By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

IN the last instalment I pointed out that it is wrong to assume that the rhetoric and practice of ‘reform’ in themselves can constitute an adequate national ideological posture because many countries who oppose US and European imperialism (such as the BRICS countries) have also pursued and achieved capitalist reforms without giving up their own national ideological positions.  

Therefore, while we pursue capitalist ‘reforms’ we still need at the same time to ask what our national values are which remain independent of neoliberal reform and can be used to tame and temper that reform for the sake of the people. 

To be more specific, our national media has failed to put the sanctions debate in its proper global frame because they are ideologically confused over the issue of illegal sanctions and neoliberal reform. 

Whereas in Russia, China and even Europe, economic reforms are conceived and executed countering the excessive economic and political power of the US and as means of dismantling the so-called Washington Consensus, here in Zimbabwe reforms have been framed first and foremost (wrongly) as a matter of obeying instructions from the US, EU and their Western allies.  

Once this frame is imposed and accepted, it follows that the significance of Zimbabwe’s struggle against illegal sanctions (imposed by the very same powers to be obeyed) is hopelessly compromised.  

This explains why in 2019 it was the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which reminded Zimbabweans of the need to fight illegal sanctions with more vigour and clarity and that, after all, these sanctions were hurting all the SADC economies in ways which were not popularly understood precisely because our regional media was both confused and divided if not often complicit on the issue.

Not usually reported in Zim: The global significance of the anti-sanctions mobilisation

According to Ryan McMaken writing for the Mises Institute, the US is current ly attempting to enforce more than 8 000 separate sanctions against hundreds of nations, institutions, banks and individuals.  

This reality makes a mockery of the rhetoric of economic freedom or free trade, so that McMaken’s article is appropriately called ‘The World Looks to Abandon the US Dollar as US sanctions Tighten Their Grip’. 

Since in the view of many media outlets in Zimbabwe we are all supposedly praying for the seemingly attractive return of the US dollar (re-dollarisation), such media outlets will never allow their readers and viewers to know that such views as McMaken’s article actually constitute the posture of the global majority against US aggression.

The truth, however, is that while the EU has sanctions against Zimbabwe in sympathy with the US and UK, it is however, fighting US sanctions against European banks and other companies being punished by the US for trading with Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran and Cuba!

In this way, according to McMaken: “Washington is treating the EU as an adversary.  It is dealing the same way with Mexico, Canada, and with allies in Asia.  

This policy will provoke counter-reactions across the world.”

This is the global frame which the sanctions mongers in Zimbabwe would not want MaDzimbahwe to know.  

The aim of the sanctions mongers is to project ‘reform’ as Zimbabwe’s obedience to North America and Europe and to present the illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe as a sign of total isolation when in fact the fight against US and EU sanctions makes Zimbabwe a true member of the real progressive global community.

How the US system was set up; now being dismantled: How Zimbabwe can join 

• The global strength of the US dollar was one of the consequences of the Hitler wars in Europe. 

Because the wars were fought away from US territory, the US benefited immensely from supplying weapons, food and clothing to the western allies fighting Hitler.

• After the war, “Financial institutions wanted to communicate with other financial institutions so that they could send and receive money. This led them to abandon inefficient institution-to-institution communications and to converge on a common solution: the financial messaging system maintained by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) consortium.”

• In addition, the same banks were obviously attracted to the accumulated strength of the US dollar which it had accrued through financing the Second World War. 

So international banks sought to make their transactions in the same US dollar.

• In terms of infrastructure, financial flows came to be channelled and concentrated through a restricted number of data cables and switch points which are now referred to as SWIFT.

• As a result, a double asymmetry merged: The dominant and concentrated use of the US dollar and reliance on a few global networks and connections, yielding power and opportunity to the US to mould and change the global financial infrastructure for surveillance and control. 

This asymmetry meant that there emerged a symbiotic relationship between the US-dominated financial system and the US intelligence-gathering system.

• The September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon precipitated a conflict situation over the control and surveillance of financial flows: The US sought to tighten its grip and was in a position to monitor and control that same system to the minutest detail. 

On the other hand, the global service providers wanted to present a neutral private sector face for the SWIFT system. “Swift officials were concerned that it would become widely known that SWIFT was becoming politicised and largely a tool of US Treasury Officials and US allies.” 

It was also becoming a direct tool of the US intelligence system.  

Since SWIFT became synonymous with reliance on the US dollars, that US dollar became a direct weapon when SWIFT became a weapon in US hands.

Anyone reading the US Patriot Act of 2002 would notice that US imperial interests were moving fast to formalise their grip on financial, telecom and data flows from the vantage point of entrenching US global domination. 

The same The Patriot reader would also come to appreciate why the US has panicked over Huawei’s development of 5G technology and infrastructure ahead of the US.  

In fact, this development is the main reason for US sanctions against China.

According to McMaken: “By 2012 for the first time ever, SWIFT unplugged designated Iranian banks from the (global finical) system in accordance with a European directive and under threat of possible US legislation.”

The US was now openly fighting an ideological and political war using supposedly neutral banks, supposedly private telecoms and international data gateways.

What had up to that time been misrepresented as a technically efficient, safe and neutral financial service system was exposed as the latest instrument for threatening the direct imperialist strangulation of adversaries, competitors and even innocent third and fourth parties caught in the crossfire.

The global fallout from the rampant resort to sanctions 

Here let me repeat that for ideological reasons, most journalists and editors in Zimbabwe have failed to inform their readers that the anti-sanctions fight in consistent with progressive reform and is part of a popular global movement, including the movement to reform the UN system and protect it against US abuses.

• Europe itself has set up an alternative payment system called INSTEX, “to facilitate trade with Iran without using the US Dollar and the (US-controlled) SWIFT system built upon it.”

• In a continental report called Toward a Stronger International Role for the Euro, the European Commission called US sanctions against Europe and Iran ‘a wake-up call regarding Europe’s economic and monetary sovereignty’, according to McMaken.

• Other nations opposed to the way the US is trying to force third parties to participate in criminal sanctions against Iran have been invited to join the European INSTEX system in order to by-pass the US dollar and SWIFT.

• China has already set up its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) in order to bypass the US dollar and its SWIFT system.

• Russia has also set up its own System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SFPS) in order to bypass payments in US dollars and to trade without hindrance with partners of its own choice outside the US-controlled and US-dollar-based SWIFT. 

As reported in the November 8 2019 instalment for this column, David E. Anderson and Joy Gordon on research for the Rice Centre concluded that:

“We must come to grips with the perversity of the (sanctions logic).  

It is simply not good enough to say that atrocities committed (by the sanctioning countries) for the right reasons (or for good intentions), or by respected international organisations, are not really atrocities after all.

Because economic sanctions are intended to inflict great human suffering, pain, harm, and even death and thus should be subject to the same kind of careful moral and ethical scrutiny given to the use of military force before it is chosen as a means to achieve political objectives; and because sanctions are themselves a form of violence, they cannot legitimately be seen merely as a peacekeeping device or as a tool for enforcing international law.”

Fighting the US sanctions in particular has become an important way to fight for true human rights on a global scale. This is because most of the 8 000 sanctions the US maintains against many countries and entities are clearly illegal and unjustified.