I wonder if Russia could use banks of Crimea to trade with Iran. USA does not want anything to do with those anyway. So they already exist as clean room institutions.
Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
61–70 of 151 posts
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#62Europe is going downhill and it is really sad. Hope there won't be another war or something.
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does the US get to unilaterally decide who gets sanctioned and who doesn't? Europe has a lot more to loose on an unstable Iran than the US and can't risk deals being undone because the US has a new regime every 4 years.
Imagine a wrestling match. 2 wrestlers fight for some good amount of time. When they're tired enough, a 3rd wrestler gets in and beats both. That was World War II for the most part. After World War II, most of the world was destroyed except for the US. After the war, the US never left. Overseas bases still exist in Germany, Japan and many other places. They had everyone adopt a financial system (Bretton Woods) which…
Very interesting, do you have any books or articles you can recommend on the topic?
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#64Sanctions are one of the most powerful tools in the US toolbox short of war. In fact it's more important than war when dealing with Great Power adversaries because they have nukes. The US should aggressively block any attempt to get around it. Trump shouldn't have pulled out of the Iran deal, but preserving that power for the future is more important. Here's a good article about OFAC, the Treasury Department group th…
US has this clout because it controls a large part of the organizations for international cooperation.
With Trump, it is clear that he only wants to exercise such power without considering the consequences of it.
With the trust towards US fading, in and out of West, a complimentary mechanism will be created. US will control/influence where its hard power can still reach, but not beyond.
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#65This article makes absolutely no sense. The EU chosing Iran over the US?! That is not what is going to happen over the reopened Iran deal. What is going to happen is that the EU will fall in line and Iran will be forced to withdraw its activities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen ... due to the severity of the economic hardship caused by the sanctions.
Whoa. Downvotes ...
As if world power had something to do with technicalities, IT-systems, which currency to transact in.
Sorry guys. This is not how the world works.
The USD is dominant currency not because of the lack of alternatives.
The USD is the dominant currency because USA is the dominant military power by an order of magnitude.
As long as that is the case it means the EU can get only token independence. Ultimately if the US says no - you cannot deal with Iran. Then that is the way it is.
Does it mean that the EU is going to be nuclear bombed by the US? Of course not. It is much cheaper to go: One of your banks. It is not allowed to trade in USD anymore.
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. I think the only reason the rest of the world plays along is because the rest of the world is weak. The US are simply a bully. But it's true that the advent of Trump makes the bullying more difficult to accept because it's now absurd and incoherent; if some other powers unite and find a way to resist the bullying, then at least some good will have come out of trumpism.
I don't think we've been a bully so much as the rich kid that indirectly paid people to be their friend. I think Trump is accurate in pointing out that many of our arrangements are detrimental to the US on the first level, but at the same time those arrangements, and the unstated threat of their removal, is what gave the US the power to arbitrarily exert its influence. This became even more true as other nations star…
>It removes single point of failure scenarios. Economies and nations keeping each other more at arm's reach would help ensure the world acts in a more democratic fashion while simultaneously also providing insulation against the failing of any given nation's poor decisions - be those social, political, economic, or military.
This is completely ahistorical. You're describing the "balance of power" system that governed international relations and we know what happened: hundreds of years of European wars culminating in two world wars.
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#67Sounds about as likely as that EU army that was supposed to make the EU independent of NATO, and thus, the US. How's that working out? The EU constantly talks about challenging US power (Macron and Merkel in particular), but almost never do. I'm sure this will be more of the same.
Well for one because with the current leadership in the US there is for the first time in history enough incentive to actually push through.
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
US: Nice. Then we will just roll the dice once a week and point our finger to random big company of yours.
These measures usually have 2 unpleasant side-effects for the initiator: they trigger some form of retaliation and they push the other party closer to the enemy. In this case it could come back to harm the US tech sector for example, and it would push EU closer to China and Russia.
« pushing closer to the ennemi », yet i don’t think any european citizen will understand why we prefer to start a judiciary war against the US just so that we can help a muslim theocracy broaden its influence in the middle east.
It doesn’t serm to me that the public opinion in europe is really heading toward that kind of opinion.
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#69When are we 'exporting democracy' to Europe? Oh, wait.
Re: Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USA invades at least as many countries as Russia.
Purely statistically you cannot even compare them: |US invasions| >> |Russia invasions| But maybe it is because of the difference in GDP: |US invasions| / GDP ~= |Russia invasions| / GDP
Why '/' but not '*'?