The fear of US-led western economic sanctions still petrifies most of the non-western world but the latest news reports show that this fear has largely dissipated at different levels and in different parts of the world today. The US authorities have been using their sanctions against the non-western world ever since the end of World War II when the colonial empires of the western nations began crumbling.
As the leading Allied power that won World War II the US did not have to worry about rebuilding a war-ravaged nation like the Soviet Union, which faced most of the death and destruction of that war.
Source: Safety4Sea
That was the time when the political, economic and military leadership of the western world changed hands from the British Empire to the US going by today news Hindi of that time.
This was also the period of the Cold War when the US was growing fast as the world’s biggest and most powerful economy with the largest global footprint in trade and enterprise.
The Soviet Union, which was the only rival of the US at that time, was too busy rebuilding their devastated country to pose any real threat to US domination of the high seas and trade routes.
The US dollar becomes the leading currency of the world
As the US began dominating the global international trade and commerce, the US dollar began gaining importance as the preferred currency for global trade.
As per the latest news of that time, the US dollar became the global reserve currency wherein 90% of the payments for all international trade are done with the US dollar.
This was when the US began gaining a critical financial leverage over most of the countries of the world and the idea of selectively applying sanctions on the countries of the world began. Any country that is sanctioned and barred from trading in US dollars would be doomed.
Source: HSDL
In addition to the US military might, this nation now had a disproportionately larger and stronger economic and financial might which it began using against most of the nations of the world.
The US foreign policy experts realized that frequent use of military power against any nation without any valid reason would create a wrong perception of the US among the international community.
Hence the use of sanctions to destroy a country’s economy became the weapon of choice for the US whenever it wanted to target any country without firing a single bullet as per today news Hindi.
Misuse of economic power and military might by the US
The Cold War formally came to an end when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1989 and was replaced by the Russian Federation, which inherited around 80% of the former’s land and over 60% of its population.
The disastrous defeat in the Cold War had severely weakened Russia and that left the entire world stage open for the US to dominate if you consider the latest news of that time.
‘Russia was no longer a super power’, declared the western media and intelligentsia and the world was no longer bi-polar but is now unipolar with the US as the sole super power.
With the global arena wide open for domination, the US began its coercive foreign policy of using its military and economic might for geopolitical control over the entire planet.
It began targeting countries where it created conditions for social strife and civil war leading to change of government in such countries, which is also known as regime change in geopolitics.
Source: GlobalTimes
Soon after the US won the Cold War, it started the war against Yugoslavia to force the dismemberment of that country into seven parts by the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the 1990s.
In response to the 9/11 terrorist attack, the US decided to go to war against Iraq in 2003 after creating a propaganda about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Earlier, in 2020 the US forcibly sent troops to Afghanistan and remained there for two decades, wasting almost 2 trillion dollars before making a drastically decided and messy withdrawal.
All such operations cost huge amounts of money that ran into hundreds of billions of dollars and soon this began to take a toll on the US economy.
The dark years of the Russian Federation under Yeltsin
Russia not just inherited 80% of the Soviet Union’s land but also most of its natural resources and that made it self-sufficient in almost everything it requires to sustain the country as per the latest news of that period.
However, in 1989 after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, when Boris Yeltsin became the first president of the newly formed Russian Federation the downfall of this once great country began.
The presidency of Yeltsin was the worst thing that could have happened to Russia immediately after its disintegration because the least that can be said about Yeltsin is that he was not fit for the job by a long way.
Source: TheTimes
His decade-long misrule ended rather abruptly when he resigned and handed over power to the then prime minister, Vladimir Putin. In the presidential elections held a few months later, Putin won a clear mandate and became the Russian Federation’s second president.
When a country of Russia’s size blessed with all the resources it has, gets a great patriotic leader like Vladimir Putin, it becomes literally bullet-proof against any kind of US sanctions.
Rise of Vladimir Putin and the resurrection of Russia
Putin was an ex-KGB operative before entering politics and he is the exact opposite of Yeltsin in matters of efficiency, efficacy and performance according to the latest news that is trending.
Over the last 24 years of his rule, he was determined to get Russia out of the mess in which Yeltsin had left the country and today he has successfully brought Russia back to its great power status.
Among the many accomplishments of Putin that brought Russia back to its great power status was the decisive Russian military involvement in Syria that helped defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS].
Source: ArabReform
This outcome is of tremendous geopolitical significance for Russia because there is credible evidence that the ISIS was the creation of the US Central Intelligence Agency [CIA].
The US wanted control over Syria in order to build a gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe through Turkey and Syria came on the way. This explains the deep involvement of Turkey in supporting the ISIS terrorists.
If successful, this would have given Europe an alternative to Russian gas and that would have been a major geopolitical challenge for Russia at that time since Ukraine was fully under US control.
The Ukraine War is a defeat for the US unipolar status
Russia got into the war in Ukraine not out of choice but out of compulsion because of the predatory moves made by the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] in Ukraine.
It all began in November 2013 with what is known as the Maidan Revolution in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev as per the latest news that was trending then.
This was a typical mass uprising funded by the US deep state actors like George Soros and others in coordination with the CIA and the US State Department. With billions of dollars pouring in to support and sustain the uprising, the government fell and Yanukovich fled to Russia.
Source: GlobalGeneva
This was a successful regime change operation by the US and now they had their stooges in power in Ukraine, a group of people who had a pathological hatred for Russians.
About half the population of Ukraine is of Russian ethnicity and most of them live in the eastern half of the country. All of a sudden, these people were faced with an uncertain future as they were told to give up their Russian identity and language or get out of Ukraine.
By 2021 the US had begun talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO and that was a red line which Russia had warned the US not to try and cross. The US still has not dared to include Ukraine in NATO as on date.
The latest news reports in February 2022 showed the Russians moving into Ukraine. Soon the US-led west responded with massive and comprehensive economic sanctions against Russia. However, Asian powers like India and China refused to be a part of these sanctions and kept buying Russian oil worth tens of billions that allowed Russia to tackle the impact of the western sanctions and continue to fight the war with ever increasing intensity. Today, the tide of the war has changed and Russia is slowly but surely winning the war. The US sanctions had failed completely and now the US itself is faced with an uncertain economic crisis. India and to a lesser extent, China, have exposed the weaknesses of US sanctions policy and now it looks certain that the US is no position to play the sanctions game anymore.
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