Whether that’s true or not, Bauxite, it does not establish a trade embargo as a cause of the 2d world war.

The Japanese military thought that they needed to knock out US capabilities before making a move for the Dutch East Indies. Japanese military leaders were very much aware that the U.K. was bogged down and that the Netherlands was occupied by the Nazis. They were still afraid of the US responding. Maybe they were wrong. (Maybe the Japanese Empire would still be around if you had been advising them in 1941.) But wrong or right, that’s what they thought and how they responded to our embargos.

It’s the same situation with Putin today. I think it would be sheer madness for Putin to respond to our economic and cultural agression by launching a hot war with NATO. Are we sure Putin agrees? As the board sets up now, his is the only vote that matters.

Politics is played for keeps in the Ukraine. However, Russophile parties acceded to the transfer of the presidency in 2004 and Europhile parties did so in 2010. In re Yanukovich, neither the security forces nor his own political party would go to bat for him.

The Russophile parties have participated in all the elections held since 2014. Prior to 2014, they could command about 40% of the Ukrainian electorate. After, they were good for about 16%. You had two Russophile candidates in the 2019 presidential election. They won between them 16% of the vote.

Putin’s a crummy salesman. He’s been bested by a Democratic Party hack named Victoria Nuland.

Again, as a motive it hardly makes any sense. If you were ready to rumble over oil, rubber, and minerals, you’d take the bloody oil, rubber, and minerals and then see what the reaction was from Britain and the United States.

If you dust off public opinion surveys taken in 1938 in the United States, the share of those polled who favored participation in a hypothetical European war was around 4%. Even in 1940 and 1941, at a time when the U.S. was engaged in rapid rearmament and instituting Lend-Lease aid, the share favoring participation in the war was less than 20%. It’s difficult to believe that Japan taking the Dutch East Indies from the dangling colonial authority was going to change public opinion on foreign entanglements appreciably. Britain couldn’t defend their own possessions in the Far East, much less the Dutch possessions.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/1-reason-imperial-japan-attacked-pearl-harbor-oil-88771

My guess is the way it works is like this: there are at least two teams, the corrupt, pro-Russian team and the corrupt not pro-Russian team, assumed Western friendly. When there is violence in leadership change, and it goes from one team to the other, some might call it a coup. When members of one team transfer leadership to another team member, without violence, that isn’t a coup. However, I sincerely doubt members of one team would peaceable transfer power to a member of the other team, legally. That is something Americans used to be famous for. The elections since 2014 don’t really feel impressive. Did they have international voting observers, one day of balloting with pre-registration, no absentee ballots without cause, and signature verified voting? Or did they vote Fulton County Georgia style?

No, it will not. It’s too small a part of the global economy. Your problem right now is horribly irresponsible fiscal and monetary policy in Washington.

Do you agree that the rise in the cost of wheat will determine the accuracy of that claim? As example, official rate of inflation is 7.9%. Cost of wheat is up 60%. Which of course can’t yet be ascribed to Russia cutting off its wheat exports.

But if the cost of wheat rises to say 200%?

Is there any metric by which you’d concede that Russia ending its wheat exports, to any nation unfriendly to Russia, would be seen as inflationary?

You can ask the officials who did that. There is no doubt it’s not going to have much effect.

“Why would Russia cut off its revenue from those commodity exports, if they know it will only minimally affect the West?” GB

“That it will have minimal effect is right there in the numbers. Russia has no magic which will turn a small problem into a large one.”

However true that may be (wheat comprises 15% of total global caloric intake, though obviously much higher for some countries) that response does not answer my question; why would Russia cut off its revenue from its wheat exports, if they know that it will only minimally affect the West and the world?