The impact of financial sanctions on the international monetary system

Abstract

After the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and Europe have taken financial sanctions against Russia, which have had an important impact. The frequent use of financial sanctions has exacerbated the distrust of the dollar system in emerging markets and developing countries, and shaken the logic of the dollar and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system as public goods of the international monetary system. However, the position of the US dollar and SWIFT is still hard to change. This does not mean that the international monetary system will remain the same forever. As the willingness to hold foreign exchange reserves declines, emerging markets and developing countries will either increase their tolerance of exchange rate volatility or implement more capital account regulation. Therefore, in the trend of de-globalization in the future, the international monetary system will turn out to be more volatile.