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quite a few commenters have pointed out SWIFT as a hand of soft power and i think its important to understand the twitter post doesnt mention an important fact:

quite a few commenters have pointed out SWIFT as a hand of soft power and i think its important to understand the twitter post doesnt mention an important fact: SWIFT was created in order that Europe may resist Kissingers increasingly capricious hand of soft power as it emerged as a lead sap in an increasingly arbitrary US foreign policy. 40 years ago the US had become effectively drunk on soft-power moves against states it perceived as even remotely objective to US interests. Is your president elect too socialist? you get an aircraft carrier floating in your strait for a year. did you nationalize your oil fields? sanctions mean you cant sell it to anyone. Cuba to this day still enjoys endless sanctions for resisting regime change. in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless as most capable, observant countries have managed to sidestep in part or in whole the once dominant US hegemony of finance and trade. even the threat of a blue-water naval presence is an unspeakable taboo as Russia is one of a handful of emerging countries you wouldnt dare send an aircraft carrier to patrol, unless its goal was to secure the ocean floor. The only meaningful threat SWIFT offers is the ability to assuage short-term market fears among traders that dont fully understand just how inapplicable SWIFT is in this case.

jorblumesea 5y ago
> in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless This is just straight up wrong. This is why the Magnitsky Act got Putin so rattled. It is also why Putin has said being cut off from swift is an act of war. If it's meaningless, why does Russia care so much?
s_dev 5y ago
Nah -- Bill Browder seems to be a expert on this exact topic. He's saying to pull Russia from Swift. His experience suggests he is intimately familiar with the financial world and the consequences. He's the genesis of the Magnitsky Act -- the one thing that actually scares Putin. I know this because Putin even said if Russia was removed from Swift he would consider it an act of war. https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1496799227082649603 https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1496799227082649603
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  Him thinking that, however qualified he is, does not mean he's right. Being the CEO of a hedge fund, with a personal grudge against Russia, does not make you infallible. The US benefits enormously from owning the reserve currency and running the world financial system, and the ultimate effect of our trigger-happy approach to sanctions is to push countries away from those, especially with the US becoming a smaller percent of the world economy every year. Even the Europeans are sick of it. The Europeans only play along still because they are militarily dependent on the US, in part because their populations have, under the comfort of the US security umbrella, developed irrational political beliefs against building up their own militaries.
  - ajross 5y ago
    > The US benefits enormously from owning the reserve currency and running the world financial system, and the ultimate effect of our trigger-happy approach to sanctions is to push countries away from those That seems belied by actual history. The US has been a "trigger happy" sanctioner for basically the entirety of the post-war era, and the dollar has been dominant throughout. What would change now that didn't when we sanctioned Iran, or Iraq, or Cuba, or Yugoslavia, or...
    - legalcorrection 5y ago
      What's changing is that every year the US economy is becoming less important for the rest of the world.
    - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
      Eventually a tipping point is reached and a seemingly minor event can cause irreversible change many magnitudes larger than the event itself. This is ok if you're certain where the tipping point exists and can keep from getting too close to it but in economics, especially when intertwined with geopolitical matters, it's doubtful anyone even knows the ballpark of where that tipping point exists until they're looking at it in the past.
  - 5y ago
aluminum96 5y ago
> in 2022 sanctions are ... effectively meaningless as most capable, observant countries have managed to sidestep in part or in whole the once dominant US hegemony This is only true to the extent that the US unilaterally imposes sanctions. The proposed sanctions involving SWIFT are multilateral, with the support of the entire EU. That's around double the economic power of the US alone, and roughly half of the entire world's GDP. Being sanctioned by half of the global economy (more, if Asian democracies participate) is very punishing indeed.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  The EU would only go along with this because the US has them by the proverbial balls. European militaries are a joke and there is no domestic political support for building them up.
  - isodev 5y ago
    You are assuming the US is leading the effort, which is not the case. Also EU and US are partners and allies and so mutual support is expected.
    - Kina 5y ago
      America represents 40% of NATO forces. America guarantees the physical security of Europe in consultation with the governments of these nations, but there is an inherent power imbalance here.
  - thomasahle 5y ago
    In this particular conflict, the stakes for the EU is much higher than for the US. Sure, the US is historically (recent) more happy to go into conflicts around the world, but this is a conflict bordering many EU states. The Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania definitely aren't happy seeing Putin on their doorsteps.
  - m2fkxy 5y ago
    A reminder that two of Western Europe's militaries are nuclear, which hardly makes them "a joke". You seem to be projecting the state of Germany's military to all European forces, which is... questionable.
parkingrift 5y ago
Everything you've said is true except that this would be a joint effort between US, Europe, and likely others. This same situation happened with Iran and it torpedoed their economy.
lvl100 5y ago
This is a conspiracy theory. Please stop.
isodev 5y ago
Access to SWIFT is one of several economic tools which work together to limit and essentially “bleed out” the target economy. Although Russia acts like a big bully, their economy is relatively small (e.g. smaller GDP than Italy) which makes economic actions especially impactful (even if it will take a moment for them to fully reach their potential).
bpodgursky 5y ago
> Cuba to this day still enjoys endless sanctions for resisting regime change. I mean, I suspect we agree that the embargo should be lifted, but that's a really poor way of saying "communist dictatorship with a penchant for, among other things, lining up homosexuals against a wall and shooting them". Hopefully the last few days have reinforced that even if one country does things wrong sometimes, it doesn't mean the other side is a good guy.
stef25 5y ago
> in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless Earlier today a report on BBC said existing sanctions on Russian already made their economy suffer to a significant extent. I forgot the percentage points they mentioned but it was surprisingly high. Applying even more sanctions will unfortunately hurt the Russian people the most and the discontent that will create among the people over the many years to come should not be underestimated.
ajross 5y ago
> in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless I don't see how this follows from your (correct) description of US influence in the cold war. Soft power works now the same way it always has, all it requires is coordination on a "pool of influence" large enough. It's absolutely true that the US can't unilaterally do what it did in the 70's. But the e.g. USA+EU+Japan+Korea? That's pretty dominant, still. Russia's only out from something like that would effectively mean becoming a sattelite state to the PRC. And... maybe that's where we're headed. But it's surely not where Putin wants to head, so it remains leverage.
pohl 5y ago
> ...theyre effectively meaningless as most capable, observant countries have managed to sidestep... In this case, though, one wants to apply pressure not on the country, but on the surrounding oligarchs. When a nation is, essentially, a syndicate of organized criminal oligarchs around a strongman, financial pressure on those people is exactly what you need.
deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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james-redwood 5y ago
I think anyone with knowledge of how badly Iran has been hit by sanctions would understand that they have a very punitive effect.

