Two “senior administration officials” held a background briefing for reporters early this morning to elaborate on the “incredibly potent” measures planned by the U.S. and its allies to impose “severe economic costs” upon Russia and its people, and to detail the contingency planning underway to somehow keep Europe, in particular, from being destroyed by those measures. It was a phenomenal display of predator hubris before a crash. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/01/25/background-press-call-by-senior-administration-officials-on-russia-ukraine-economic-deterrence-measures/
“The gradualism of the past is out, and this time we’ll start at the top of the escalation ladder and stay there,” they promised. Nor is this economic warfare contingent on future action by Russia. They took credit for “deepening” a sell-off in Russian markets, raising its borrowing costs, and driving down the value of its currency already, through the talk of “sanctions with massive consequences” to come.
They did not hide that the goal is not to prevent some alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine, but is rather to “hit Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy quite hard… [to] undercut Putin’s aspirations to exert influence on the world stage.” For this, not just financial sanctions are promised, but export controls to deny Russia access to technologies which are “critical to its own ambitions to develop high-tech capabilities in aerospace and defense, lasers and sensors, maritime, AI, robotics, quantum, et cetera…. We’re willing to work with any country in order to deny Russia an input that it needs to diversify its economy,” because this, they delude themselves, “would lead to an atrophying of Russia’s productive capacity over time.”
