[secabeen]

> What you consider a feature I consider a bug. Whatever was the predecessor of SWIFT was, was probably not intended to cut people off of international settlements, it was intended as a way to establish trust between otherwise untrustworthy parties. It's kinda to normal banks what the BIS(bank for international settlements) is to central banking.

> The very fact that one party can bully others to completely shut off parties from international banking is probably not what a lot of countries thought when they joined the system.

I don't know if that was necessarily the case. SWIFT was founded in the 1970s, during the cold war. I doubt any bank or country attaching to SWIFT expected to be able to use it to transfer money into the Soviet system. I can't find any easily available history of Russian connection to SWIFT, or whether that was before or after the fall of the USSR.

I would expect that any bank participating in SWIFT would expect that it is reliable and durable throughout the West, but that using it to connect with what used to be called the Second World would be best effort only, and could be cut off.