Tag: SWIFT

Would World War II have come as quickly as it did? Probably not. In reality, Germany was already isolated. After 1933, the Nazis moved to make the country self-reliant. Everything went to Hitler’s war machine. Germany didn’t depend on Europe for anything in 1939, and vice versa. From its spurious historical rationale to its bloodiness, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a carbon copy of Hitler’s invasion of Poland (with one exception: Putin’s blitzkrieg appears to be failing in the face of fanatical Ukrainian resistance).And yet, Russian commodities still flow westward. Although Western sanctions have ratcheted up faster than I expected, there are still big carve-outs for Russian energy exports.