The management of SWIFT[1] did not resist pressure from the United States for long and decided to disconnect the Central Bank of Iran and other financial organizations targeted by American sanctions from its system. According to Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the Russian parliamentary committee on financial markets, prospects for rapprochement are now under discussion with China, Iran and Turkey, as well as several other countries, for the interconnection of systems. Knowing that China has its own internal system and other countries are also building theirs. If the United States has used SWIFT as a “weapon” in its foreign policy, it is clear that SWIFT is ultimately only a code and an encrypted messaging system. In reaction to American pressure, Russia and China are writing their own code.

Thus, Russia's SPFS[2] is gaining customers and seems to be galvanizing independence intentions in Iran (10.2018), China (09.2018), Turkey (10.2019), India (10.2019), and even Vietnam ( 10.2019) very recently as well as with other close commercial partners that are not yet effective. Mainly by putting this into perspective with regard to what the partner countries represent within organizations such as the Astana Economic Forum bringing together the main countries of Eurasia and their respective extended partners. Those of Asia with APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) with the Vladivostok Forum, or even the ACP regions (African Caribbean and Pacific) and more recently the partners of the African continent meeting recently in Sochi.

Irony of “de-SWIFTization”
The new 2018 US sanctions against Russia have raised the risk of an escalation that could potentially lead, in the event of maximum tension, to a total disconnection of all Russian banks from the international Visa and Masterard card systems. As a response, in the summer of 2014 the Russian authorities launched the project of the National System of Payment Cards called NSPK (Nationalnaya Systema Platyojnikh Kart) thanks to which a national bank card bearing the name of MIR. Important point: the plastic of the card, the chip, as well as the encryption protocol of the chip are 100% Russian-made. A national card system makes it possible to compensate for a potential disconnection of the international Visa and Mastercard card systems, thus ensuring the continuity of all card operations on the soil of the Russian Federation, Crimea included.

Not only is the MIR card linked to the NSPK's computer system, but the Visa and Mastercard operators have also agreed to link their cards issued by all the banks located in the Russian Federation to it. However, that was not guaranteed from the start… And the Russian State had to inform them of a huge deposit to pay in case of refusal to connect to the NSPK. All that was left was the option of logging in… Or leaving the Russian Federation! What Visa and Mastercard did not. That is, in the event of complete disconnection of Russian banks from Visa and Mastercard computer systems, Visa and Mastercard cards distributed by banks located in the Russian Federation will continue to operate normally on the soil of the Russian Federation. Even better: the Russian subsidiaries of the Visa and Mastercard companies now pay fees to the NSPK system to benefit from the operational functioning of their cards issued in Russia.

However, MIR had the disadvantage of not being usable abroad, nor on a website linked to a bank located outside Russia. This is the limit of the system which complies with its original principle of being a national card in the same way as China Union Pay, the national system of Chinese payment cards. But the international development of the card is launched following the example of China Union Pay, since the NSPK begins to produce so-called "co-branding" or "co-badged" cards with foreign operators such as Japan Credit Bureau following the agreement signed in July 2015, or with "Union Pay" signed in September 2016.

These co-badged cards allow MIR cards to operate abroad in the main tourist sites and major cities, on the model of Union Pay, which can also be used by Chinese tourists abroad. There are several countries in the world that also have their own national payment card system, "China Union Pay" being the best known of all, but also Japan, which uses the system called JCB internally, or the India with its national card system NPCI, (National Payments Corporation of India), created in 2008. Today within the BRICS[3] there are no plans to make it a common system, but rather to sign “co-branding” agreements between the different national card systems to develop reciprocal use. The countries plan to connect the platforms using a system of gateways by transcoding the messages from the initial format to the final format.

Another area of development is the internationalization of MIR via electronic payment systems, such as the agreement recently signed between the NSPK and Samsung which will allow the use of the MIR card within the Samsung electronic payment system. Pay. This is also the case with AliPay and WeChatPay (which carry out transactions free of charge) for which it would not be surprising if retaliatory measures were applied to them aimed at guaranteeing US supremacy as the latter had taken care of it a while ago. several months towards Huawei in the ruthless Sino-American trade war.

