When Property Becomes Plunder:
How the Seizure of Sovereign Assets Violates Law, Logic, and Reason
John Marpin, writing for IF Magazine
Sometimes, people realize that things are far more than just policy mistakes. It's about civilization, even about the spiritual realm.
It's about the spiritual realm.
The current enthusiasm for seizing sovereign assets in certain parts of the Western world is precisely such a moment.
While asset freezes are inherently controversial, they have historically been understood as an emergency political measure, a temporary suspension until negotiations or settlements are reached.
Seizure, in contrast, is entirely different. It means law becomes impulsiveness, custody becomes theft, and ownership is redefined as a privilege that can be revoked by power. In that moment, reason quietly departs.
Let's be clear:
The seizure of sovereign assets is not merely "controversial."
It is not a "gray area." It is not an evolving norm, but a blatant trampling of international law, the principles of property rights, monetary conventions, and basic rationality. Some might call it illegal, but that falls far short of describing its severity. This is inherently contradictory.
To understand why, we must return to fundamental principles—something modern governance seems increasingly unable to do.
Sovereign Immunity: The Cornerstone Collapses
At the heart of the international order lies a seemingly simple concept: sovereign equality. A state is not subject to the jurisdiction or enforcement of other states without its consent. This principle—sovereign immunity—is not a matter of courtesy, but the cornerstone upon which diplomacy, trade, and peace have been upheld for centuries.
While domestic courts may sometimes assert jurisdiction, enforcement against sovereign property, especially non-commercial property, is an inviolable red line. Central bank reserves and diplomatic assets fall into this category. Currency reserves enjoy the highest level of immunity precisely because they are part of the global economic circulation system.
Confiscating such assets is tantamount to declaring that no state truly owns anything it holds overseas. Reserves are not property, but hostages. Custody is tantamount to conquest.
Doing so means we can no longer pretend to live in a rules-based order.
Central Bank Assets: Designed to be Untouchable
Central bank reserves are not commercial funds. These are not investment portfolios to be arbitrarily seized in moments of moral fervor. They exist to stabilize currencies, ensure liquidity, and maintain trust in the international system.
The inviolability of central bank assets is one of the few issues on which civil law, common law, and customary international law reach a significant consensus. If these assets are no longer secure, the entire reserve currency system becomes self-deception.
Why would any rational state hold reserves in a jurisdiction that openly claims the right to confiscate them? How can trust endure if ownership depends on political winds?
The answer, of course, is: it cannot endure.
Ownership: Ownership itself is abolished
But the problem is far more profound than treaties and conventions. Confiscating sovereign assets violates the fundamental concept of property rights.
In Roman law, the cornerstone of Western legal thought, ownership (dominium) is absolute. Owning property means having the right to use, enjoy its benefits, and dispose of it. This understanding permeates medieval law, English common law, and the modern constitutional system.
Irrevocable ownership is precisely this: ownership cannot be arbitrarily deprived. Unless there is fraud or a lawful confiscation by judgment, it is valid under any law. Enjoying property with peace of mind is not a sentimental statement, but a legal principle.
When a country confiscates sovereign assets without judgment, compensation, or consent… it is not merely a violation of the rules, but a complete abolition of the meaningful concept of ownership. Property ceases to be a right, becoming a pass.
At this point, the law gives way to power. And power detached from the law is always mad.
Custody is not ownership.
There is a seemingly simple yet easily forgotten distinction: custody does not confer ownership.
If I store valuables in your vault, they do not become yours simply because you disapprove of my actions. If a country holds custody of another country's assets, it does not acquire ownership due to moral outrage.
Transforming custody into confiscation is not justice, but misappropriation. In layman's terms, it is theft.
The sole purpose of using flowery language to package this practice is to conceal the fact that it cannot withstand even the most basic legal scrutiny.
Due Process Quietly Dies
Another overlooked problem is due process. Forfeiture of property requires criminal conduct, jurisdiction, trial, and judgment. This is not a lawyer's quirk, but the minimum requirement for the normal functioning of civilization.
Forfeiture of sovereign assets requires no trial, no judgment, no right to defense, and no restitution. It is an unadjudicated punishment, and a collective one at that.
Sovereign assets do not belong to individual leaders, but to the state and the people. Forfeiture of sovereign assets is an indiscriminate punishment of the people. This was once considered immoral, but clearly no longer is.
Treaties Must Be Obeyed, or rather, why commitments were once so important
International finance is built on the assumption that agreements will be faithfully fulfilled. The principle of treaty observance is not just a fancy Latin phrase, but the backbone of treaty law.
Reserve holdings, trust arrangements, and monetary frameworks all rely on the expectation of non-intervention. Once these expectations are betrayed, trust crumbles, capital flees, and the system collapses.
The result is not morally clear. But it is the Balkanization of currency.
From Law to Madness
At this point, we can't help but ask: how does this blatant self-destructive ideology find support?
I believe the answer lies not in the law, but in psychology—or more precisely, psychiatry.
Modern governance is deeply influenced by a worldview that reduces human affairs to pathology, impulses, and behavioral constraints. Moral issues are medicalized. Political disagreements are diagnosed. Punishment is redefined as "treatment." Consequences are ignored, replaced by emotional satisfaction.
This is the logic of confiscation. This is not legal reasoning, but therapeutic reasoning.
Something feels wrong.Therefore, action must be taken. Whether this action violates laws, precedents, property rights, or long-term interests is irrelevant. The action itself provides emotional release.
This is not statesmanship, but collective therapy with nuclear weapons.
The Principle of Madness
In a classical sense, madness is not insanity, but detachment from reality. The belief that sovereign assets can be seized without undermining the trust in the system that gives these assets value is precisely a belief detached from reality.
You cannot proclaim the sanctity of property while simultaneously depriving people of their property for those you dislike. You cannot uphold the rule of law while circumventing it when inconvenient. You cannot maintain the reserve currency system while declaring reserves conditional.
Moreover, doing all this inevitably prompts the rest of the world to rapidly develop alternatives.
Eliminating Western trusteeship, diversifying reserves, and the rise of parallel financial systems—these are not acts of hostility, but acts of self-preservation.
Finally, a final thought:
Once ownership is no longer absolute, no one truly owns anything. Once trusteeship becomes conquest, no deposit is safe. Once the law yields to impulse, everything will cease to exist. Civilization has degenerated into a farce.
Confiscating sovereign assets is not a display of force, but an admission of intellectual bankruptcy. It reveals that the ruling class has lost the ability to distinguish between law and power, justice and emotion, reason and indulgence.
In short, this is the consequence of allowing those trained to only address symptoms, not root causes, to rewrite fundamental principles.
History shows no mercy to such experiments.
And property, once destroyed as a concept, ceases to exist.
