The meaning of modern warfare goes far beyond the hot war itself, in addition, there are public opinion warfare, scientific and technological warfare, economic warfare, and financial warfare.
Since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, although nato countries led by the United States have not directly participated in the hot war on the ground, they are the initiators, promoters, and participants of the war, from seizing the commanding heights of public opinion, to weapons and equipment support, to economic sanctions, financial sanctions, and scientific and technological sanctions.
In britain, for example, the first round of sanctions against five Russian banks and three Russian billionaires was followed by ten more sanctions against Russia.
As of now, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada have issued a joint statement on sanctions against Russia, showing that the United States and its allies have promised to remove selected Russian banks from the SWIFT system; promised to impose sanctions on the foreign exchange reserves of the Russian central bank; promised to restrict the golden passports of wealthy Russians; and promised to impose sanctions and other measures on more Russian officials.
In particular, the removal of Russian banks from the SWIFT system is a "financial nuclear bomb".
Why is SWIFT a "financial bomb"?
Founded in 1973, SWIFT is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, along with the US-led CHIPS, and called the world's two major clearing systems.
SWIFT is the world's leading financial information transmission platform and is widely used in international cross-border trade activities. Financial institutions and enterprises in various countries rely heavily on the SWIFT system for fast, secure and standardized financial information transmission to promote and secure cross-border payments, securities transactions and trade finance.
In 2019, more than 11,000 banks and other financial institutions and enterprises in more than 200 countries and regions around the world used the SWIFT system for financial information transmission.
This time, the United States and Europe joined hands to cut off SWIFT's connection with Russia, which means that the money outside cannot come in, the money inside cannot go out, and Russia is basically unable to make international receipts and payments.
Combined with the previous freezing of overseas assets of Russia's major banks and the sanctions on the foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Russia, in fact, russia's accumulated wealth through oil exports and so on, all were "confiscated", and the United Kingdom alone froze 154 billion pounds, if according to the logic of money is commodity, money is wealth, this is no different from waging war and plundering wealth.
In 2012, the United States and Europe upgraded financial sanctions against Iran, directly eliminating four important Iranian banks from the SWIFT system, resulting in Iran losing nearly half of its oil export earnings and nearly 30% of its foreign trade.
In 2014, after the Crimean incident, the United States eliminated 7 large Russian banks from the SWIFT system, resulting in the freezing of the payment function of about 500,000 credit and debit cards, and panic runs were frequent.
Even the detention of Huawei executives in Canada in 18 years is not unrelated to the fact that the United States has made HSBC bow its head through SWIFT data access.
Therefore, SWIFT has always been recognized as a "financial nuclear bomb", because we live in an era of high virtualization and high financialization, which seems to be huge wealth, but in fact, it has long been separated from the logic of the original wealth, that is, physical objects, materials and fields, and the vulnerability is also extremely large, and it is easy to erase it.
From this to the other, think of danger in times of peace
Order is based on countless rules, with rules to ensure fairness, but unfortunately, the rules do not speak, the people who make the rules have a say, just like the referees do things according to the rules, if the referees turn against each other, how do we win the game?
SWIFT itself is a set of rules, to solve the trade problems before different countries, different currencies, to achieve the convenience, security and standardization of international trade, when more than 200 countries around the world, more than 11,000 banks are highly dependent on this set of rules, this set of rules almost form a monopoly, if you leave it, it seems that nothing can be done.
To know that we are much richer than Russia, as of January 2022, the mainland's foreign exchange reserves of 3221.6 billion US dollars, about 20 trillion yuan, how many people have paid how much labor to accumulate wealth, if it is separated from SWIFT, it will become illiquid capital, if capital can not flow, can not multiply, it will die.
Russia is replacing other major powers as a test animal:
A modern country, if there is no SWIFT, in the end, can not work?
SWIFT is theoretically equal, it is just a set of rules, SWIFT sanctions are seven wounded fists, kill a thousand enemies, and self-inflicted damage eight hundred. Domestic capital overseas cannot be returned, and capital entering china from overseas cannot be returned.
Of course, the side of the trade surplus suffers more, such as China, which exports more than imports, and more money is not exchanged for goods to return to China, and wealth is virtualized numbers.
epilogue
Since the beginning of 18 years, the United States has imposed sanctions on a number of Chinese technology companies such as ZTE, Huawei, and SMIC, which has triggered concerns about the global industrial chain of semiconductors in various regions, and China, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the United States have continued to increase investment, often hundreds of billions of dollars, and fully guarantee their own supply chains.
Now that SWIFT kicks out of Russia, it may raise global concerns about the old financial system, and international trade is once again challenged.
All kinds of signs show that when the rules are no longer fair, the anti-globalization begins, the old order is challenged, and the formation of new rules and new orders is accelerating.