A Uncle Sam's BITCH? Pay The PRICE!

I just took a short break from my life in “meatspace” to comment upon the great news of the day: Russia is introducing a full 12 months embargo on the import of beef, pork, fruits and vegetables, poultry, fish, cheese, milk and dairy products from the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada and the Kingdom of Norway. Russia is also introducing an airspace ban against European and US airlines that fly over our airspace to Eastern Asia, namely, the Asia-Pacific Region and is considering changing the so-called Russian airspace entry and exit points for European scheduled and charter flights. Furthermore, Russia is ready to revise the rules of using the trans-Siberian routes, and will also discontinue talks with the US air authorities on the use of the trans-Siberian routes. Finally, starting this winter, we may revoke the additional rights issued by the Russian air authorities beyond the previous agreements. This is such an interesting and major development that it requires a much more subtle analysis than just the crude calculation of how much this might cost the EU or US. I will attempt no such calculation, but instead I would point out the following elements:

EUROPE’s NEW ARC of INSTABILITY

The old post-cold war order is now forever over. A quarter century after the falloff the Berlin Wall, a new and highly volatile geopolitical landscape is emerging in Europe. Its contours and content are not yet clearly evident, however. But in this tumultuous year of 2014 (marking a hundred years since the start of the “Great War”, and two hundred years after the Congress of Vienna) global events as in the past, are again(and with a vengeance) re-shaping or determining the way the map of Europe might look likein the coming decades. The extremely violent ructions in Ukraine showcase such a trend. This “semi-autonomous”and relatively stable former Soviet republic was once known as the “bread basket” of the USSR. It’s today just an impoverished basket case, left for the IMF to pillage and plunder in the name of “freedom and democracy”.