It is indeed a debacle when what you’re threatening as a punishment will hurt you and your allies far more than it will hurt your opponent. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:
Are we past ‘peak frenzy’? Quite possibly, but it will subside only slowly. It is too good a diversion from other difficulties.
The sheer size and scope of the western information operations – insisting repeatedly on the imminence of a Russian invasion of Ukraine – has almost dwarfed the western effort mounted in the lead up to the second invasion of Iraq. This latest info-war has been qualitatively different from that earlier episode however, in the way in which supposed intelligence titbits were constantly fed to the press in order to stiffen the narrative spine with a direct sense of being at the very cusp of war.
By last weekend, the U.S. mainstream was indeed in a war frenzy, and it seemed that the narrative was gaining a momentum and energy of its own – moving beyond Washington’s control and picking up support from across the U.S. bi-partisan spectrum.
A sense of this was given by White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, referring to the Ukrainian borders as ‘sacred’ – evoking the 6 January language of viewing the transgression of protestors across the boundaries of the Capitol Building as being an assault on something ‘sacred’ to democracy.
By this week however, the lacunae inherent to the U.S. narrative were obvious: Biden, in his 7 December virtual summit with Putin, had threatened a ‘sanctions Armageddon’ for Russia. But those sanctions were not Biden’s to unilaterally wield (ultimately, they would have to be European sanctions).
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 