The April 24th cover of the London Economist, known for their cynically sadistic sense of humor and their indefatigable loyalty to the British Empire’s interests, published a pleased editorial about the opening salvo of Biden’s sanctions against Russia, under the hopeful headline: “Putin’s Next Move: Russia’s President Menaces His People and Neighbors; The West Should Raise the Cost of His Malign Behavior.” https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/04/24/russias-president-menaces-his-people-and-neighbours
After dark warnings about the evil Mr. Putin, his “colossal show of force” along the border with Ukraine, and his “conspiracy theory about the West trying to assassinate Alexander Lukashenko, the despot of next-door Belarus,” the editorial sagely explained: “Mr. Putin is weaker than he looks, but that makes him dangerous,… Facing protests at home, he may lash out abroad, in Ukraine, Belarus or elsewhere.”
The editorial then presented the conundrum Biden and his British masters are facing. “When deciding how to deter Mr. Putin, the West should be realistic. No one wants war with a nuclear power, and sanctions are often ineffective.… Russia has fashioned a siege economy, inward-looking and stagnant but hard for outsiders to throttle. Talk of an embargo on Russian oil and gas exports, meanwhile, is naive. The world must one day find alternatives to fossil fuels, but suddenly shutting off a supplier as big as Saudi Arabia would cause global economic tremors—so it won’t happen.”
So, what to do?