"Plumbing of the International Financial System"
Since Russia has veto power at the UN, how have so many sanctions been imposed on them since the start of the Ukraine war? Surely, the Russians would have veto’ed it, right? When Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal treaty, we know none of the other parties to that deal – the EU, Russia, China – agreed. And yet, Iran was cut off from the international financial system. How could the US do that unilaterally? I found the answer to this question – how the US can unilaterally impose sanctions on whoever displeases them – when I was reading De-dollarization . That power, that capability is rooted in the fact that the US dollar serves as the “plumbing of the international financial system”. And since the dollar is owned by the US, they have the right to allow/disallow its usage by other countries – it’s their property, after all. And since international trade is overwhelmingly in US dollars, a country that can’t use the dollar can’t trade with anyone – it’s ef...