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But if SWIFT is already in play, everyone already has a reason to diversify, and will do so. You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to avoid

But if SWIFT is already in play, everyone already has a reason to diversify, and will do so. You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to avoid the thing you're threatening. Also you can't be hesitating on everything that seems like a one-off. Then you really don't have a lot of sticks to shake at people. This whole thing is so embarrassing for the West. We won't let Ukraine into NATO, we won't promise not to, we won't send troops, we won't send much help at all, we won't sanction all Russian nationals (yes it's heavy handed), we won't sanction a few thousand top regime officials, we won't sanction just the oligarchs, we won't stop them living in the West, we won't even stop them sending money home.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
> we won't sanction all Russian nationals It would be nice to see a mass deportation of Russian mafia.
- fsn4dN69ey 5y ago
  Why should dual citizens living in other countries suffer, especially if they've lived there for decades? Asking for myself.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Slightly disrupt, in a pretty small way, a few thousand people connected to the regime vs a bunch of Ukrainian civilians get killed, their homes destroyed, thousands of refugees, and troops on both sides die and are horribly injured. No idea if you're connected to the regime, but it would be unfortunate to mess up your life in the west. But there's a tolerable amount of collateral damage. This goes back to hurting yourself to hurt the bad guy, it's not a western ideal to harm the innocent, but we might end up where it happens and we shouldn't be paralyzed by the possibility.
    - hkt 5y ago
      Not exactly a convincing expression of support for people's human rights, especially those of fellow citizens with dual nationality. Wouldn't exactly be a good look. A better solution is to clean up the financial sector, especially the City of London, and to move to renewables ASAP to break the hold of all petrostates on the West.
    - whateveracct 5y ago
      Russians in America (dual citizen or not) have inalienable lights outlined in the Constitution.
  - ada1981 5y ago
    Dual citizens should renounce Russian citizenship if they don’t support their government and tax dollars going to war. If you aren’t willing to overthrow the shithole government of Russia, you don’t get to complain when your allegiance (especially when you have dual citizenship and can easily renounce it), makes life hard for you.
    - _Tev 5y ago
      So when Russians in USA go back to visit their family they should pay for visas? I don't see how that helps the fight against Russian goverment in any non-symbolic way. Maybe stop trying to punish ordinary people for their (effectively unelected - see how opposition in Russia can't survive) government?
      - tekknik 5y ago
        2 things here: 1) Russians can own firearms. They can start a rebellion to overthrow the gov. Why haven’t they? There’s some level of comfort the residents are getting that they don’t want to give up. 2) Punishing residents for their govs misdeeds (it is listed as a democracy after all) is a good way to get them to comply and overthrow or vote out this gov. People in the US pay everyday for Russian misinformation campaigns, while Russian residents sit by and do nothing. What’s that saying from BLM? If you do nothing you’re just as guilty?
      - ada1981 5y ago
        Yes. Or perhaps don’t go visit a country actively murdering other people unproked and encourage your family to leave. Leave or revolt. Otherwise you are complacent. So yes, if you maintain citizenship with Russia, there ought to be consequences.
simonh 5y ago
Exactly. Alternatives to swift are already growing and will continue to do so. What’s more important, protecting Ukraine, Taiwan and anywhere else under threat, or slowing down the erosion of something already being eroded. Lives matter, swift will do just fine without Russia. This asshole is at war with us. It’s about time we went to war back. Yes it would be costly, but it would have been a lot less costly if we’d done more than wring our hands over Crimea. The cost of dithering is going up and up, so what’s the answer? More dithering?
- qiskit 5y ago
  > What’s more important, protecting Ukraine, Taiwan and anywhere else under threat Ukraine, Taiwan, etc are under "threat" because the West is using them as political/military pawns. If NATO/West didn't exist, there would be no invasion of ukraine. Taiwan would have unified with China already. It's going to anyways. We are just bleeding Taiwan as much as we can before china takes it back. It's silly the amount of useless weapons we are forcing taiwan to buy. > This asshole is at war with us. It’s about time we went to war back. Yes it would be costly, but it would have been a lot less costly if we’d done more than wring our hands over Crimea. You have it backwards. We are at war with him and he finally decided to stand up for himself. We invaded ukraine first. We broke our promises first. It's NATO expansion that is the threat to the world. Not russia. Is it China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Venezuela, Haiti, etc the problem or is it the West? Think about it. The world has a common problem. It isn't "China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Venezuela, Haiti, etc". It's the imperial west.
  - Consultant32452 5y ago
    Just because the US/West is in the lead of the empire game at the moment doesn't mean the other empires aren't a problem. We aren't the first empire and won't be the last. China, in particular, is in a massive expansion into Africa. If there was not competition from US/West for power, it would be moving much faster and more aggressively/violently as it had in the past. The ideal for the common person would be no empires. If that is a fantasy, then the next best thing would be some sort of minimally violent stalemate.
tablespoon 5y ago
> But if SWIFT is already in play, everyone already has a reason to diversify, and will do so. > You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to avoid the thing you're threatening. > Also you can't be hesitating on everything that seems like a one-off. Then you really don't have a lot of sticks to shake at people. Exactly. It's possible to be too reluctant to "save" a weapon for next time. You can get to the point that you wasted it because you let it gather dust until it was ineffective.
- igravious 5y ago
  SWIFT is an interconnecting protocol, like the IP in TCP/IP. It's absurd to my mind to talk about weaponising shared/common protocols. It's not only bad because of how it might affect us, it's bad because it's bad in principle. That this way of seeing things is not a more universal way of seeing this matter is telling and disheartening but I guess ultimately not that surprising.
toyg 5y ago
"We" should just have left Ukraine well alone 10 years ago. We effectively cut checks that could never be cashed.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> This whole thing is so embarrassing for the West. We won't let Ukraine into NATO, we won't promise not to, we won't send troops, we won't send much help at all, we won't sanction all Russian nationals (yes it's heavy handed), we won't sanction a few thousand top regime officials, we won't sanction just the oligarchs, we won't stop them living in the West, we won't even stop them sending money home. I think this is actually the idea behind "strategic ambiguity".
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
Yes. Western liberal “democracy” may have to come to terms with its collective ignorance much sooner than it planned to. (it never planned to)
soheil 5y ago
> You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to avoid the thing you're threatening. You should assume reasonable people already know SWIFT was going to be used as a threat at one point or another. So I'm not sure you're saying anything new. Those people continue to use it because it's permeated all over financial world very much like the dollar is. The cost to move away from it is non-zero and the alternatives aren't subsidized enough by the likes of China to incentivize others to join them and if not enough people are joining you won't have a network effect.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

