by Salman Rafi Sheikh, New Eastern Outlook:

In Washington, economic and financial sanctions remain one of the most favourite options for fighting wars by other means. We continue to witness the use of this tool quite often, with the US strategy to fight Russia’s military operations in Ukraine being the most recent example. A key reason that has thus far enabled the US and its allies in Europe to weaponise economics and finances to punish their enemies is the territorial centrality of the global economic order, a legacy of western colonialism entrenched further at the end of the Second World War. But geoeconomics is a tricky game, as the power potential of a given source of power can radically alter in different contexts. The Russia-Ukraine war is a very useful example of such an alteration. While the West – US and EU – responded in its usual way by imposing “sanctions from hell” on Russia, little did they realise that Moscow will eventually use their own tactics against them. Responding to Western support for Ukraine and retaliating against sanctions imposed on Russia, Moscow’s ‘gas politics’, or its decision to weaponise its gas sales to Europe, has clearly outmanoeuvred the Transatlantic alliance, unsettling it from within and forcing it to tackle one of the most serious ‘cost of living crisis’ in decades.