by Gordon M. Hahn
Some Western sources have been floating the idea of cutting Russia off from the SWIFT inter-banking mechanism. This step could be aking to cutting off oil supplies to Imperial Japan and lead to a similar result, though one not necessarily initiated by Russia but rather by the forces on the ground in Ukraine: the Ukrainian or Donbass forces.
Russia will be sure to retaliate harshly, as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned today: “…(O)ur economic reaction and in general any other will be unlimited” [Дмитрий Медведев: «…наша экономическая реакция, да и вообще всякая другая, будет без ограничений» (www.ntv.ru/novosti/1295220/)]. What steps might Moscow take? The menu looks something like this:
- Call in Ukraine’s $3b debt
- reduce oil supplies to Europe
- accelerate the BRICS-based and China-allied de-dollarization, separate financial system, and BRICS’s own rating agencies
- increase already high level of gold purchases
- perhaps increase military assistance to Donbass rebels
- and perhaps undertake a military buildup in Crimea and along Ukrainian southeastern border.
Big war will be on the horizon.
The goal at this point should not be to rachet tensions up, but to do the opposite.