Retreat or face defeat that is the question

The West sleepwalked into a geoeconomics quagmire when she collectively imposed series of sanctions to arm twist Russia lately and Iran for decades. There was a fault line between the will to defeat the target country and the pathways that were followed up. Here is my critique:

As regards to Russia the sanctions pathways did open up for her new alternate markets and consumers. Russia wasted no time in upgrading her strategic partnership with China and with the hereto dark continent of Africa. Russia-China inter-trade was done in Yuan and Ruble amounting to US$137 Billion in the first half of 2024 alone. Significant part was channelled across the land border. Africa was a combination of food & weapons. In terms of food, Russia delivered more than 200,000 metric tons of grain to the Sahel region as well as to Eritrea & Somalia. Added to this is unspecified number of weapons exported to Africa as a whole.

USA led west faces a dilemma. Either retreat from geoeconomics warfare or be defeated soundly by Russia and her team mates China & Iran. Here are six delimitations faced by the west as a warring party:

1. Over-investing on sanctions along with bungling Ukraine theatre. Failure of sanctions was gradual and remained un-noticed for quite some time. Contrarily, despite initial success the war in Ukraine bled white the resources of the west

2. Both sanctions as geoeconomics tool and the proxy war in Ukraine were carried out in wrong time, wrong place, using wrong methods and finally alluding wrong reasons

3. Both geoeconomics warfare and military confrontation led to the de-industrialization of Europe in general and Germany in particular

4. Failure in balancing full spectrum military warfare with a total geoeconomics contest resulted in the global south aligning with Russia and gradually moving out of Western dominion

5. Neither America nor Europe were willing to fight a long term attrition warfare primarily in the military field and secondarily in the arena of geoeconomics

6. The real loss was not felt in politics but in economics. In geoeconomics concept, policy and strategy must be co-ordinated in proper manner such that one leads to the other and be networked seamlessly. The heart of the matter is geoeconomics actions and counter actions must be properly integrated and be practical. Regrettably, the west failed to read the tea leaves. Result: Russia got two gold medals one in geopolitics and the other in geoeconomics!

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist