The crisis-ridden US Empire is hell bent on antagonizing foes, American writer and political analyst Daniel Patrick Welch has said.

The capitalist system in the United States is desperate to save itself and the oligarchs who are behind it are lashing out in all directions, with no concerns for the consequences either internationally or for their own people, Welch said on Friday in an interview with Press TV.

Welch was commenting on a statement by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev who said on Thursday Moscow will consider any new sanctions by the United States as a "declaration of economic war" and will retaliate in kind.

The US announced a new round of sanctions on Wednesday, following separate legislation introduced last week in draft form that proposes curbs on the operations of several state-owned Russian banks in the US and restrictions on their use of the dollar.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East on Thursday, the Russian premier said his country is not going to tolerate bans on its financial institutions.

"I would not like to comment on talk about future sanctions, but I can say one thing: If something like a ban on the operations of banks or on the one currency or another follows, it would be possible to completely directly call it a declaration of economic war," Medvedev said.

"And it would be necessary...to react to this war economically, politically, or, if needed, by other means," he said. "And our American friends need to understand this."

The warning came a day after the US Department of State announced a new round of sanctions against Russia for a nerve agent attack against former Russian double agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter in the UK.

‘Our American partners’

“I really get a kick out of the Russian habit of referring to the Americans – you are not sure if it’s sarcastic or what-- they say ‘our American partners, our American friends… Putin or Medvedev, Lavrov, they all use these terms, ‘American partners’ when it is anything but in reality--you know you are sitting across the table from these murderous psychopaths, dripping blood from fangs and a running chainsaw,” Welch said.

“The Chinese do it too. It’s a kind of diplomatic veneer to pretend that you have some sort of relationship but of course this is exactly the point. There is no desire in the Western capitalist oligarchic cabal to affect any sort of détente with Russia. You can see some of the cracks that people have been talking about because there are different gangs – and we should these terms gangs, cabals, really! – in the US ruling class that represents different factions, different kind of mafia territories. One is this notion, maybe supported by Trump although it’s not clear whether his is all ego, that the rapprochement with Russia will somehow will impede or at least slow the integration with China, and thus extend the US empire’s death knell for a few years,” he stated.

“Then you have this other faction that is all out war everywhere against everyone at all times. Russia and China both have to be attacked. And if you listen to Lindsey Graham or the Democrats who are completely on the board with this, it’s shocking. The tone-deafness and the desperation that they are exhibiting when they say: ‘Russia has to get out of Ukraine, and Russia has to stop meddling in Syria,’ --- ‘meddling in Syria,’ in our elections’ in the same week when the US-backed thugs in Venezuela actually tried to drone a head of state speaking in a public forum in his own country,” the analyst stated.

“It’s remarkably hypocritical and the good thing I would say is that it shows how desperate this system is to save itself. And Russiagate, all of this crap is just a distraction from the very, very real, serious internal crises that imperialism is facing. The domestic crisis at home is just beyond redemption. Neither wing of the capitalist duopoly can address it,” he noted.

“They have no concerns for their people, no concerns for jobs, no concerns for their well-being, the healthcare, the police brutality, they’re just writing off huge segments of the population – kind of condemning them to eternal poverty and sub-poverty existence,” the writer observed.