As a foreigner, I can say that whatever it is you’re thinking of isn’t even newsworthy on the international stage.
What Putin has done to Russia is like if an American president had invaded a neighbour and the result was simultaneously $4 trillion central bank assets held abroad getting frozen, most of the billionaires becoming personae non grata in half the planet, a lot of smart people leaving the country as quickly as possible, the stock markets crashing about as hard as the Great Depression, direct refusal by major shipping companies to deal with the nation, and the currency halving relative to everything else, while also finding the hard way that all the military hardware had been “maintained” with cheap lookalike products and the cost difference pocketed by corruption at an unknown part of the chain.
He probably believes what most of my relatives (most of whom are Texans) do: this is all Biden’s fault for not letting petroleum producers drill and frack wherever and however they want; Putin never would have tried this if he knew the US could just overwhelm the oil market.
They can’t bear to consider that this is something of a last hurrah as Europe tries to wean themselves from the petro drug. There’s plenty of non-petroleum-related business going on in Texas, but the semi-rural power base relies on oil to stay rich.
ben_w|4 years ago
What Putin has done to Russia is like if an American president had invaded a neighbour and the result was simultaneously $4 trillion central bank assets held abroad getting frozen, most of the billionaires becoming personae non grata in half the planet, a lot of smart people leaving the country as quickly as possible, the stock markets crashing about as hard as the Great Depression, direct refusal by major shipping companies to deal with the nation, and the currency halving relative to everything else, while also finding the hard way that all the military hardware had been “maintained” with cheap lookalike products and the cost difference pocketed by corruption at an unknown part of the chain.
KarlKemp|4 years ago
MandieD|4 years ago
They can’t bear to consider that this is something of a last hurrah as Europe tries to wean themselves from the petro drug. There’s plenty of non-petroleum-related business going on in Texas, but the semi-rural power base relies on oil to stay rich.