It turns out that banning the unwanted little kids from one’s imperial playground only encourages them to build their own.

De-dollarization and war

This realization has prompted many countries to take action to decrease their vulnerability to sanctions, with China creating a new financial infrastructure outside US control and pushing for commodity suppliers to short-circuit the dollar. The establishment of a BRICS bank as a counterweight to the IMF is just one more step in that direction.

It remains to be seen whether the US will view widespread de-dollarization as a national humiliation and yet another pretext to go to (financial) war. But what is certain is that sanctions do not work – with the rare exception of those levied against Apartheid South Africa last century, though perhaps because these sanctions were genuinely a universally agreed upon course of global action.

Western sanctions, in contrast, are a specific coercion instrument used by only a handful of states to force” behavior change” on targeted adversaries, as seen in Iraq, Serbia, Iran, and Venezuela.

Iran, as a case in point

The Islamic Republic of Iran is an old hand at dealing with western financial coercion. It is the most sanctioned country in the world with over 4000 sanctions – until the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian conflict came into focus. Despite the oppressive regime of western economic punishments, Iran has made remarkable progress in both military and scientific fields and has established self-sufficiency milestones in vital sectors of its economy.

Read the whole thing. The other side was waiting for the triggering event and found it when the US stupidly kicked Russia out of SWIFT. This is all great for the rest of the free world. Someday, it might even be of value to Americans – if they can first rid themselves of their ruling foreign elites.