Deterrence can be summed up simply as “generation of fear”. This fear syndrome is based on making the opponent avoid any action that entails his losing benefits and at the same time increasing the cost of taking such action.
Like a coin, deterrence has two sides. One relates to creation of fear as alluded to previously and fear itself on the other side where an opponent is condemned to live with the fear syndrome until such time the deterrence is breached by him or withdrawn by the imposer. In the first scenario deterrence acts as trip wire and the imposer gets the signal to move against the one who breaches it instantly in military or related reactions.
Deterrence works effectively as tactics both in military warfare and in business warfare. It has got a new application in geoeconomics as well. As usual the usual suspect is either America acting alone or together with her vassals such as NATO or European Union.
An important deterrence in the post-Soviet collapse world is the “rules based international order (RBIO)” which is not clearly stated in any publication of any international organization such as United Nations Organization (UNO). This order is cited mainly by the US officials and in lesser extent by few European nations such as UK, France and Germany.
The succinct summary of this deterrence of fear is “You do what we ask you to do and not what we are, in fact doing”. On the other hand fear of deterrence succinctly means “You are bound with us as an exceptional nation, if you try to unbound then we shall impose harsher sanctions so that you will be automatically targeted and would lose our protection in terms of geoeconomics carrot and would instead of it get geoeconomics stick”
Harsher as well as comprehensive sanctions are currently in place against the following countries arranged alphabetically: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria. Out of these Russia and Iran are subjected to most sanctions so far.
Debarring from using American Dollar and SWIFT funds transmission are ranked on the top rung of the Geoeconomics stick along with denial of insurance, shipping, travel and other areas of moving men & material. Moratorium over international contacts and representation is too damning as the spanking stick. In its extremity both Russia and Iran had their funds frozen by international banks.
The logic of the argument is that the stick works quickly and effectively so that the errant boys come over to the right side of the fence. But the tragedy is geoeconomics is not behaving the way the imposers expected it to do so. According to latest estimates Russia has outpaced both the United States and Europe in terms of gdp growth, increasing in size by 3.6% despite all those geoeconomics sanctions.
While Iran has done what even the World Bank could not dream about. Her economic growth of 4.2% in 2023 has exceeded the measly average growth rate of 1.5% of the advanced economies, including the imposers of these horrendous sanctions.
Cheers!
Muthu Ashraff Rajulu
Business Strategist
Mobile: + 94 777 265677
E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com
Blog: Business Strategist
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