News out today that Russia will impose "special" economic sanctions on countries, organizations, or individuals that export military and dual purpose products to Georgia. Among other things, this could mean that Investors Business Daily and The Weekly Standard will vanish from the international newsstands in Moscow (both have called for arming Georgia) and that the URLs jamestown.org and gfsis.org are banned from the Russian Internet. Also, expect Russia to amend this act to allow the Russian Space Agency to purchase shuttle rides to the International Space Station from its American counterpart.

In all seriousness, it will be interesting to see which option Russia will choose to take, because some countries are still arming Georgia and will continue to do so because they will miscalculate Russia's will and intent. What exactly will Russia do?

update - I reread the report and in addition to imposing economic sanctions, Russia will also "restrict military cooperation" with countries supplying arms to Georgia. As we all know, the American and European defense industries are dependent on Russia in certain niche areas

This entry was posted by Colleen, on 1.19.2009. You can leave your response.