Belgium Holds the Line on €210 B Russian-Asset Plan for Ukraine

Major powers have weaponised foreign reserves before—Britain froze Iranian sterling balances in 1952; the U.S. impounded $50 billion in Iraqi assets in 1990—but the scale here dwarfs those moves and directly challenges the post-1971 norm that sovereign reserves are sacrosanct. Europe’s dilemma exposes two structural trends: (1) the crumbling of the dollar-centric, rules-based financial order as reserves become bargaining chips, and (2) the EU’s struggle to convert its economic heft into strategic autonomy without U.S. cover. If Brussels musters the political will, it pioneers a template for financing wars and reconstruction with aggressor assets; if it fails, future reserve-holding states may accelerate diversification away from Western custodians, eroding euro and dollar dominance over the next century. Either outcome will echo for decades—much as the Dawes Plan (1924) and the seizure of Axis assets (1945) re-shaped international finance long after the cannons fell silent.