MIR-ization

This consolidation of relations[4] between Moscow and Beijing, enriched by the dialogue established with other sulphurous actors for Washington, means a new multipolar world fueled by bilateral trade, but by different monetary nerve centers "The United States States manipulate their currency, the dollar, and use it as a tool to exert pressure when they want to punish someone,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Russia's 2020 budget plan allows for foreign loans of up to $3 trillion as the government seeks bonds in currencies other than the dollar. While “Panda Bonds” are reportedly already in the making, hope has nonetheless fallen on Russia's vast gold reserves, which should dampen potential volatility in oil prices. Responding to questions from journalists on the sidelines of an IMF-World Bank meeting, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov stressed that due to the impact of US sanctions on the country's sovereign debt market, Moscow has created the infrastructure to use the yuan and the euro for loans while Russia is already the first country to buy physical gold.

Dedollarization in progress
After the invective launched by Donald Trump against Pakistan in connection with the non-respect of its commitments concerning the fight against terrorism, the central bank of Pakistan announced that it would no longer use the American dollar for its international transactions, but would turn to the Chinese yuan. Four months later, in response to the US administration's injunctions concerning Iranian nuclear power, the European Union seemed to be initiating a change in behavior by announcing that it was going to use its own currency, in order to continue to trade with Iran for what is oil. But this European emancipation initiative did not last very long…

For their part, Moscow and Beijing have announced a plan to use their own national currencies in bilateral trade. By way of comparison, since Trump's inauguration, the greenback[5] has been used in nearly 90% of international transactions. Today, that figure is down to about two-thirds, according to Shabbir Razvi, the director of International Finance Solutions Associates. As Economist Peter Schiff recently put it, “I think the world is trying to de-dollarize.”

The currency war
According to Kay Van Petersen, Global Macro Strategist at Singapore-based Saxo Capital Markets, "The unintended consequence of the United States' struggle on multiple fronts is that the world needs an alternative to the US dollar for trade and transfers. On the contrary, the trade war will lead to redoubled efforts on the structural deployment of the yuan to echo this theme of internationalization. In 2014, China linked the Hong Kong stock market to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and in 2016 began allowing foreigners to invest in mainland China's financial markets. Chinese authorities also launched yuan-denominated "gold" contracts on the Hong Kong and Dubai stock exchanges, as well as new "petro-yuan" oil futures contracts on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange from March 2008 .

Said Hayden Briscoe, head of the Asia-Pacific fixed income division at UBS Asset Management: “We now believe that these countries, oil producers, who sell oil in these contracts and are paid in yuan, start to recycle their profits in obligations of the Chinese government, and this will continue for decades.” Beijing and Moscow take into account the fact that America has used the dollar to control the world, setting up a new type of "Gold standard 2.0". They want to distance themselves from this control. Also, it is worth noting that the vast majority of people in Asia consider gold to be superior to the paper wealth (credit) accumulated by the Western world.

China is setting up an alternative to the post-Bretton Woods settlement:

With the announcement of the price of oil in yuan.

By using a Shanghai gold-backed futures contract.
Through the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as well as the new development bank,
Gold in Sukuk
To enable African countries to settle their contracts for the construction of new infrastructures, which represent 54 billion dollars each year (51 billion euros, in 2016), new financing methods must be constantly found. International institutions cover two-thirds of the projects (World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank, etc.), but other forms are developing, notably at the initiative of China.

An investment vehicle has since gained momentum: Islamic finance. In mid-November 2016, Sichuan Development Financial Leasing & Co announced that it would sell $300 million of “Sukuk” through “Silk Routes Capital”. A tailor-made fund created in Singapore, led by Chinese and a team of international financiers. The term "Sukuk" designates in Muslim law an investment certificate in accordance with "Sharia" and therefore financial products and transactions that respect the principles of prohibition of usury and speculation. In total, this fund should eventually offer a billion dollars of these Islamic bonds and will serve as a financial vehicle for China in Muslim countries where the "Sukuk" is preferred. This is particularly the case in the Middle East and Africa. A first for China in this area.

“China, via Hong Kong and Singapore, seeks to position itself as a premier financial center for Islamic finance and thus capitalize on the growth of commercial ties between China, the Middle East and the African continent. Asian and African states want to attract foreign Muslim investors who have until now tended to invest in Europe or the United States”, explains consultant Philippe Djemis, specialist in China-Africa. This new Chinese project is part of the larger design of this New Silk Road (BRI) which crosses South Asia, Eurasia and descends towards the African continent. Chinese funds authorized to invest abroad have been on the rise since the birth of this pharaonic project and the sums invested have more than quadrupled between January and the end of September 2016 to reach 2.6 billion dollars.