> we won't sanction all Russian nationals It would be nice to see a mass deportation of Russian mafia.

fsn4dN69ey 5y ago
Why should dual citizens living in other countries suffer, especially if they've lived there for decades? Asking for myself.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Slightly disrupt, in a pretty small way, a few thousand people connected to the regime vs a bunch of Ukrainian civilians get killed, their homes destroyed, thousands of refugees, and troops on both sides die and are horribly injured. No idea if you're connected to the regime, but it would be unfortunate to mess up your life in the west. But there's a tolerable amount of collateral damage. This goes back to hurting yourself to hurt the bad guy, it's not a western ideal to harm the innocent, but we might end up where it happens and we shouldn't be paralyzed by the possibility.
  - hkt 5y ago
    Not exactly a convincing expression of support for people's human rights, especially those of fellow citizens with dual nationality. Wouldn't exactly be a good look. A better solution is to clean up the financial sector, especially the City of London, and to move to renewables ASAP to break the hold of all petrostates on the West.
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    Russians in America (dual citizen or not) have inalienable lights outlined in the Constitution.
- ada1981 5y ago
  Dual citizens should renounce Russian citizenship if they don’t support their government and tax dollars going to war. If you aren’t willing to overthrow the shithole government of Russia, you don’t get to complain when your allegiance (especially when you have dual citizenship and can easily renounce it), makes life hard for you.
  - _Tev 5y ago
    So when Russians in USA go back to visit their family they should pay for visas? I don't see how that helps the fight against Russian goverment in any non-symbolic way. Maybe stop trying to punish ordinary people for their (effectively unelected - see how opposition in Russia can't survive) government?
    - tekknik 5y ago
      2 things here: 1) Russians can own firearms. They can start a rebellion to overthrow the gov. Why haven’t they? There’s some level of comfort the residents are getting that they don’t want to give up. 2) Punishing residents for their govs misdeeds (it is listed as a democracy after all) is a good way to get them to comply and overthrow or vote out this gov. People in the US pay everyday for Russian misinformation campaigns, while Russian residents sit by and do nothing. What’s that saying from BLM? If you do nothing you’re just as guilty?
    - ada1981 5y ago
      Yes. Or perhaps don’t go visit a country actively murdering other people unproked and encourage your family to leave. Leave or revolt. Otherwise you are complacent. So yes, if you maintain citizenship with Russia, there ought to be consequences.

