It’s the second-raters that stir up hell; first-rate people wouldn’t.—Dorothy Parker
As I recall, “blowback” was defined by the CIA as the unintended and/or unforeseen adverse consequences of U.S foreign policy. We can certainly see that in Washington’s current adventure in Ukraine. In fact, this may be the supreme example to date, and there has been quite a track record, as noticed by cognoscenti who follow such things.
Let’s start from ground zero. Vlad Putin did not roll out of bed one morning and decide to order Russia’s armed forces to invade innocent, hapless Ukraine. It is not even necessary to be a foreign affairs cognoscenti to realize that this entire affair has “made in Washington” written all over it.
In the immediate run-up to Prez Putin throwing up his hands, one could almost casually observe that Washington was doing everything it could (while loudly proclaiming just the opposite) to ensure that no negotiations would be entered into between Moscow, Kiev and their next door neighbors in Europe.
After all, please remember that Washington had already shown its hand by slamming the door on the 2014-15 Minsk accords. It simply instructed its European vassals to walk away from the signed-and-delivered Minsk II, and let things slide.
This annoying fact alone would give Vlad pause about negotiating with the Europeans or Kiev. À quoi bon? Washington’s meddling foreign-policy officialdom was always lurking in the background with a monkey-wrench.
Now comes this instructive item via Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post, alerting us to a hilarious and egregious blowback from Washington’s triumphal post-invasion sanction regime. If Washington’s demands about boycotting Russian oil had actually been followed, then Europe and the U.S. would be in even worse shape than they currently are!
Item: “…the United States and the European Union should thank China and India rather than castigating them for buying cheap oil and gas from Russia.”
Item: “The massive embargo promised by the US and the EU on Russian energy sources did not materialise, fortunately. If they had succeeded, prices today would have been ruinous for many more poor nations, as some already are in a dire situation with today’s prices.”
Item: “As argued by economist Huang Yukon of the Carnegie Asia Programme, “…if the two Asian giants [China and India] actually stopped buying crude oil from Russia and relied more on Middle Eastern producers, the competing demand coming from Europe would result in soaring prices and chaos in global energy markets”.
Item: “…As Huang wrote: “The Western alliance should not even try to persuade China and India to stop buying energy resources from Russia…. the oil and gas that Europe is no longer buying needs to be made available to other major customers, or energy prices will ratchet up to politically destabilising levels. The Western allies cannot have it both ways.”
Sanction the world, ruin the world. The monkey-wrench from Washington bounces every-which way.