The sums invested in funds respecting Islamic law increased by 28% this year between January and November and China is increasingly interested in them. According to projections by Ernst & Young, Sukuk emissions could triple by 2017, reaching $720 billion. In total, the Islamic finance market weighs 2,100 billion dollars, according to the latest note published by the American rating agency Standard & Poor's.

The China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund) and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) signed a first agreement in Beijing this year that will allow China to invest more heavily in this area. Chinese banks, such as ICBC and Bank of China, are already in ambush, but the main vehicle for investment will be the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This structure, initiated by China, arouses strong mistrust in the United States. The AIIB, whose founding statutes were signed in June 2015, aims to finance infrastructure projects whose investments are sorely lacking. Of its 57 founding members, around 20 are Western countries, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and there are currently two African countries, Egypt and South Africa. Saudi Arabia and the AIIB are currently negotiating the establishment of Islamic financing.

China is not the only Asian country to set its sights on Islamic bonds. Malaysia and Indonesia, as Muslim countries, are already leaders in this sector. But we must also count on Japan, whose subsidiary in the Gulf of the Tokyo Mitsubishi bank already offers financial services respecting Sharia. "With 23 million Muslims in China and a preponderant place for Africa in its diplomacy and foreign trade, Beijing therefore has what it takes to become a key player in Islamic finance", emphasizes Professor Yi Ren Thang, from Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

The Blockchain as a panacea in the search for sovereignty
Xi Jinping's speech during a speech delivered on October 31, 2019 to members of the Politburo promoting blockchain, is part of the strategy of cyber-sovereignty, with the ambition of placing new technologies at the service of power: cons -measures to US habits in short. And that's probably where the shoe pinches, being the use of one's own weapons through one's own processes. An auspicious technological complement to strengthen the financial transition initiated.

Like Facebook's Libra, Beijing is preparing its cryptocurrency. This technology allows the secure storage and exchange of values (currency, assets, data, etc.) without the need for a trusted third party. This speech triggered a rebound in stock market values linked to this technology. The leader called on the second world economy to "accelerate its efforts and investments" to "seize the opportunities" of this new sector, according to the official Xinhua agency.

Thus, the multimodal responses put in place in order to free themselves from the omnipotence of the United States through alternative processes galvanizing intentions towards other tropisms, are only relevant if they are articulated in a global and joint way. . This multidimensional form of counter-attack is part of a global strategy that cannot be viable without these multiple, skillfully orchestrated components:

The parallelization of dedollarization actions.
The diversification of supports or backing to own values.
The decorrelation of borrowings up to the migration to other innovative fields such as Blockchain or their combinations...
This leads us to think that finance – or total economic warfare – still has a bright future ahead of it. It is therefore becoming important to question ourselves about the European positioning and particularly of France in the face of its own intentions in these fundamental shifts.

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Notes:

[1] The United States government scrutinizes payments made in US dollars (USD) through the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) interbank system. SWIFT is an international system that provides standardized messaging and interbank transfer services and interfaces to more than 10,800 institutions in nearly 200 countries. In 2018, the amount of SWIFT commissions amounted to 200 billion dollars.

[2] During the 2014/15 ruble crisis, Russia announced in the wake of US and European sanctions resulting from the Ukraine case, that it would begin implementing an alternative internal electronic financial transfer system. Russia to calm the ardor of the United States of America by allowing potential retaliatory measures to hover in the space domain to temporize until the alternative system is operational.

This Russian financial message transfer system SPFS (Система передачи финансовых сообщений), now works not only in Russia, but also covers the entire CIS region (Commonwealth of Independent States) and thus manages the financial transfer data of the majority of Russian institutions .

[3] The BRICS countries represent 40% of the world's population. These are the economic areas with the strongest population growth, and they represent about 23 percent of the world's domestic product.

[4] This new Sino-Russian alliance is also symbolically affirmed during the Russian Army Games, equivalent to the Olympic Games, in their martial version, or more seriously through the multiplication and multiplicity of joint joint military exercises.

[5] When the Nixon administration decoupled the US dollar from the gold standard, the US brokered a deal with Saudi Arabia to buy oil. They offered the Kingdom military aid and equipment in exchange for an agreement that this country invest part of its revenue from the petrodollar in US Treasury bonds. Saudi Arabia held US$164.9 billion in US government debt at the end of June that year.