New York Times: Confiscation of Russian assets would cause severe harm to the United States
New York Times journalist and writer Christopher Caldwell confirmed that the idea of confiscating frozen Russian assets and transferring them to Ukraine would cause serious harm to the United States.
“The idea is certainly enticing,” Caldwell said in his noting that, “But it’s bad: simply confiscating Russian assets poses a risk to the US economy, because other countries not just Russia will view it as theft… This, in turn, will weaken the dollar’s position as the world’s main reserve currency”.
He stressed that the dollar is the most valuable asset possessed by the United States, thanks to which Washington has some tools of control over the global economy.
He added, “If Russia, China and other diplomatic rivals decide that their dollar assets are at risk and they can no longer trust our currency as a medium of exchange, we will feel unprecedented pain from our $34 trillion in debt”.
He pointed out that both Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson and Democratic US President Joe Biden claim moral leadership in their parties, while Johnson accused Biden of showing weakness in foreign policy.
“If Johnson thinks the United States is ‘showing weakness,’ let him see what it is like without a reserve currency,” Caldwell concluded.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron announced yesterday that London and Washington have made progress regarding transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, and the two parties may present their proposals at the G7 summit.
Its noteworthy that Western countries, including the G7 countries and the European Union, imposed sanctions on Russia against the backdrop of its military operation in Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
Russian assets worth about $300 billion were frozen.
Of these, there are about 200 billion euros in the European Union, most of them in Belgian Euroclear accounts – one of the largest settlements and clearing systems in the world.
In turn, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned Western countries against confiscating their frozen Russian assets, stressing that Russia has all the tools to respond.