jorblumesea 5y ago

> in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless This is just straight up wrong. This is why the Magnitsky Act got Putin so rattled. It is also why Putin has said being cut off from swift is an act of war. If it's meaningless, why does Russia care so much?

s_dev 5y ago

Nah -- Bill Browder seems to be a expert on this exact topic. He's saying to pull Russia from Swift. His experience suggests he is intimately familiar with the financial world and the consequences. He's the genesis of the Magnitsky Act -- the one thing that actually scares Putin. I know this because Putin even said if Russia was removed from Swift he would consider it an act of war. https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1496799227082649603 https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1496799227082649603

legalcorrection 5y ago
Him thinking that, however qualified he is, does not mean he's right. Being the CEO of a hedge fund, with a personal grudge against Russia, does not make you infallible. The US benefits enormously from owning the reserve currency and running the world financial system, and the ultimate effect of our trigger-happy approach to sanctions is to push countries away from those, especially with the US becoming a smaller percent of the world economy every year. Even the Europeans are sick of it. The Europeans only play along still because they are militarily dependent on the US, in part because their populations have, under the comfort of the US security umbrella, developed irrational political beliefs against building up their own militaries.
- ajross 5y ago
  > The US benefits enormously from owning the reserve currency and running the world financial system, and the ultimate effect of our trigger-happy approach to sanctions is to push countries away from those That seems belied by actual history. The US has been a "trigger happy" sanctioner for basically the entirety of the post-war era, and the dollar has been dominant throughout. What would change now that didn't when we sanctioned Iran, or Iraq, or Cuba, or Yugoslavia, or...
  - legalcorrection 5y ago
    What's changing is that every year the US economy is becoming less important for the rest of the world.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    Eventually a tipping point is reached and a seemingly minor event can cause irreversible change many magnitudes larger than the event itself. This is ok if you're certain where the tipping point exists and can keep from getting too close to it but in economics, especially when intertwined with geopolitical matters, it's doubtful anyone even knows the ballpark of where that tipping point exists until they're looking at it in the past.
- 5y ago

