Russia's Looming Economic Collapse - The Atlantic - 0 views
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The first battlefield is geographic
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The second battlefield is made up not of physical particles, but rather of relationships—contracts and promises between nations, banks, companies, and individuals. This is the economic arena.
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the United States and several major European countries have declared a series of financial penalties and sanctions against Russia that are without modern precedent for a major economy. These policies are triggering a financial catastrophe in Russia.
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Only 12 countries in the world have more total exports. Russia trades oil, gas, and coal to much of Europe and wheat to the Middle East and Africa.
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The sanctions imposed so far amount to a kind of siege of a country that depends on access to global markets.
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The country is sealed off—from Western trade, Western travel, and (apart from energy exports) most Western business.
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Tajikistan, a small Central Asian country north of Afghanistan, relies on remittances from Russia for more than 20 percent of its GDP. That means if workers in Russia stop sending money to their families in Tajikistan, that country’s economy could nose-dive into a depression.
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Economic crises can spark political revolutions, and Tajikistan shares a border with China’s westernmost province, Xinjiang. Russia’s crisis could, then, become a Central Asian economic crisis, which could become a Chinese political problem. What happens in Russia will not stay in Russia.