Never underestimate Russia
February 4, 2024“The Ruble has collapsed. The Russian stock market closed due to fears of capital flight. Interest rates have more than doubled. Credit rating agencies have significantly downgraded Russia.” These were essentially the statements made by Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, echoing the sentiments of Western officials who were counting on “massive and unprecedented consequences”…
American Sanctions: A Double-Edged Sword
September 24, 2023Sanctions are a lever frequently employed, certainly because it allows the rulers who use and abuse them to avoid costly armed conflicts. Sanctions represent a kind of “low-cost” warfare. Not quite, in reality, because these retaliatory measures against a state – far from harming its officials – primarily punish the most vulnerable under the yoke…
Russia: a poor power
February 8, 2022In terms of sanctions against it, Russia is particularly vulnerable when it comes to technology. Its dependency goes back a long time, to the Soviet era in fact because – despite the USSR exporting more machines and machine tools than it imported numerically-speaking – the value of these imports exceeded 7 and sometimes even…