Eras of sanctions

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

More than once I have heard in recent days from the lips of young people about the sanctions against Russia. They usually talk about it with aspiration, sometimes with poorly hidden horror. Say, how to live on in such unbearable conditions? Usually I calmly listen to this cry from my heart and explain to them that nothing fundamentally new has happened. For the past 100 years, our country has been constantly under various sanctions of the states of the democratic world.

Their range is wide. It will satisfy any, even the most demanding taste. There was a complete blockade of goods from the USSR in the 30s, and the technological blockade of 1949, and the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974, and the blockade of the construction of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline in 1981. We still don't remember the blockade of Soviet Russia immediately after the revolution, taking it for granted.

“All right,” another young man will tell me, “it was all under communism. The West fought against an ideology alien to it. But nowadays in our country there is no leading role of the party. Why is there such disfavor? It’s not a matter of the political system at all! The goal is the same: at any cost to achieve dishonor and humiliation of Russia. And all this has nothing to do with the events in Ukraine. The sanctions followed long before the Maidan.

Many, probably, are not even aware that in 1998, when there was no "Putin dictatorship" and "revival of imperial ambitions" in 1998, sanctions in the field of scientific cooperation followed. American companies were prohibited from receiving any goods, technology or services from the 10 Russian organizations listed. Doesn't it look like anything?

I repeat: ideology has absolutely nothing to do with it. It is about protecting a monopolar world order. Your own cozy world. As soon as Moscow began to overcome the consequences of the 90s and regain its rightful place in the international arena, the sanctions mechanism immediately kicked in. So take it as a contributing factor. They will be removed only if Russia ceases to be Russia. And then - I'm not completely convinced of this.

There is another popular reason for grief today: pegging the ruble to the dollar as a world currency. But you will remember that the USA as a state is younger than our Bolshoi Theater. And before that, they somehow managed to do it. Having been under sanctions for almost 100 years, they also not only survived, but also won the war and were the first to fly into space. The Americans themselves also understand that they cannot go too far. This is fraught with a complete imbalance in the trading system, fragmentation of the global economic space. They understand, but do not speak aloud. Till. Perhaps, after the end of the current "Caribbean Crisis 2.0" they will start talking. There is no other way out. The unipolar world is dying out faster than they would like it to be.