Sanctions seldom work and, if pursued, they can have unintended consequences. One of the best examples was the oil embargo imposed by the United States on Japan in 1941, which prompted Japan to attack the United States.

More recently we have witnessed attempts to sanction governments into compliance and, when the sanctions fail, as they generally do, they are followed by war and descent into chaos à la Iraq and Libya.

Sanctions have been imposed on North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria in order to undermine the governments and to effect regime change but with little effect. In most cases the sanctions are initiated by the United States against governments solely because the country in question has the temerity to not abide by US dictates.

Having learned nothing from this failed policy, the US is levying sanctions against Russia to undermine its economy   and overthrow its government. There is no question but what these sanctions are harming Russia’s economy, but they are also working in Putin’s favour. His approval ratings have soared and the sanctions have mobilized the Russian public. They see the sanctions as an attack on Mother Russia and themselves.

Putin, as I wrote in an earlier post, just has to weather the next three years until the natural gas begins to flow into China, then he will be able to ignore pressure from the West. In the meantime, he should begin working within the SCO, BRICS and the Gulf States to undermine the reserve currency status of the US dollar and this process is underway.  See: http://www.globalresearch.ca/brics-and-the-shanghai-cooperation-organization-sco-challenge-u-s-global-dominance/5415550

In addition, Saudi Arabia, a creditor of the US, sent their foreign minister to Moscow for talks last week. The Saudis are none to happy with US Middle East foreign policy so they could be ripe pickings for Putin.