For seven years, since the initial Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, the United States and its allies have piled on economic sanctions to punish and possibly reverse the Russian gains in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
These Western efforts have not only failed but have created a strategic condition wherein Russia’s economy has been hardened against future economic sanctions – and where Moscow and Beijing are now operating closer than ever before.
Clearly, American actions toward Russia are creating a nightmare scenario where the two most powerful states in Eurasia are being forced into an anti-American alliance of autocrats that could fundamentally rewrite the rules of the international order. Unless the United States can figure out a new strategy for dealing with this new world order of ascendant autocrats in Eurasia, it will find itself isolated and alone in the world.
The current crisis in Ukraine is but the beginning of the international reorganization away from America’s post-Cold War “unipolar” hegemony into a tripolar balance of power where two of the three players, Russia and China, are aligned against the third, the United States.
Washington has tried desperately to contain Russia and force it to abandon its Ukraine policy since 2014. What so few in Washington comprehend is that for President Vladimir Putin and his regime, Ukraine is an essential geo-strategic asset. And, yes, the Russians are likely willing to go to war to possess at least the eastern part of Ukraine.
Washington created its own worst enemies
The real problem for Washington is that not only has it created in both of its strategic rivals, Russia and China, a mutual loathing for the United States and the West more generally, but now both China and Russia are coordinating at all levels.
Thus Eurasia, the heartland of the world, is rapidly becoming dominated by two military and economic powers inimical to the United States, and which are increasingly radicalized in their shared hatred of America’s role in the world.
Since the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing eight-year conflict in eastern Ukraine, the US has applied onerous sanctions on Russia. Initially, these sanctions did much damage to Russia. Yet, over time, Russia became more self-sufficient.
Like an antibiotic that has been overused, American sanctions lost their efficacy against Russia. Yet the Americans continue applying this ineffective remedy to a problem that is only worsening. Now, Russia is starting to ignore those sanctions and even to dish out its own, nascent form of economic sanctions against the United States and the wider world economic system – with China’s gleeful assistance.
Russia goes after America’s food
For example, as Russian military forces continue their horrifying buildup along Ukraine’s borders, Moscow has imposed harsh sanctions until April 1 on all ammonium-nitrate fertilizer products emanating from Russia.
As one of the largest exporters of one of the most ubiquitous fertilizer products in the world – during South America’s all-important harvest season, which has already been negatively impacted by drier conditions, thanks to La Niña – Russian sanctions risk spiking the price of global agricultural products at a critical time.
This means that Americans’ groceries are about to explode in price, which will eventuate in a severe drag on an already flagging economy. And, with warnings that the United States may be headed for a recession no later than 2023 – with inflation already at a whopping 7.5% – it stands to reason that now is not the time for added costs on essential goods like food.
Struggling for food is likely to make Americans less open to struggling against foreign threats, which is precisely the point of the Russian actions.
Thanks to feckless American and European policies toward Ukraine and Russia, the Kremlin has found itself in a position where it can severely impact the price of global food supplies.
Ever since the West imposed the initial round of sanctions on Moscow following the 2014 invasion of Crimea, Russia has worked to become both a major energy exporter and a major food producer. Moscow’s efforts have been wildly successful. Because of this, Russia can now fundamentally change the trajectory of global commodities markets as readily as Washington can impact global financial markets with its injudicious use of sanctions.
As Russia has piled on temporary sanctions of its ammonium-nitrate fertilizer products, Beijing announced a similar ban on exports of phosphate-based fertilizer products until June 1. This, along with the Russian move, has already increased the global price of food.
Unlike Washington’s long-running sanctions, which appear to have hardened the resolve of the Eurasian axis of autocrats and allowed these regimes to innovate their way out of the trap the Americans set for them, the West is entirely susceptible to the Sino-Russian gambit to spike the price of agricultural products with their fertilizer bans.
China, Russia might create their own currency
By the way, these moves are but the beginnings of what might become a much more comprehensive and debilitating set of moves by the autocrats, should Washington continue behaving as though it were still 1994 and history had ended.
Not only have Russia and China both moved together to form a possibly potent sanctions regime against the United States and its allies, at some point they will likely move their economies – and the economies of their proxies throughout Eurasia – closer together. In fact, over time, the two Eurasian powers may create an alternative currency to stymie further America’s ability to impose sanctions.
Thanks to Russia, China might beat US blockade
Beyond that, as tensions between Washington and Beijing flare up over Taiwan, leading American strategists have argued for the US Navy to impose a long-distance blockade on China.
While this is a sensible strategy (at least for now, as China’s navy still does not yet have the range to break such a blockade), what few realize is that the presence of a friendly Russia to the north of China means that Beijing could likely endure whatever blockade Washington attempts to impose should China invade Taiwan.
So US military power potential is being sapped because of the economic hardening that both China and Russia have engaged in to withstand the inevitable and ongoing sanctions regime America has used against them. The enemy, you see, always gets a vote.
A new (old) world order is born
Whatever happens next over Ukraine, one thing is clear: This is not the world that the United States inherited after its bloodless, stunning Cold War victory. The world we are now living in is one in which the messy geopolitics of the past are back – a world that is not ruled by only one power but where there are at least three competing powers (and several medium-sized ones all jockeying for power).
Today’s international system is unstable and the Americans, who had become comfortable as the global hegemon, sadly, have lost that pole position.
If Washington continues behaving as though nothing has changed, the system will collapse further, and the US will find itself in a truly disadvantageous position: surrounded by antagonistic, empowered Eurasian rivals, cut off from access to the world’s most important markets and resources, and under constant pressure to conform to the new autocratic world order.
Russia and China can go after the US economy through the global commodities market. Over time, as these two powers solidify their alliance – and as China continues its economic growth over the next decade – the ability of these two powers to threaten America economically will only increase.
Washington is wholly unprepared for this scenario, and the leaders of both Russia and China know this.