Even a win would herald defeat
A victory in the sanctions war with Russia would hasten the end of US hegemony
Wars are hard to win; often, they’re not worth fighting. During the Cold War, for example, a candidate for prime minister of Denmark came up with a novel and refreshing idea. He proposed to replace the entire defence budget with a single recording – “We surrender” – in Russian. But now we have another war. And our blood is up. This is no time to wave the white flag. Thankfully, we are told, the international community has rarely been as united as it is today in applying sanctions against Russia.
Oh yeah? South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, for one, is not onboard. Vladimir Putin has thanked him for his “balanced approach” to the war. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro has refused to take sides. Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has also declined to join the sanctions. China has cosied up to Russia and scrupulously declined to criticise the invasion of Ukraine. How come most of the world’s people – China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Brazil – are either on the other side, or neutral? How come they have refused to join the crusade? Even in the West, support for US sanctions is more bluff and bluster than reality. The EU, for example, has donated $1.09bn in aid to Ukraine. At the same time, its purchase of Russian energy supplies has funnelled $38bn into Putin’s war machine.
We have no insight into which side God is on, or whose victory would make the world a better place. We’d be just as happy to see both sides lose. Tolstoy was mostly right; war is a scam: “In reality war is an inevitable result of the existence of armies; and armies are only needed by governments to dominate their own working classes”. Tolstoy overlooks the great joy and pride the working classes get out of seeing their boys kick foreign butt. It brings them a psychic satisfaction that is hard to measure. And now, goaded by their upper classes, they cheer on the Ukrainians as if it were the home town in the Super Bowl.
But war is no game. And the sanctions war is no more likely to end well than the wars in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Will Russia be forced to withdraw, humbled, so that Americans can rejoice, with their first real win since 1945? Maybe. More likely, even a victory will hasten the decline of the US empire and its dollar-dominated money system. “Wars also upend the dominance of currencies and serve as a doula to the birth of new monetary systems,” says Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse. China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran… most of the world’s people aren’t part of this sanctions war. But all have seen what the US can do with its weaponised dollar and are speeding up efforts to find a replacement. A strong yuan? A gold-backed rouble? A new digital or crypto money? We don’t know; but we don’t doubt they will find something.
“The EU has funnelled $38bn into Putin’s war machine”