Shooting a bunch of missiles at the architecture of globalisation

The West's attempt to bring Vladimir Putin to heel by weaponising everything from aircraft spares to finance will have much wider repercussions, writes T N Ninan

Twenty-five years ago, the International Monetary Fund forced the wrong medicine down the throat of East Asian economies facing a foreign exchange shortage. Countries like Indonesia convulsed into near-collapse. Bitter lesson learnt, regional players said “never again” and have since accumulated mountains of foreign exchange reserves. Three decades earlier, US President Lyndon Johnson weaponised wheat supplies to a famine-stricken India because, despite being a supplicant, New Delhi had the temerity to criticise US actions in Vietnam. “Never again,” said Indira Gandhi as India pushed ahead with the Green Revolution and began the pile-up of grain that is now as much