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Bloomberg
Russia Asset Seizure Law Spurs Yellen Praise, Dollar Angst
- Lawmakers argue over effect on dollar, US Treasury market
- Congress passed new seizure powers as part of Ukraine aid bill
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Russia-Ukraine war updates: Moscow threatens to target ‘Western weapons’
By Edna Mohamed
Published On 23 Apr 202423 Apr 2024
MITCH MCCONNELL GLOATS OVER PASSAGE OF $95 BLN FOREIGN WAR CHEST WHILE US BORDER LEFT WIDE OPEN
by INTEL-DROP April 28, 2024
- The US Senate is to vote on a military aid package for Ukraine that is all but certain to pass after the House of Representatives approved the assistance with broad bipartisan support.
- Referencing the US aid package, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu says Russia will “increase the intensity of attacks” on Western weapons.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says US President Joe Biden promised Kyiv that the aid would arrive “quickly”.
- A Russian aerial attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa has injured nine people overnight, including four children, Ukrainian officials say.
- Officials in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, say 120 civilians there have been killed and 651 people injured in Ukrainian attacks since the start of the war in February 2022.
- China condemns US claims that Beijing has fuelled the Ukraine war by supplying components to Russia that it has used to expand its defence industry, calling them “groundless accusations”.
A majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives dropped their opposition to a $95 billion package of additional US support for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the military-industrial complex last week after a six-month deadlock. A minority of conservative Republicans saw the move as a betrayal, given the situation at the US’ southern border.
Ardent neocon and GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on television Sunday to explain why House Republicans dropped their opposition to giving away nearly $100 billion in additional US taxpayer dollars to foreign countries while the crisis at the US’ southern border with Mexico remains unaddressed.
“Once we realized we were not going to get a border result, I think our members really started focusing on the package. It was clear that it was not going to have a border provision attached to it. And there are almost no good arguments against this,” McConnell told CBS’ Face the Nation, assuring that all the arguments made by opponents of the $95 billion foreign package were “provably wrong.”
Admitting that the border with Mexico is “a disaster,” McConnell said he and his colleagues recognized that Democrats wouldn’t accommodate GOP concerns on the frontier. “They’ve got the White House, they got the Senate.”
Saying that he’d spoken to Volodymyr Zelensky before Sunday’s CBS interview, McConnell said he “apologized” to the Ukrainian president for taking such a long time to get the spending package through ($61 billion of the $95 billion is formally earmarked for Ukraine, although the US military-industrial complex is expected to get a good chunk of that to replenish depleted Pentagon stocks).
McConnell characterized the “powerful voices” within his own party calling on the US to step back from its global imperious commitments as “isolationists,” and said it was a phenomenon that the GOP has had experience with going back to mid-20th century.
“We may not have time for a history lesson, but we’ve been there before. Before World War II and after World War II, the most prominent Republican of that era was Robert Taft. He opposed Lend Lease. He opposed NATO. He opposed the Marshall Plan. So that strand of isolationism prior to this last really big war was stopped when [Dwight D.] Eisenhower beat Taft for the nomination and had a totally different view of our role in the world and that’s been the case of most presidents since then,” McConnell said.
Border Catastrophe
The small group of hardline conservative House Republicans who voted against last week’s $95 billion foreign aid package characterized the bill’s passage as a betrayal of America’s national interests, calling the entry of millions of illegal immigrants into the US since President Biden took office in 2021 an “invasion” that’s far more important to address through legislation.
GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson did his best to placate House Republicans concerned over the passage of additional aid to Ukraine, unbundling the $95 billion package into four separate bills, and stipulating that of the $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $9.5 billion in economic assistance would come in the form of a loan, which the president could forgive after the next election.
McConnell patted himself and the neoconservative members of his caucus on the back after the passage of Ukraine aid last week, calling it “one of the most important issues” of his 30 year Senate career.
Russia slammed the US legislation as a sign that permanent Washington plans to continue its gruesome proxy war against Moscow “to the last Ukrainian.”
