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Yazata
Feb 28, 2022 06:31 AM
(This post was last modified: Feb 28, 2022 06:42 AM by Yazata.)
I think that short-term as a result of the Ukraine War, the US arguably needs to stop importing Russian oil for a while. Russia is one of the biggest suppliers of oil to the US. Of course there are those in Washington who don't want to halt that oil because doing so would raise US fuel prices at the pump and might have political effects at the voting booth.
An obvious way to address that would be to stop suppressing the US petrochemical industry. The United States could be self-sufficient in energy if the federal government wanted us to be. Energy self-sufficiency would be very much in the US interest. In fact we could be a net energy exporter if we wanted to be, which could help wean Europe off its dependence on Russian energy imports.
Of course halting Russian energy imports might not hurt Russia very much either, since China is rapidly modernizing and has a ravenous appetite for oil. All the oil that Russia no longer sells to the US and Europe would just be sold to China, moving those two potential enemies of the US closer together. So for 30 years there's been a good argument for Russian trade with the West, since it ties Russia and the West more closely together. But that strategy seems to be falling apart as we speak.
Looking out long-term, I've always felt that Russia runs a serious risk of being eventually reduced to a client state of the would-be world's Middle Kingdom. If the Russians could just be convinced of the danger that China represents to them (how long do they propose to continue owning Siberia and its resources?), it would make more sense for them to enter into a more equal and mutually advantageous alliance with the US and Europe who could support it against powerful next-door China.
But Putin appears to be an old-style Russian cold-warrior who thinks of the US and Europe as Russia's natural enemy. (The US is seeing a corresponding rise of neo-cold-warriors as well, who have been almost deafening in the last few days.)
And it all works in the interest of China, who are clearly the big future super-power threat. As Ukraine burns, the pieces on the world geopolitical game board are falling into place very nicely for China.
