This is actually pretty troubling. Anybody remember the lead up to Pearl Harbor and the second world war?
For those of you that don’t, it was all about the money. Their economy was being squeezed. Russia could be very dangerous in a situation like this.
The bright spot is that it is OPEC (namely the Saudi’s) that are screwing with the price of oil to damage our production and that is hurting Russia more than so far it is hurting us.
Poking one’s finger in Russia’s eye may not be wise. Russia could very easily change the equation in their favor by sponsoring an attack by Iran on the Saudi’s.
Just saying... These are dangerous times.
Russia does not have conventional military parity with its potential enemies. All of its former captive nations now are free. The Russians hate this, but it's true. So nations like Poland, Hungary, and the rest will not be able or willing to aid Russia.
NATO is weak, but not as weak as Putin thinks. If you look at how strong Japan was relative to the USA prior to Dec 7 1941, Japan was much stronger than Russia is compared to the rest of the world.
Putin's using surrogates, paid trolls, full spectrum information and disinformation, and goofball threats. We need to stay strong and realize that even Putin is not suicidal for a neo-Russian empire enough that he'll start WWIII. He can return to the family of nations very easily. And if Russia really wants him as their president for life and to rename the country Putinstan, they can. Just end his unprovoked and undeclared war on his neighbors and he'll have all of Russia for himself and his rich cronies.
Yes, it started with Imperial Japan in the 1930's setting up a puppet state in Manchuria and then invading China. The Rape of Nanking in 1937 killed 300,000 people.
In response to the invasion of China, FDR started to impose economic sanctions against Japan in 1938. They had little effect in stopping Japanese aggression. In 1940 the Japanese signed the tripartite agreement with Germany and Italy to form the Axis powers.
Responding to continuing Japanese aggression in China, the U.S. froze Japanese assets in the U.S. on 26 July 1941 and on 1 August established an embargo on oil and gasoline exports to Japan. The oil embargo was an especially strong response because oil was Japan's most crucial import, and more than 80 percent of Japan's oil at the time came from the United States.
Poking one’s finger in Russia’s eye may not be wise. Russia could very easily change the equation in their favor by sponsoring an attack by Iran on the Saudi’s. Just saying... These are dangerous times.
Yes, these are dangerous times, but we don't need a Neville Chamberlain approach that just ignores or rewards aggression. The Russians seized Crimea and is now embarking on aggression in Eastern Ukraine. The Russians started this and need to pay a price, especially that piss-ant Putin.
Russia isn’t prepared for war, nor capable to conduct large scale invasions and fight against a real enemy, and they can’t afford to lose their military in a useless gesture against the United States and the 27 other NATO countries.
See post 20, this is Russia, not the old Soviet empire.
I once heard that Standard Oil was selling to Japan prior to Pearl Harbor. Or something like that. Did it fall under embargo? Not saying anything political, just curious.
Perhaps somebody here has more accurate info. Thanks in advance.