A first round of EU sanctions against Russia, unveiled yesterday, has been roundly mocked by Russian officials as weak and meaningless. Hawks among the EU foreign ministers are inclined to agree, and are pushing for an immediate and dramatic escalation of sanctions.
That’s not going to be an easy sell, as the EU can’t impose anything that’s not unanimous, and with Russian trade ties vital to many nations, they are none too eager to make the sanctions war any more biting than it already is.
Austria is leading the opponents, arguing that sanctions are taking the EU and Russia further away from negotiations, and other east and central European nations that depend on Russia for natural gas see tit-for-tat sanctions as something that’s going to hurt them a lot worse than Russia.
Even the nations pushing the sanctions, like Germany and Britain, have important economic ties with Russia, and while Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister David Cameron both insist they’re willing to take the hit to stick it to Russia, there’s likely a limit to how much they can absorb politically.
The sanctions war is already getting underway, as Russian officials are already pushing to scrap a major military helicopter deal worth $1.7 billion with France, on the grounds that the sanctions may not make France a reliable source of such supplies.
Desperate acts takes desperate measures, the question is, if these chicken hawks( European this time) being so desperate wanting to repeat their already proven stupidity to another level where they will lose again, yet so proud being chicken hawks blinding them to see the consequences.
Pull one thread, the right thread, and the entire shawl comes undone.
I have always said that the European view of NATO was that it should fight to the last American. I wouldn't be surprised therefore if the EU leaders will simply impose a few symbolic sanctions which will be quietly dropped once it is clear that Putin is staying away from the Baltic republics. Equally, negotiations will probably then resume on the agreement that Russia was negotiating with the EU on Visa-free access for Russians to the EU labour market, which is oddly simiar to the agreement with Ukraine that Putin supposedly objected to! Once the oligarchs get Putin back under control, and that seems to be happening, everything will be sorted out through negotiations with the EU.