On Wednesday evening, General David Petraeus explained to Fox News how crippling and devastating the economic sanctions put on Russia can be, as their invasion of Ukraine continues.
Fox's Jesse Watters, like most right-wing media, claims that economic sanctions imposed by the US and the world against Russia are a milquetoast response to Putin's aggression against Ukraine -- without ever explaining what they would do differently.
Jesse Watters asked what kind of pressure will be put on the West to do something more than we are doing now?
General Petraeus took the time to explain how devastating these sanctions are.
Petraeus said, "Some of the economic measures are so draconian that it literally could be a race between how quickly the economy just collapses in certain respects."
"The fact that the central banks reserves of which there very proud --- they are foreign reserves. They are in foreign banks and they are now all frozen," he said.
Watters said, "Hmmmphf"
"They can't even open their stock market exchange for fear that it will completely plummet. They are on the precipice of a very dire situation in their financial and economic markets. They're going to be in a serious world of hurt in that regard even as they are trying to lay siege (to Ukraine)," Petraeus said.
As Americans, it's very easy to shrug off the concept of economic sanctions against an aggressive rogue nation as an inadequate punishment. But in this instance, when the entire world, including even Switzerland, rallies together to put the clamps down on a country like Russia, the effects can be devastating.
These sanctions are not some slap on the wrist measure to placate the world's outrage.
When Russian oligarchs are seeing their luxury possessions repossessed, you know that's a different animal altogether.
