Enemies

There were a couple of news stories yesterday involving long-time adversaries of the USA – a combination of political sanctions and falling oil prices have the Russian ruble near collapse, and President Obama announced steps to resume normal diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Our attitude toward Cuba has never made sense to me.  Even during the missile crisis, Cuba itself was never a serious threat to the US, but although we have encouraged trade with Russia and China, we have kept the clamps on Cuba.  I’m sure it made life there that much worse, but what (if anything) did we ever gain from it?

I have never considered Russia to be friend in spite of cooperation on things like the International Space Station.  My dad’s unit fought alongside a Soviet brigade in Mongolia during WWII, and he wrote home predicting that our next war would be against them.

With that background, I couldn’t help a smug first reaction – serves ‘em right – but a collapse of the Russian economy could very easily lead to a world-wide monetary collapse, a depression as bad or worse than the 1930s.  Now, that is a very scary possibility.