Politico ran a lengthy policy op-ed on March 8 by Julia Friedlander headlined, “The West Has Declared Financial War on Russia. Is It Prepared for the Consequences?” Friedlander is a director at the Atlantic Council (which has been functioning as a kind of planning headquarters for war against both China and Russia), and she was a sanctions and financial warfare expert in both the Obama and Trump administrations, working in the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Treasury Department.
Friedlander opens with a simple point: “Every morning since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when markets open, analysts watch two things simultaneously: the advance of Russian troops on one screen and the value of the ruble on the other, two battle fronts in the same confrontation.” What started as a policy of simple sanctions against Russia, “has now shifted to driving the country into the ground.” This has included “severing Russia’s access to nearly $400 billion, or over 60% of [foreign exchange] reserves, overnight.”
All of this goes way beyond anything President Trump did, she explains. “The West’s response is no longer just pressure—it’s financial war.” But the big question is: “Can the U.S. and its partners wreak enough havoc on the Russian economy in time to make war unsustainable? No one can answer that.” This is “a high-stakes gamble over European security, in real time, through financial and economic means.”