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Seizing Russian Assets: A Feel Good Bill That Will Absolutely Boomerang
A Senate measure under consideration would breed contempt and prolong the war in Ukraine
Global Research, February 16, 2024
Responsible Statecraft 15 February 2024
Region: Russia and FSU, USA
Theme: Global Economy, Law and Justice
In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT
Introduction
The Washington foreign policy establishment is on the precipice of making yet another strategic blunder.
The Senate is poised to ram through the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act. This legislation will provide the president the authority to confiscate Russia’s frozen sovereign assets in the United States and transfer them to Ukraine for its reconstruction.
Confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets is an act of economic war. Seizing and transferring these assets to Ukraine may make Washington feel virtuous, but it will not bring peace. Passage of this bill will only reinforce the view of hardliners in Moscow that Russia’s war lies not just with Ukraine, but really with the United States and the West. Any hope that the United States and Russia could work toward stabilizing or improving relations will subsequently be destroyed.
There is no justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but enacting this bill will make peace less likely. Ukrainians have courageously defended their country for nearly two years, but even Ukraine’s former top military commander General Valery Zaluzhny admits the war is now a stalemate.
Russia’s frozen assets could be used as a bargaining chip during negotiations, but once Congress provides the president the authority to seize Russian assets, there will be immense political pressure on him to carry out the policy to avoid looking weak. President Biden was recently pilloried by the media and members of my party for returning frozen Iranian assets in exchange for five American hostages. He is unlikely to make that decision again.
Confiscation will only convince Moscow that there is no negotiated settlement to be had with Ukraine. The result will be a destroyed Ukraine. More Ukrainian soldiers and civilians will die, and more cities and towns will be turned to rubble.
History is replete with examples of economic warfare turning into violent hostilities. Many historians believe the U.S. embargo of 1807, which was intended to punish France and England for their aggressions at sea, led to the War of 1812. Likewise, FDR’s decision to freeze Japan’s sovereign assets and implement an embargo on oil and gasoline exports led to Tokyo’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor.
The past teaches us the folly of embracing every proposed act of revenge. U.S. senators are duty-bound to ask whether our actions will ensure American security and prosperity. In regard to the REPO Act, the Russians already answered that question for us. Moscow says they will retaliate in kind against the United States and our allies, with some estimates claiming upward of $288 billion in Western assets that Moscow could confiscate.
Nicholas Mulder, an assistant professor of history at Cornell University, highlights the danger of the “destabilizing precedent that western countries would set by seizing assets to end a war they are not openly involved in.” Professor Mulder states that such an action “would broaden the coercive actions that states could take for disputes to which they are not a direct party.”
Confiscating Russia’s assets will also certainly convince other countries, including China, that the United States can no longer be trusted as the guarantor of the global economy. They will seek to move away from the dollar and hold their reserves in other currencies. This process of de-dollarization will be an unmitigated disaster as it will degrade America’s financial strength and ensure the prosperity Americans have come to expect is no longer attainable.
In addition, this bill will hand the Russians another tool to fuel resentment against the United States. American leaders speak of a “rules-based international order” but the theory that the United States can confiscate the assets of another country we are not at war with is legally dubious.
Professor Mulder argues that “economic reprisals are the prerogative of injured states, not of third parties.” Rather than compel respect for international law, our actions will demonstrate to our adversaries that we are flouting it. This bill will be used by the Kremlin to show the world that while Washington demands that others follow the rules, we are happy to break them whenever we see fit.
In a multipolar world, Washington can no longer expect to act with impunity, particularly when dealing with a nuclear power. We understood the serious dangers our country faced during the Cold War. But three decades of repeated foreign policy disasters proves that Washington’s foreign policy establishment is badly broken.
A good way to start on the road to fixing that broken foreign policy is rejecting this disastrous bill.
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Sen. Rand Paul is the junior Senator from Kentucky, and a Republican. He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Featured image is from RS
The original source of this article is Responsible Statecraft
BIG BROTHER in the 21. Century 