Page 27 - bne_newspaper_May_04_2018

Opinion
May 4, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 27
MOSCOW BLOG:
Russio delenda est
Ben Aris in Berlin
When King Pyrrhus of Epirus stood on the Italian coast surveying the battlefield of Asculum where he had just defeated the Roman army in 279BC he famously said: “If I have another victory like that I will return to Epirus alone.”
Epirus is in the modern day Balkans and Pyrrhus was the first serious challenger faced by the growing Roman Empire, which very nearly lost to the Illyrian fighting forces.
The Romans won in the end thanks to their ability to simply out-resource all their opponents: if an army lost they simply drew on their massive and growing hinterland to raise another one. They wore their opponents down into eventual defeat – even if that took years to accomplish. The Romans were later challenged by Hannibal in the second Punic war and unable to defeat the wily general, but again they out-resourced him and Carthage was eventually raised to the ground.
The US is in a similar position today and that is what worries the emerging markets that are rapidly catching up with the western world.
Like the Romans, the US has built a military- industrial economy that can massively out- resource all its opponents’ and so is impossible to defeat – a legacy of the rapid militarisation during WWII when it simply out produced first the Nazis and then the Soviet Union, the only other country
The ruins of Carthage. The US is increasingly following a policy of “Carthago delenda est” – Carthage must be destroyed.
on the planet at the time with any chance of matching the US’s industrial might.
Like the Romans, the US will have its share of vain and incompetent leaders and US President Donald Trump has become an international laughing stock, with other politicians openly mocking his stupidity.
Rome screwed up regularly in its fights with Hannibal. The most famous was the battle by lake Trasimene, where Hannibal lured the Roman general Gaius Flaminius into a trap by playing on his arrogance and drove the Roman forces into the water where most of them drowned. Hannibal lost a handful of soldiers. The battle is still taught at West Point and acknowledged as one of the most stunning military victories of all time. But Hannibal lost in the end, defeated at the battle of Zama outside the Carthaginian gates.
The US imposed new sanctions on Russia on April 6 that have ended in a Pyrrhic victory as they seem to have done as much damage to US business interests as Russian.
The new US sanctions that singled out Oleg Deripaska and his Rusal and other companies in the Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN List) has been a “game changer”. Previous sanctions stopped those listed from issuing new shares and bonds, but the