Well we are burying Russian economy so she chose the right attire for funerals:
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We had effectively zero trade or financial ties with Russia from 1947 through 1991.
The problem with trade embargos is they are only truly effective when deployed against regions too small to survive without them. We've been trying to starve the Iranian people into submission since, what, 1979? They're still around, since they can trade with Russia and China, and Iran itself is a pretty big patch of ground with a lot of resources. Turning Iraq into their vassal state didn't help speed things along, either.
One of the problems America has in 2022 that it didn't have in 1952 is nobody trusts us to have their backs any more, not after Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan. If Russia successfully breaks Ukraine, that clinches it: a safety guarantee from the USA, whether stated or implied, is only an election away from being turned into toilet paper.
The tradeoff in the Cold War was that, sure, Washington is calling some shots in your country, but it guarantees that those commie red bastards aren't going to take over and murder a few million of your citizens. Most small countries felt that was a pretty good deal, and a lot of bigger countries played Washington and Moscow off against each other to maintain their own independence--think India, Mexico, and China.
We aren't offering people that tradeoff anymore. We're actually offering threats. Stay on the USA's good side, or we cut off your access to SWIFT. Play ball with the US or we fund a color revolution. Dance to Washington's tune or kiss the largest single market in the world good-bye. And if some radical towelheads or whatever decide to overthrow your government, and we're too busy to give a shit? Just be glad it didn't happen earlier, you bastards.
So, okay, let's say we cut of Russia, and so does Western Europe. That's going to be a hard knock for them. But China isn't going to. India probably won't, either--they're too worried about China, and have historically never wanted to be one country's bitch. Looks like Brazil and Argentina aren't playing our game, either, and Mexico's got its own independent streak. Okay, so suppose we've got a trading bloc consisting of China, Russia, Mexico, India, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, and Iraq.
That's just too much territory to starve out. Sure, it'll be hard for Russia, but it will hardly
end them. They'll have access to all the same Chinese-made goods we depend on, and raw materials are pretty easy to launder.
