lol seriously?
US could cripple russia with sanctions if they wanted. the only down side is it could leade to greater russian aggression similar to Germany in WW2.
Make no mistake, russia needs europe as much if not more than europe needs russia. Europe would survive without russian gas.
Here are some sanctions for the pea brains here,
Ban all russian companies accessing financial markets.
Ban all russian companies exchanging US dollars.
Ban russian government from exchanging US dollars
Ban all russian companies and diplomats from entering the US
Cancel all outstanding US treasuries heald by russia (150 billion)
Trade embargos
Seize assets belonging to russian companies and russian government
Then on top of that add all the sanctions the EU could impose in regards to the euro currencry and refuse to purchase russian gas (which is the biggest thing fueling the russian economy) and rely on north sea gas.
Anyone here who thinks putin has the upper hand clearly doesn't know dick about geo politics.
And at the end of the day, if it came to the worst..NATO would wreck russia so fucking hard putin would need to bring his own lube and he knows it, he tries to be a big swining dick because he knows obama is weak..but if it comes to it he will back down so hard it will make your head spin.
its only in recent years the US has seemed weak, simply because they dont want to get drawn into some bullshit middle east crap. Don't be fooled though, the US is still the worlds only super power and no one could ever challenge them