The simple definition of a sanction is: a law or regulation or order which prevents local persons, businesses and entities from engaging with a defined external entity, a person, business or nation, in any transactions through the formal channels of the sanctioning nation.
In short, sanctions are limitations inflicted on your own economy on the assumption that the other party has such a need for your economy that they would be damaged far more than your own businesses which have been barred from dealing with that party..
Recall that US law is not global law or UN law. It has no force outside the US territory. Outside of treaties, other states have no obligation to enforce US law just like the US has no obligation to enforce the acts of congresses or parliaments in other parts of the world (this is something American pundits fail to understand: they think their congress is universal and global. No it ain’t!).
Sanctions on other states are merely prohibitions on American businesses from dealing with those states. Period!
Whatever happens in the mid-term elections, Russia will be accused on meddling and depending on the composition of the new Congress, the US will become ever more aggressive towards Russia. The sole advantage Russia has in all this is that aggressors are often poor planners… they lock themselves into a matrix of wanting to live up to their own chest-beating.
The world bank report on Russia is quite telling. The transition away from oil is way ahead of schedule. Digital finance is on track and the services sector has outgrown all other sectors. Diversification of its foreign exchange stock is on track while the debt burden is low. Inflation is lower than anticipated by the central bank of Russia; in general macroeconomic indicators are all positive in spite of all the sanctions; even the current account has gained as exports in non-commodities have risen.
It seems that finally external pressures in the form of sanctions are enabling the Russian govt achieve policy goals it had little room to pursue without them. These sanctions are counterproductive because they are showing the world a way of living without being embedded within the US financial system. This is a self-destructive policy for the US because the majority of global liquidity is actually in the East in Japanese and Chinese banks (these are the trade surplus nations)… it only goes to the west to purchase US treasury bills (as these nations loan the US money to keep its budget afloat). Perhaps it is the resilience of the Russian economy which has left US congresspersons and senators distraught… they hoped Russia would be destroyed by now. (Perhaps they should bomb it. Why not? They did commit rigging or was it hacking which is on par, MSNBC tells us, with Pearl Harbor. And all this, with 13 accounts and under $100K in spending most of which happened after election day: all hail omnipresent Putin.)
I have no idea what the imperial power is on about but carrying this on will weaken the empire as more and more surpluses begin to find new places other than the US to be invested and stored. NATO can grow and expand all it wants: but the prospect of a real war with Russia would disband the alliance. It would be a nuclear genocide and nations in Europe eager to join this cult of death will flee from it. There were indications of this when Turkey shot down the Russian plane in 2015. The usefulness of NATO is purely imaginary and it is merely a cash cow and corporate welfare for military industrialists.
Keep on borrowing eastern money and spending it on NATO. Oh, and the space force.