aluminum96 5y ago

> in 2022 sanctions are ... effectively meaningless as most capable, observant countries have managed to sidestep in part or in whole the once dominant US hegemony This is only true to the extent that the US unilaterally imposes sanctions. The proposed sanctions involving SWIFT are multilateral, with the support of the entire EU. That's around double the economic power of the US alone, and roughly half of the entire world's GDP. Being sanctioned by half of the global economy (more, if Asian democracies participate) is very punishing indeed.

legalcorrection 5y ago
The EU would only go along with this because the US has them by the proverbial balls. European militaries are a joke and there is no domestic political support for building them up.
- isodev 5y ago
  You are assuming the US is leading the effort, which is not the case. Also EU and US are partners and allies and so mutual support is expected.
  - Kina 5y ago
    America represents 40% of NATO forces. America guarantees the physical security of Europe in consultation with the governments of these nations, but there is an inherent power imbalance here.
- thomasahle 5y ago
  In this particular conflict, the stakes for the EU is much higher than for the US. Sure, the US is historically (recent) more happy to go into conflicts around the world, but this is a conflict bordering many EU states. The Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania definitely aren't happy seeing Putin on their doorsteps.
- m2fkxy 5y ago
  A reminder that two of Western Europe's militaries are nuclear, which hardly makes them "a joke". You seem to be projecting the state of Germany's military to all European forces, which is... questionable.

parkingrift 5y ago

Everything you've said is true except that this would be a joint effort between US, Europe, and likely others. This same situation happened with Iran and it torpedoed their economy.

lvl100 5y ago

This is a conspiracy theory. Please stop.

isodev 5y ago

Access to SWIFT is one of several economic tools which work together to limit and essentially “bleed out” the target economy. Although Russia acts like a big bully, their economy is relatively small (e.g. smaller GDP than Italy) which makes economic actions especially impactful (even if it will take a moment for them to fully reach their potential).

bpodgursky 5y ago

> Cuba to this day still enjoys endless sanctions for resisting regime change. I mean, I suspect we agree that the embargo should be lifted, but that's a really poor way of saying "communist dictatorship with a penchant for, among other things, lining up homosexuals against a wall and shooting them". Hopefully the last few days have reinforced that even if one country does things wrong sometimes, it doesn't mean the other side is a good guy.

stef25 5y ago

> in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless Earlier today a report on BBC said existing sanctions on Russian already made their economy suffer to a significant extent. I forgot the percentage points they mentioned but it was surprisingly high. Applying even more sanctions will unfortunately hurt the Russian people the most and the discontent that will create among the people over the many years to come should not be underestimated.

ajross 5y ago

> in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless I don't see how this follows from your (correct) description of US influence in the cold war. Soft power works now the same way it always has, all it requires is coordination on a "pool of influence" large enough. It's absolutely true that the US can't unilaterally do what it did in the 70's. But the e.g. USA+EU+Japan+Korea? That's pretty dominant, still. Russia's only out from something like that would effectively mean becoming a sattelite state to the PRC. And... maybe that's where we're headed. But it's surely not where Putin wants to head, so it remains leverage.

pohl 5y ago

> ...theyre effectively meaningless as most capable, observant countries have managed to sidestep... In this case, though, one wants to apply pressure not on the country, but on the surrounding oligarchs. When a nation is, essentially, a syndicate of organized criminal oligarchs around a strongman, financial pressure on those people is exactly what you need.

deleted 5y ago

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deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

james-redwood 5y ago

I think anyone with knowledge of how badly Iran has been hit by sanctions would understand that they have a very punitive effect.