* Since late February, the United States has continued to add fuel to the fire by delivering lethal weapons to Ukraine, goading allies into cornering Russia, and imposing massive economic sanctions on Russia's institutions and enterprises.
* The United States, obsessive about political coercion and economic bullying, has sowed discord between Russia and European countries, and driven Russia and Ukraine into a corner of confrontation, causing geopolitical tensions and economic shocks that jeopardize world stability.
* All these moves run counter to global efforts to de-escalate the crisis and put world stability in peril.
by Xinhua writer Zhang Yisheng
BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- As the Russia-Ukraine conflict grinds on, picturing Washington's role in the chaos is less challenging than predicting an endgame of the crisis.
Since late February, the United States has continued to add fuel to the fire by delivering lethal weapons to Ukraine, goading allies into cornering Russia, and imposing massive economic sanctions on Russia's institutions and enterprises. All these moves run counter to global efforts to de-escalate the crisis and put world stability in peril.
No matter which side gains the upper hand in the crisis, "the United States is the winner," Chen Fengying, a researcher with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told Xinhua on Wednesday.
Staff members provide living necessities to people from Ukraine at Berlin Central Train Station in Berlin, Germany, March 3, 2022. (Photo by Stefan Zeitz/Xinhua)
ANOTHER ROUND OF SANCTIONS
The United States on Wednesday imposed additional sanctions on Russia for its military operation in Ukraine, targeting Russia's major financial institutions and the two daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to a factsheet from the White House detailing the measures, the United States will impose full blocking sanctions on Russia's largest financial institution, Sberbank, and the country's largest private bank, Alfa Bank, freezing any of the two banks' assets in the U.S. financial system and prohibiting Americans from doing business with them.
U.S. President Joe Biden will sign an executive order banning new investment in Russia by Americans no matter where they live, the factsheet said, adding the executive order aims to "ensure the enduring weakening of the Russian Federation's global competitiveness."
A man walks into a Sberbank office in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 25, 2022. (Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn)
Since the conflict broke out in Ukraine, the United States has imposed rounds of sanctions on Russia, despite experts' warning that sanctions alone are inadequate to de-escalate the tensions and might even invite a nightmare scenario.
"The U.S. approach of imposing successive batches of sanctions complicates the situation," Ahmed Eliba, a researcher at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Xinhua. "These sanctions also backfire on the Western side, which, I believe, pays a high cost."
Herman Tiu Laurel, founder of Philippine BRICS Strategic Studies, said, "For the U.S. allies in Europe, the sanctions punish them as much as predictable skyrocketing energy prices bedevil their economies now, and threaten even the very survival of the European economy."
"We should fully understand the causes and consequences of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Will the sanctions against Russia solve the problem? Will the sanctions force Russia to withdraw their troops? The answers unfortunately are No. The sanctions will only deteriorate the world economy already weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic," Wichai Kinchong Choi, senior vice president of the leading Thai bank Kasikornbank, told Xinhua.
U.S. ROLE IN CRISIS
The root cause of the outbreak of the conflict, analysts have said, is the continuous eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States.
Putin had repeatedly warned NATO against deploying its troops and weapons to Ukraine, saying this represents a red line for Russia and would trigger a strong response.
Russia's concern that NATO is expanding to its borders has never been heeded by the United States, "which is only interested in maintaining its hegemonic status in Europe, and which has been steadily retreating from that collaborative policy which the West committed itself to after the Cold War," said William Jones, Washington bureau chief of the U.S. publication Executive Intelligence Review.
The tragedy in Ukraine "could have easily been avoided if the Biden Admin and NATO had simply acknowledged Russia's legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine becoming a member of NATO," former U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard tweeted.
In the past several weeks, U.S. politicians have flown back and forth across the Atlantic to instigate hostilities against Russia, while showing little interest in acknowledging the root cause of or brokering a political solution to the tragedy in Ukraine.
Fuel prices are displayed at a gas station in Paris, France, March 16, 2022. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)
Immediately after the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, Biden announced that the United States would provide 350 million U.S. dollars in military aid to Ukraine. On March 16, Biden announced an additional 800 million dollars in security assistance to Ukraine.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said on Wednesday that the United States has already sent 100 killer drones called Switchblade to Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said on Wednesday that his country and its allies have provided Ukraine with 10 anti-tank systems for every single Russian tank.
John Pang, a senior fellow at New York-based Bard College, said U.S. sanctions "worsen the situation," adding that "they possibly prolong the conflict because of suffering in Russia, but also in Europe and around the world. They will bring the global economy into, very likely, a recession in which millions of innocent people will suffer."
"If you put this together with the fact that ... NATO and the U.S. continue to arm Ukraine, the actual effect will be to prolong the conflict, not to end it," Pang told Xinhua on Wednesday.
Mick Wallace, a member of the European Parliament, has doubted the effectiveness of sanctions against Russia, saying that sanctions could only affect ordinary people.
"Sanctions are a form of war, and often the consequences are shocking," Wallace said in a video released on his social media platform on Wednesday. "500,000 children died in Iraq because of sanctions. 40,000 people died in Venezuela in recent years because of illegal U.S. sanctions. Tens of thousands have died in Syria because of U.S. and European sanctions. What are the sanctions that you have on Russia going to do?"
WORLD STABILITY IN DANGER
The United States, obsessive about political coercion and economic bullying, has sowed discord between Russia and European countries, and driven Russia and Ukraine into a corner of confrontation, causing geopolitical tensions and economic shocks that jeopardize world stability.
The country, unconfident and insecure, still wants to maintain hegemony in the international system or a dominant position in the global economy, thus attempting to suppress countries that it thinks could threaten and challenge it, said Zhao Suisheng, a professor at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.
The current disruptions in energy, metals and food markets caused by the month-long conflict in Ukraine are "broad and savage," The Economist magazine reported in mid-March, warning that a retreat to Cold-War spheres of influence or self-sufficiency would be "a mistake" and the costs would be "vast."
A customer chooses cooking oil at Lidl supermarket in Brussels, Belgium, March 29, 2022. Due to rise of high energy prices, Belgium markets witnessed the rise of prices of petrol, diesel, cooking oil, flour, etc. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)
Renowned American linguist and foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky said, "We're approaching the most dangerous point in human history ... We are now facing the prospect of destruction of organised human life on Earth."
"What we do know is that Ukraine will be further devastated. And we may move on to terminal nuclear war if we do not pursue the opportunities that exist for a negotiated settlement," Chomsky was quoted by The New Statesman magazine as saying on Wednesday.
"Virtually any additional steps -- reducing imports of oil and gas, banning a wider range of exports, or telling European firms to withdraw from Russia -- would entail an economic cost for Europe," Jean Pisani-Ferry, a senior fellow at Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel, said in an article published by Project Syndicate in late March.
"Today's uncertainty understandably makes European policymakers nervous," Pisani-Ferry said, adding that the economic conflict "is entering a hazardous new phase. The risk of failing is too big to be taken." (Video reporters: Kang Wenjun, He Fei, Roberto Ferranti, Liu Zongya, Yu Shuaishuai, Liu Yanan, Zhang Mocheng, Sun Ding, Hu Yousong, Deng Xianlai; video editors: Hong Liang, Zhang Yuhong)■
