PUSHBACK: Russia Threatens SWIFT.

It is important not to underestimate the amount of bluster and bluff in Russian talk about its friendship with China and its turn to the east. Repeated failures to build an effective Russia-China partnership date back to the era of the Soviet Union and Mao. But both countries, and they are not alone, are deeply and seriously concerned about what they see as the excessive power that the present day SWIFT system gives the U.S. and its Western allies; essentially, the ability to cut a country’s banks off from the global financial system. These are the sanctions that have been so effective against Iran. Russia and China, and a number of other countries, would like very much to break this weapon, something they see as one of the chief props of American world power.

It isn’t easy to build an alternative, and countries like China which depend on large flows of both investment and trade with the rest of the world, and whose financial systems are pointed toward greater rather than less integration with the global system are somewhat less eager about building an alternative than countries like Russia. Furthermore, lots of ne’er-do-wells like Venezuela, Argentina, or perhaps a Syriza-led Greece would love to join an alternative system thinking that it offers them new chances to stiff a new set of creditors.

Still, the more powerful the sanctions weapon becomes, and the more we try to use it, the greater the incentive we create for other people to challenge it. This should at the least cause the West to think twice before slamming sanctions down when somebody jaywalks; this is a tool that should be reserved for great dangers, not pesky annoyances. Yet there’s a longstanding tendency in the West to use sanctions as a substitute for military action—public opinion demands action, politicians don’t want to send troops (and think the public demand for action will cool rapidly when the body bags start coming home), so sanctions become the way to look tough while staying cool.

Which calls for courage and self-discipline among politicians, both, alas, in short supply these days.