Nearly two months in, there’s little doubt Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been a colossal strategic blunder. NATO is unified, energized, and set to expand into two historically neutral countries, the Russian military looks to the world like a paper tiger, and the invasion prompted Russia’s economically and strategically important Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be finally axed.

Yet somewhat lost in all this is the fact that the US-led response to the invasion — involving unprecedented economic sanctions meant to isolate Russia and rupture its economy — could prove a strategic blunder of its own.

Just last month, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) first deputy managing director, Gita Gopinath, warned that Western sanctions could undermine the global dominance of the US dollar. While the dollar’s global reserve currency status, an important element of US global primacy, will remain for the medium term, she told the Financial Times, “fragmentation at a smaller level is certainly quite possible,” which will translate into “low-moving trends towards other currencies playing a bigger role” as reserve assets. Gopinath had previously served as the IMF’s chief economist for three years.