RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/09/sleepwalking-into-war-rebecca-weisser/

Our international editor, John O’Sullivan, has compiled an excellent collection of essays called Sleepwalking into Wokeness, which I heartily recommend to readers. It prompts me to wonder whether the West is now sleepwalking its way into a Third World War, or at least a war engaging great powers on three continents: North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.

After my three-month fellowship at the Danube Institute in Budapest, of which O’Sullivan is the founder and president, the Russian invasion of Ukraine feels far too close for comfort. It’s not just that Hungary shares a land border with Ukraine, and Budapest is located less than 1000 kilometres from the front line. Up to 75,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Ukraine, many of whom are fighting the Russian invasion, and more than 60,000 refugees from Ukraine have arrived in Hungary, of whom more than 44,000 have registered for temporary protection.

Meanwhile, Russia and Belarus have weaponised the entry of up to 400 illegal migrants a day into Poland, some of them violent and armed with homemade spears and broken bottles, one, on June 6, stabbing a Polish border guard to death. Finland has closed its border with Russia entirely after it experienced a sharp increase in migrants from Somalia and Iraq who had been aided by Russian security agencies.

The European Union was outraged at Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s audacity in independently promoting peace negotiations by calling on all the key protagonists while Hungary is President of the EU, but he may have helped focus minds on the end game.

One prospect of a speedy end to the conflict rests on the second coming of Donald Trump. Perhaps Orban’s visit to Mar-a-Lago reminded the warring parties of Trump’s bold promise that if he is re-elected he will end the war before he reaches the White House.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20816/biden-administration-empowering-houthis

[S]hortly after taking office, on February 12, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken officially removed the Houthis’ designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. This decision marked a significant shift in U.S. policy: it delisted a group that, according to a Yemeni government intelligence report, has close affiliations with Al Qaeda and ISIS, and, according to other reports, regularly commits crimes war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Biden administration’s policy has involved releasing billions of dollars to the Iranian regime, and refraining from enforcing stringent sanctions against Iran. The influx of funds has doubtless enabled the Iranian regime to allocate substantial financial resources towards supporting and arming the Houthis as well as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

This flow of capital has not only sustained Iran’s regional influence but is also prolonging the conflict in the region.

The US Navy, thanks to the Houthis, has reportedly been facing “its most intense combat since World War II” and has reacted by destroying three “small boats” whose crews attempted to board a container ship in the Red Sea; a fourth boat “fled the scene.”

Responding to the Houthis was left to little Israel. Last week, its air force targeted Yemen’s port city of Hodeida “in an attempt to prevent the ongoing delivery of weapons to the Houthi militia by Iran”.

Yet, not one senior US official – not US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris nor Secretary of State Antony Blinken — bothered to greet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “The Churchill of the Middle East,” at the airport when he landed this week in Washington, D.C. In an additional snub, Harris boycotted his speech to Congress.

A former U.S. military official, speaking to CNN on the condition of anonymity, criticized the current approach, likening it to past unsuccessful efforts: “The US campaign against the Houthis appears to bear the hallmarks of many of these highly circumscribed, scrubbed campaigns of the past where we seek to avoid causing them actual pain.”

The administration… needs to redesignate the Houthis as a full-fledged “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” In January, after pressure, the Houthis were ultimately named “Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” a level below “Foreign Terrorist Organization”, which enables them still to receive funding and enter the United States.

Given the growing threat posed by these developments, and especially Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it is imperative that the US take decisive steps to address the issue effectively before the situation further deteriorates into an even larger international crisis.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20740/china-sanctions

There is no mystery why China’s big banks have run from Russia: These behemoths — the four largest banks in the world ranked by assets are Chinese — know the U.S. can effectively impose a death sentence. The Secretary of the Treasury, for instance, can designate, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Chinese banks to be of “primary money laundering concern.” Designated banks can no longer clear dollar transactions through New York, where every dollar transaction clears.

Because the dollar reigns supreme in international transactions, Section 311 designations would put the Chinese state banks out of business most everywhere outside China and even reduce their business inside that country. The Treasury Department, to great effect, imposed Section 311 on Bank of Dandong, a small Chinese bank, in 2017 for participating in prohibited transactions with North Korea.

Moreover, Washington has other tools to hit Chinese banks. In 2012, Treasury also cut China’s Bank of Kunlun off from the U.S. financial system by invoking the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010.

“Transactions between China and Russia will increasingly go through underground channels.” The underground channels include cryptocurrency, generally banned in China. — “[T]he head of a trade body in a southeastern province that represents Chinese businesses with Russian interests” to Reuters.

China’s regime is playing Americans for fools. It is time for Washington to sanction all Chinese banks, all other Chinese financial institutions, and all Chinese corporates, treating them as one single organization.

Sanctions will work… if they are immediately applied against all Chinese entities to produce maximum shock.

There is no point in imposing sanctions that never have a chance of stopping offending behavior.

The larger Chinese banks, in response to stern U.S. warnings, have this year been exiting transactions involving Russia.

Are America’s sanctions efforts finally working?

No. Beijing is merely shifting transactions to smaller banks and non-banking channels. China, to help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, is employing a decades-old stratagem: the shell game.