Over the last thirty years, the inability to deal with Russia’s security concerns specifically expressed by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin eventually exploded into a military conflict.
Incensed by Putin’s audacity, America and the allies, in the collective rush to impose punitive economic sanctions, challenged the cohesion of international order by seeking remedies, which negate the functioning of the global economic system.
The current system is based on respect for contracts, sureness in the banking system, inviolability of private property, and economic interdependency. The scope of economic sanctions violated every aspect of the established order. America has weaponized the dollar as a tool for achieving political ends. The combination of constant threats, freezing foreign assets without a search warrant, and arbitrary expropriation of private properties without due process ostensibly for the global public good invokes memories of Bolshevism and raises the issue of power and legitimacy.
Furthermore, by forming a coalition against Russia, Biden unintentionally, indeed contrary to his intention, is dividing the world and risking to upend American standing among the countries opposing sanctions or clamming neutrality. At the time of this writing, Russia, China, India, the Arab World, most of Latin America, and Brazil are in this camp.