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The Coming Financial Wars

ABSTRACT: Since 9/11, the United States has waged a new brand of financial war against rogue regimes, terrorist groups, and criminal syndicates. By leveraging American global economic predominance, the US has isolated such actors from the financial system. The domain of financial warfare, however, is now no longer the sole province of the US and presents challenges from enemies and competitors. (1) ********** On 8 October 2012, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly bemoaned that the Iranian economy was under direct economic assault, with oil sales cut, bank transfers banned, and the value of the Iranian rial and foreign currency reserves plummeting. He admitted plainly, "The enemy has mobilized all its forces to enforce its decision, and so a hidden war is underway, on a very far-reaching global scale.... [W]e should realize that this is a kind of war through which the enemy assumes it can defeat the Iranian nation." (2) He was right. Over the past decade, the United States waged a new brand of financial warfare, unprecedented in its reach and effectiveness. This "hidden war" has often been underestimated or misunderstood, but it is no longer secret and has since become central to America's national security doctrine. In a series of economic pressure campaigns, the United States financially squeezed and isolated America's principal enemies of this period--al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Far from relying solely on the classic sanctions or trade embargoes of old, these campaigns have consisted of a novel set of financial strategies that harness the international financial and commercial systems to ostracize rogue actors and constrict their funding flows, inflicting real pain. America's enemies have realized they have been hit with a new breed of financial power. And they have felt the painful effects. Al Qaeda has found it harder, costlier, and riskier to raise and move money around the world and has had to adapt to find new ways to raise capital for its movement. The documents found in Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, reflect a terrorist leader and movement in search of new sources of money. This development was not new--from 9/11 on, the movement struggled to maintain its core financing. In statement after statement--intended for donors and sometimes only for internal consumption--al Qaeda admitted that it has been choked financially. In a 9 July 2005 letter to Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Ayman al-Zawahiri, then al Qaeda's number two, asked for money, noting that "many of the lines [of financial assistance] have been cut off." (3) The campaign against North Korea had a direct and immediate impact. In the wake of financial pressure unlike any the regime had seen while under international sanctions, North Korea found its bank accounts and illicit financial activity in jeopardy. A North Korean deputy negotiator at the time quietly admitted to a senior White House official, "You finally found a way to hurt us." (4) The Iranians, too, have suffered the economic effects of a targeted financial assault. On 14 September 2010, former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged the Iranian Assembly of Experts to take seriously the painful sanctions and financial pressures imposed by the United States and the international community. "Throughout the revolution," he said, "we never had so many sanctions [imposed on Iran] and I am calling on you and all officials to take the sanctions seriously." (5) The journalist Moises Naim opined that the financial pressures on Iran "are biting, the sanctions are very very powerful. They are the most sophisticated economic and financial sanctions imposed on a country ever." (6) All of these assaults derive from a blueprint for financial warfare developed years ago by the United States. It is defined by the use of financial tools, pressure, and market forces to leverage the banking sector, private-sector interests, and foreign partners to isolate rogue actors from the international financial and commercial systems and eliminate their funding sources. …