I was actually discussing what you wrote with a friend. It would appear to me that nations around the world have now seen how effective US sanctions can be. Russia’s economy will be absolutely hammered by said sanctions.
What is of interest though is how these sanctions are somewhat ‘different.’ Even the Russians did not expect how massive they would be. Nations have seen how global brands have left almost overnight, how currency has been targeted, how international transfers/SWIFT no longer function, how export routes and logistics have been stymied, how products and services ranging from unhealthy burgers to taxi-and-hotel hailing apps to credit cards to mobile phones have just upped and left.
Russia’s so-called ‘fortress economy’ was made into a sandcastle in under two weeks, and future consequences to the Russian economy may be massive.
I am sure on Beijing (and even places that are not necessarily anti-American like Delhi and Brasilia) there are a lot of mental calculations happening to see how they can maintain some sort of immunity against such action. After all, it was not the typical ‘Venezuela/Iran’ sanctions they’d seen in the past. Not even the type Russia absorbed following the annexation of Crimea. Russia thought it was safe. Ha!
This was literally weaponised economics to the nth level. In its own way beautiful, but it may just have killed globalization. At the very least, it is now the number one priority of China to build measures against it.
It may be a win for Biden against Russia, but it’s a loss against China.
After the 1997 Financial Crisis, Asian countries accumulated reserves in order to prevent currency manipulation from being used against them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#Outside_Asia
The freezing of Russian Central Bank dollar reserves by the US now clearly jeopardizes this strategy.
Every country that values independence will diversify reserves away from the dollar.