simonh 5y ago

Exactly. Alternatives to swift are already growing and will continue to do so. What’s more important, protecting Ukraine, Taiwan and anywhere else under threat, or slowing down the erosion of something already being eroded. Lives matter, swift will do just fine without Russia. This asshole is at war with us. It’s about time we went to war back. Yes it would be costly, but it would have been a lot less costly if we’d done more than wring our hands over Crimea. The cost of dithering is going up and up, so what’s the answer? More dithering?

qiskit 5y ago
> What’s more important, protecting Ukraine, Taiwan and anywhere else under threat Ukraine, Taiwan, etc are under "threat" because the West is using them as political/military pawns. If NATO/West didn't exist, there would be no invasion of ukraine. Taiwan would have unified with China already. It's going to anyways. We are just bleeding Taiwan as much as we can before china takes it back. It's silly the amount of useless weapons we are forcing taiwan to buy. > This asshole is at war with us. It’s about time we went to war back. Yes it would be costly, but it would have been a lot less costly if we’d done more than wring our hands over Crimea. You have it backwards. We are at war with him and he finally decided to stand up for himself. We invaded ukraine first. We broke our promises first. It's NATO expansion that is the threat to the world. Not russia. Is it China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Venezuela, Haiti, etc the problem or is it the West? Think about it. The world has a common problem. It isn't "China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Venezuela, Haiti, etc". It's the imperial west.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  Just because the US/West is in the lead of the empire game at the moment doesn't mean the other empires aren't a problem. We aren't the first empire and won't be the last. China, in particular, is in a massive expansion into Africa. If there was not competition from US/West for power, it would be moving much faster and more aggressively/violently as it had in the past. The ideal for the common person would be no empires. If that is a fantasy, then the next best thing would be some sort of minimally violent stalemate.

tablespoon 5y ago

> But if SWIFT is already in play, everyone already has a reason to diversify, and will do so. > You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to avoid the thing you're threatening. > Also you can't be hesitating on everything that seems like a one-off. Then you really don't have a lot of sticks to shake at people. Exactly. It's possible to be too reluctant to "save" a weapon for next time. You can get to the point that you wasted it because you let it gather dust until it was ineffective.

igravious 5y ago
SWIFT is an interconnecting protocol, like the IP in TCP/IP. It's absurd to my mind to talk about weaponising shared/common protocols. It's not only bad because of how it might affect us, it's bad because it's bad in principle. That this way of seeing things is not a more universal way of seeing this matter is telling and disheartening but I guess ultimately not that surprising.

toyg 5y ago

"We" should just have left Ukraine well alone 10 years ago. We effectively cut checks that could never be cashed.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> This whole thing is so embarrassing for the West. We won't let Ukraine into NATO, we won't promise not to, we won't send troops, we won't send much help at all, we won't sanction all Russian nationals (yes it's heavy handed), we won't sanction a few thousand top regime officials, we won't sanction just the oligarchs, we won't stop them living in the West, we won't even stop them sending money home. I think this is actually the idea behind "strategic ambiguity".

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

Yes. Western liberal “democracy” may have to come to terms with its collective ignorance much sooner than it planned to. (it never planned to)

soheil 5y ago

> You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to avoid the thing you're threatening. You should assume reasonable people already know SWIFT was going to be used as a threat at one point or another. So I'm not sure you're saying anything new. Those people continue to use it because it's permeated all over financial world very much like the dollar is. The cost to move away from it is non-zero and the alternatives aren't subsidized enough by the likes of China to incentivize others to join them and if not enough people are joining you won't have a network effect.