Norway demonstrated a childish disconnection with the reality of power, as well as a recklessness that can be very costly. Emboldened by her $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, she indulged in an act of diplomatic arrogance: selling her shares in Caterpillar for supposedly ethical reasons. He did it to punish Israel, alleging that the American company’s bulldozers violated international law in Palestinian territories. But the Nordic country seems not to understand that when your existence depends on another country.
The Norwegian fund is an illusion of power. It’s true: it is the largest in the world, with participation in more than 1.5% of all listed companies. But that power is lent by a financial system that depends on the dollar and the American global architecture. Norway does not have a relevant army, nor a nuclear deterrent. However, it shares a border with Russia, an increasingly disputed North Sea, and the fantasy that money buys immunity. It’s not like that. Money is worthless when life is in danger. And in the real world, military power and coercive diplomacy still rule.
The United States has already made it clear, the State Department described the measure as “very worrying” and Senator Lindsey Graham warned that they will impose personal sanctions on the fund’s officials: canceled visas, banking restrictions, loss of access to the financial system in dollars.
In Brazil, the White House applied individual sanctions against Alexandre de Moraes, judge of the Supreme Federal Court, freezing his assets, blocking his access to Visa or Mastercard cards and pushing the Brazilian banking system to a crossroads: disobey the local judiciary or expose himself to sanctions from OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury.
The consequences were immediate. Shares of the main Brazilian banks, Itaú, Bradesco, Santander Brasil, plummeted. Their compliance officers They were caught between two incompatible jurisdictions. What did they do? They avoided the risk: they closed accounts, froze services and forced the judge to operate in cash. The message was clear: When the United States applies sanctions, no one wants to be on the wrong side. And that was in Brazil, a country with 200 million inhabitants, without military dependence on Washington.
Norway, on the other hand, depends on it for its survival. If Russia tightens the rope tomorrow, Norway has no autonomous defense capacity. All America has to do is raise an eyebrow. He does not need to withdraw troops or issue a statement. It is enough to let it be known that he considers Norway an unreliable partner. In minutes, the Norwegian stock market collapses, oil falls, the bottom becomes toxic. Because the fund depends on the implicit permission of the United States. And that permission can expire.
Norway’s mistake is believing that ethics replaces realism. And the worst thing is that it does so by attacking a company like Caterpillar, an emblem of American industrial muscle, in the middle of a diplomatic war with Israel, one of Washington’s main allies. It is exactly the worst time, the worst target and the worst channel.
Norway also recognized the Palestinian state and reduced its exposure to Israeli companies. It is no longer a symbolic gesture, it is a policy. And policies have consequences. Trump has already demonstrated that he uses sanctions as a diplomatic tool, not only against enemies, but against allies who do not align. He did it with the European Union, Canada and Mexico; to cite recent examples. He will do it with Norway.
This is not a world where international justice guides trade. That fiction died with the invasion of Crimea and the sanctions on Huawei. It also expired when China sanctioned Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize for Liu Xiaobo – a jailed dissident. There is no international “ethics” without force behind it, and Norway has no force. He only has blind faith in his Scandinavian exceptionalism, with which he believes himself to be a universal arbiter. As if I had the right to judge. But it doesn’t have a hammer. And when a country without a hammer gets into the mud, they step on it.
The most ridiculous thing is that Norway does not even have an exemplary legal tradition. It is not Sweden or Holland. It is a nation of fishermen that found oil; a Kuwait with a scarf. And its sovereign wealth fund, in reality an accounting fiction managed by five people, arrogates to itself the right to determine which company is morally acceptable and which is not. As if they represent something more than a combination of geographical luck and good financial management.
But the punishment No It will come from the system: banking, diplomacy and security. The United States already has tools to isolate any individual or entity it considers risky. He did it with Russia and Iran; He will do it with Norway if necessary. And it’s not Caterpillar, it’s precedent.
If Norway imposes punishments for “ethical criteria” without consequences, it opens the door for other sovereign wealth funds, such as Qatar or Saudi Arabia, to do the same against Western companies for their own religious, political or cultural reasons.
In a world where Caterpillar is penalized for selling to Israel, but Chinese companies that exploit Uyghur Muslims receive investment without problem, double standards are not sustainable. And when applied against a superpower, it is suicidal.
Norway has already lost diplomatic respect and the privilege of being considered neutral. The question now is how much are you going to pay for that mistake. And the United States has already shown that it knows where to push.
Things as they are
Mookie Tenembaum addresses international issues like this every week with Horacio Cabak on his podcast El Observador Internacional, available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and all platforms.
