STOPPING PUTIN WITHOUT GOING TO WAR

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Despite the fact that there’s a lot of partisan political divisiveness here in the United States and for that matter around the world, there is a remarkable unanimity around the entire Free World on one issue: outrage at Putin’s unprovoked and absolutely barbaric assault on Ukraine

There’s talk about war crimes and bringing Putin to justice. Pragmatically that’s a long shot; there is no overriding jurisdiction that could accomplish it in the short term and too many Ukrainians would die in the interim if that’s the focus.

But Putin has a major weakness that could be capitalized on even more and have results in the short term. it’s based on 2 facts: One, waging war costs billions to start and even more billions to sustain. And two, Putin’s economy is a one trick pony; his primary source for funding the Ukraine attack is selling oil and natural gas to the rest of the world.

Putin thought he was waging a 72 hour war; he now realizes that given the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people and the US and other countries supplying military equipment, he’s going to have to fight a war that’s going to continue for months if not longer and he does not have the money to afford it. In fact there are rumblings that he’s likely to default on a lot of the debt he’s already incurred. Putin’s ability to continue funding his attack on Ukraine is dependent on one thing: selling more oil and natural gas to the rest of the world.

If we can dramatically restrict his ability to do that, he won’t be able to continue funding his barbaric attack. What’s needed are HARD sanctions not SOFT ones with loop wholes that let him continue to sell through intermediator channels. And these HARD sanctions need to be implemented broadly and immediately. 

The US is the only nation in the world that can pull this off. We have the stature and clout globally; we also have the world’s largest supply of oil and natural gas reserves, thus enabling us to supplant Russia’s oil and natural gas with our own while still maintaining stability in overall global supply. Further, thanks to recent game changing developments pioneered here in the US in capturing the carbon dioxide created in the drilling, refinement and use of natural gas, it has now become cleaner and much more environmentally friendly being produced here than anywhere else in the world. 

This is a LOUD non-political, bipartisan call on our government (Democrats and Republicans alike) to stop pussyfooting around; rise above petty politics and do the right thing. Take the lead. Get the majority of the Free World (our allies, NATO, the majority of the United Nations) to agree to stop buying Russian oil and natural gas and immediately crank up our own energy sector so we can supplant it with ours. And then, importantly, get government bureaucracy out of the way!

It’s right for us. it’s right for Ukraine. it’s right for the world.

PS. Guess who’s carefully watching this whole situation – China. If they see the United States uniting the Free World to come together in using HARD economic sanctions to cut off Russian military funding, might they have second thoughts about attacking Taiwan? The majority of China’s economic revenue comes from exporting their manufacturing to that same Free World.

Old Man Rock