February 24, 2022 – the day the Russian invasion of Ukraine began – may prove to be the start date of World War III. If we put Putin in place of Hitler and in place of Ukraine Czechoslovakia, which disintegrated in 1938-1939 under pressure from Hitler and because of the compromise tactics of the United Kingdom and France, we will see that then – as now – this what we consider to be a “limited” war can determine developments throughout Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If, in fact, we compare the policy of economic sanctions applied by the USA against Japan in the period 1939-1941 with the economic sanctions applied by the USA today against China in the context of the competition of the two superpowers, we find that then – as well as now – the economic war has taken on great proportions and defined global developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin’s aggressive initiative changed the situation around the world and increased the chances of a repeat of the devastation of World War II in a different way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue of escalating US sanctions against the Chinese economy is reminiscent of what preceded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the expansion of World War II into the Indian and Pacific regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the massacre of Nan King in December of the same year, and other Japanese atrocities, the United States canceled the 1911 trade treaty with Japan. From 1940 they began to impose restrictions on exports to Japan under a special law. When the Japanese strengthened their influence in French Indochina in 1940, the United States imposed an embargo on iron ore exports to Japan, despite the fact that the Japanese covered 74% of their needs from the United States. They also closed the Panama Canal to Japanese merchant ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July 1941, when the Japanese took control of strategically important airports in Indochina – in consultation with the Vichy authorities – the United States proceeded to “freeze” Japanese assets. In August 1941, they also banned the export of oil and petroleum products to Japan, which covered 80% of its needs from the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are historians who argue that the escalating US sanctions against the Japanese eventually led to the latter attacking Pearl Harbor as part of an expansionist strategy that would allow them to meet their raw material needs from the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). Malaysia and other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no guarantee, then, that US economic sanctions against China – mainly of a financial and technological nature – will lead to self-limitation, or that economic sanctions against Russia will lead Putin to abandon his aggressive strategy. After all, sanctions have been in place, in a milder form, since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
February 24, 2022 – the day the Russian invasion of Ukraine began – may prove to be the start date of World War III….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[825,3],"tags":[3395,3396,3394],"class_list":["post-7949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe-geopolitical","category-geopolitical","tag-war-in-ukraine","tag-world-war-ii","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7950,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949\/revisions\/7950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}