dollars/euro, one would quite rightly point out that a dollar buys much more food or miles of subway tunnel in Russia than the United States. The same is true for Military spending. The military is labor heavy, and production is mostl…

> The military is labor heavy, and production is mostly domestic.

Russia is decades behind in high-tech and has only limited access to western technology in many areas. The country largely lives of selling natural resources. There is a many years ongoing embargo on high-tech in many areas - also from the EU. There is basically limited technological cooperation with Russia in many high-tech sectors right now.

The result is that Russia has only a few somewhat competitive areas in military technology and needs to invest a lot of money into those: Nuclear weapons, rockets, space technology, etc. Selling those weapons helps their industry a bit.

This affects for example how much money they have to deploy even tanks:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22600/russia-cant-affo...

For example they have only a single old aircraft carrier:

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-admiral-kuznetsov-murmansk-f...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmUpZDb3W0Q

The US OTOH has none or ten whole carrier fleets...

Russia has submarines and a lot of nuclear technology. From time to time an old one sinks. The older ones are rotting somewhere...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48897468

That Russia has cheap clothes for their soldiers, or can mass produce tanks for their soldiers does not help them, if they don't have a competitive high-tech industry. Keeping the nuclear weapons (rockets, submarines, launchers, spy satellites, ...) is extremely expensive and where the money goes.

For the West it's much easier to cooperate on technology and weapons.

See the list of carriers: most of them are from US, NATO or allies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s...

It's clear that 65 billions USD doesn't buy much on the world market, even though the costs at home are low. The rest of the economy does not support their high-tech needs...

It's not that Russia has no competitive weapons, but the breadth and depth is simply not there. Russia selectively chooses areas where they develop competitive weapons with their more limited resources.

True, the Russians don't reveal the full scale of military costs. But the US does the same:

https://www.thenation.com/article/tom-dispatch-america-defen...

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

#302

Post by dang »

wanderer2323 wrote: post #152
eru wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conquest of Crimea was probably more about providing a distraction for domestic audiences than anything else?

The "conquest" of Crimea was a response to an implied threat to a natural gas trade with Europe in the followup of a western-sponsored coup. (to be even more specic, Crimean events were mostly about regaining the control of the Black Sea Fleet naval base, while Donbass events were about reacting to a hostile coup, but the two things are closely related) It was also an object lesson to all the minor powers in the regi…

Please don't go on about downvotes. It's against the site guidelines, is tedious, and usually turns out to be wrong. In the end your post got almost no downvotes relative to upvotes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#303

Post by DeonPenny »

torstenvl wrote: post #164
DeonPenny wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the US be drawn into that war? Why are we helping EU in the first place especially when they are russia main trading partners.

Because that's what being the leader of the free world means. The U.S. has the economic and military resources to give freedom a fighting chance of survival. If we choose not to counterbalance the influence of autocracies, that freedom won't last long.

But isn't the premise that no one wants the US to be the leader anymore.

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

#304

Post by jariel »

lispm wrote: post #194
bloodm wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Germany would spend 2% of its GPP on military, then it would approach Russia in absolute numbers, That would be crazy." It is her contractual obligation. Currently Germany does not have an Army anymore but a museum. How many tanks are operational? 100? Russia has 10.000...

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

"There is no contract about it."

You are disingenuously arguing against the wind.

Yes, there is, a kind of contract.

When nations agree to targets, and they did a long time ago, its material. That it's not technically part of the treaty is relevant, but not so important.

The 2% target was established long ago, there's a renewed 'agreement' since Trump took office, but it's along the same lines: European states will wait for Trump to be out of office and then ignore it.

The fact remains America provides defence for Europe, and Europe is willing to let that happen because, well, it's very expensive, among other things.

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

#305

Post by philwelch »

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.

No ruler means no rules.

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

#306

Post by stallmanite »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #113
zozbot234 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note, the point is not to overthrow the government in any real sense, but rather to make it incredibly costly and perhaps outright infeasible for the government to actively use state-organized violence against its own people , as dictatorships everywhere are wont to do. Combine an armed populace with a strong tradition of being loyal to the Constitution and its principles first and foremost, even in the context of a…

The federal government is light-years ahead of whatever private citizens can get their hands on; 71% of americans are overweight or obese; 30% of americans have some kind of chronic pain. If a shooting war broke out between the federal government and private citizens, the National Guard would just steamroll right on through them like they were made of thin air. I think that the best way to exercise the second amendme…

Just like we steamrolled through Iraq right? Easy-peasy

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

#307

Post by MR4D »

meerita wrote: post #238
MR4D wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The yuan won’t be freely convertible because that would open the floodgates to capital flight from China. As long as that possibility exists, free convertibility will not.

Actually they're flooding with yuans. 2018 and 19 they opened the gates to avoid the economy crash.

Flooding their market. Converting to dollars or other currencies is still very limited. [1] and [2]

1 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-12/after-a-d...

2 - https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012312/c...

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

#308

Post by rad_gruchalski »

dTal wrote: post #276
AsyncAwait wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions. Which is in stark contradiction to the sophisticated goals of the West to control as much of the world's market as possible in order for mega multinationals to be able to exploit cheap labor and maintain their insane margins, so that they're able to pay their executives an ex-politicians millions of dollars per yea…

I have no idea whether this comment is meant sarcastically or not.

It’s probably not sarcasm. In many places this sentiment is prevalent. Introduce „freedom” and „democracy” to create „free market” and seed „capitalism”.

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

#309

Post by rad_gruchalski »

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…

> For them, blackmailing Germany and other wealth nations in Europe by threatening to close the tap has no political story to it at all, just plainly a way to extort some extra bucks, and show the world how big their balls are.

Not sure how this benefits Russia. Each country has stategic reserves. Gas / oil is the only thing Russia can sell to the Western Europe in order to finance their own system. Russians have to sell it. Blackmailing countries is not in their business.

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

#310

Post by Bendingo »

hopia wrote: post #219
igravious wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> think Russia would annex a Baltic state

Baltics and Crimea are not comparable. - Crimea has Russia's only warm water port and would never be given up - Russia already has Baltic access (Kaliningrad and StPetersburg) - Crimea has been majority ethnic Russian for centuries and welcomes Russia - Baltics hate Russia

In summary, there is absolutely no logical reason Russia would annex Baltic state.

However, there are plenty reasons why non-Russian interests always repeat this narrative.

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