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Why Russia does not respond to Western sanctions with piracy
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.by Petr Akopov [REGNUM] The US and UK introduced new sanctions against Iran in response to the Islamic Republic's attack on Israel. It is unnecessary to clarify that no Western country is going to impose any sanctions against Israel, which provoked the Iranian attack with its strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Sanctions are imposed against those who are considered their enemies - Russia, Iran, North Korea, even China - and allies are, at best, slightly scolded. The war of sanctions has long become a continuation of a conventional war—or its replacement, or even simply a preparation for it. At the same time, the economic and political effectiveness of sanctions is no longer a determining factor in their announcement. If previously it was believed that with the help of restrictions they wanted to force the enemy to change policy, make various concessions, or achieve his collapse, now sanctions wars are being waged under new circumstances. The paradox is that sanctions primarily affect the interests of the West itself, because they destroy the rules of the game in the global market, in a globalizing world. Namely, building such a world was the main goal of the West. Built according to its rules and with the help of its institutions - financial, trade, etc. - a single world organism was supposed to ensure the dominance of the Western world. Sanctions against small or fairly isolated countries like North Korea did not cause much damage to the reputation of the West. And even sanctions against such prominent states, including in the oil market, as Iran and Venezuela, did not have a fatal impact on the functions of the West as a global helmsman. However, sanctions against Russia became a turning point, primarily due to the seizure of quite large Russian foreign assets. And although they have not yet been confiscated, constant conversations and votes on this topic only strengthen the entire non-Western world in the belief that the West will stop at nothing to defend its dominance. That is, the West, while causing undoubted damage to the Russian economy, is simultaneously causing much more serious and strategically important damage to its own reputation and its global project. But these are the problems of the West. How should those countries that are subject to sanctions pressure, and primarily Russia, counteract it? Not only because it is the largest of the countries against which the West is waging a sanctions war, but also because the rest of the world is looking at us, assessing the effectiveness of our response to Western pressure. So far, Russia is trying to take a middle path - at the same time, together with other non-Western countries, building alternative systems and mechanisms to Western ones (financial, trade, logistics, etc.), and respecting the rights of Western producers and copyright holders. Despite the departure of a huge number of Western companies from Russia, we do not continue to produce familiar goods using their equipment or under their brands: new Russian brands are produced or foreign ones are attracted, for example, Chinese ones. Why don't we just start exploiting the Western capacity, know-how and intellectual capital left behind? Of course, in some cases this is simply impossible due to the cessation of supplies of certain components. But the main reason is that Russia considers it necessary to comply with international law - copyright, trademark and others. That is, we do not want to create a precedent and scare the rest of the non-Western world. Yes, we are in conflict with the West, it imposed sanctions against us, left our market, but we still comply with international law, do not engage in piracy and theft of intellectual property (officially, because copying and, especially, industrial espionage have not been abolished). So the Global South need not worry; in relations with it, no matter how they develop, we will certainly never stoop to violating agreements and stealing. But the West is just ready for it - we return to the situation with our same hundreds of billions of dollars and euros frozen in unfriendly countries. The position is understandable and, when playing for a long time, generally justified. Russia sees itself not as a victim of the West, not as a fortress country, but as part of the world community. Only built not on Western rules, but on new ones, developed through the consensus of all leading centers of power. Strategically, it is much more profitable for us to comply with even the current Western-centric rules than to abandon them altogether. Because our role and our weight in the process of forming a new world order - both trade and economic, and geopolitical in general - directly depends on relations with the non-Western world. A world that, like us, is aimed at transitioning from the current world order to a new, multipolar one, but does not want and cannot break the existing rules before the supporting pillars of the new global architecture are built. This concerns not only the financial system and the economy, but also security, that is, military alliances. Everyone understands that the era of Western dominance is ending, but no one wants its completion to take place in the form of the collapse of the entire system at once. That is why the question of our response to sanctions has not a country-specific, but a global dimension. Sanctions not only will not help the West break us or extract concessions from us, but will also not lead us astray from our main goal - building a new multipolar fair (that is, taking into account the real balance of power) world order, beneficial both for Russia and for the absolute the majority of humanity. Posted by: badanov 2024-04-23 |
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