Renewed Sanctions Against Russia

The EU is recently backtracking somewhat from its confrontational stance against Russia. Not only has JC Juncker recently announced that he is actually for building South Stream after all, the German language version of Reuters reports that ‘Berlin is sending conciliatory signals to Moscow’.
The reasons for this more conciliatory stance are easy to discern. For one thing, the truce in Eastern Ukraine is holding up quite well now. A complete split of Donetsk and Lugansk from the Ukraine is no longer on the agenda, at least it doesn’t appear to be. At the same time, we can be absolutely certain that Ms. Merkel has been getting more than an earful from German industrialists and bankers, all of whom are suffering Russia-related losses now and are afraid that more losses are in the pipeline. The sanctions have destroyed what was a major new market for many companies in Europe, and especially in Germany. German capitalists have been major investors in Russia during Czarist times already, and commercial relations have smoothly resumed and expanded greatly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The exact opposite is happening in the US, which isn’t suffering economically from Russia sanctions. We refer you to this report on how another round of sanctions has just been imposed due to actions taken by a mere three Congressmen:
‘Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a far-reaching Russia sanctions bill, a hydra-headed incubator of poisonous conflict. The second provocative anti-Russian legislation in a week, it further polarizes our relations with Russia, helping to cement a Russia-China alliance against Western hegemony, and undermines long-term America’s financial and physical security by handing the national treasury over to war profiteers.
Here’s how the House’s touted ‘unanimity’ was achieved: Under a parliamentary motion termed ‘unanimous consent,’ legislative rules can be suspended and any bill can be called up. If any member of Congress objects, the motion is blocked and the bill dies.
At 10:23:54 p.m. on Thursday, a member rose to ask ‘unanimous consent’ for four committees to be relieved of a Russia sanctions bill. At this point the motion, and the legislation, could have been blocked by a single member who would say ‘I object.’ No one objected, because no one was watching for last-minute bills to be slipped through.

This post was published at Acting-Man on December 19, 2014.