The de-dollarization is happening because of the war. America signaled to the globe that holding usd reserves is unsafe as they can seize those funds on a whim, as they did with Afghanistan and now Russia. Furthermore, Russia’s resilience to economic sanctions is an important signal to the rest of the world that it can be done, and you have a network of countries unwilling to join the western sanctions regime. That network is growing. Were trending to a multipolar world, and not one led by russia, but chiefly by china
The global south benefits from multipolarity. Not just as a counterweight to us military hegemony, but economic sanctions regimes as well. It’s undeniable that the global south benefited when the ussr was still around, that would certainly be the case in a world where a Chinese led bloc is the other pole
I think, generously, the war accelerated this, but it would have happened anyway sooner rather than later. Confidence in the dollar was already dropping due to factionalism in the US government and the growing economic power of China. And I don’t think that acceleration has been worth the cost in human life.
Could you make an argument for why the war merely accelerated de-dollarization? What evidence is there that countries were turning away from holding USD reserves or moving towards international trade not denominated in dollars? Factionalism in the US government, led mostly by a trump administration, might have lowered confidence in US generally, but how has that impacted US economic hegemony?
This is a more devastating moment of clarity than it might seem at first glance. The promise of economic sanctions was never that they would punish people and corporations in authoritarian countries in order to provide vicarious emotional satisfaction for Western voters; the hope was that sanctions could simultaneously strengthen diplomacy while more or less replacing military force as an instrument of coercion. Western domination of key technologies, banking, trade routes, and international institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and the Paris Club—so the thinking went—would allow us to impose our desired outcomes not only on irritant regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, and Myanmar, but also on peer-competitors like Iran, China, and Russia. And we could do it all without having to fire a shot.
The success of the Russian economy at resisting the sanctions regime is directly related to the emerging multipolar world. Those peer-competitors like China, but also “irritant regimes” like Cuba are all watching things develop with great interest.
As an aside, I don’t think anyone here is doing math with human lives and saying that the blood spilled is “worth it”. That’s un-charitable, at best. It’s more of a material analysis - history, international relations, expanding russian economic influence on the EU, and politics has wrought war. Many on this site, myself included, wish for the war to end in a way that doesn’t result in the complete collapse or subjugation of the russian state because it would be net negative for anti-imperialism and the global south. But importantly they still want the war to end.
America’s bond rating got downgraded under Obama, for one thing. We’re barreling towards the, what, 4th or 5th government shutdown in like 6 or 7 years? International confidence in the US to maintain the stability of the dollar is shaken both by the intermittent shutdowns and by its increasingly mercurial foreign policy. Trump’s demands about NATO funding, overtures towards North Korea, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, immediately replaced by Biden’s huge injection into Ukraine, to be followed by…?
At the same time China has been growing in leaps and bounds and has an enormous economy and an incredibly stable government. It seems inevitable that their GDP will overtake the US’s sooner rather than later.
These taken together paint a picture to me that we didn’t need a war to convince the global south that America’s era of monopolar hegemony was coming to a close.
The de-dollarization is happening because of the war. America signaled to the globe that holding usd reserves is unsafe as they can seize those funds on a whim, as they did with Afghanistan and now Russia. Furthermore, Russia’s resilience to economic sanctions is an important signal to the rest of the world that it can be done, and you have a network of countries unwilling to join the western sanctions regime. That network is growing. Were trending to a multipolar world, and not one led by russia, but chiefly by china
The global south benefits from multipolarity. Not just as a counterweight to us military hegemony, but economic sanctions regimes as well. It’s undeniable that the global south benefited when the ussr was still around, that would certainly be the case in a world where a Chinese led bloc is the other pole
I think, generously, the war accelerated this, but it would have happened anyway sooner rather than later. Confidence in the dollar was already dropping due to factionalism in the US government and the growing economic power of China. And I don’t think that acceleration has been worth the cost in human life.
Could you make an argument for why the war merely accelerated de-dollarization? What evidence is there that countries were turning away from holding USD reserves or moving towards international trade not denominated in dollars? Factionalism in the US government, led mostly by a trump administration, might have lowered confidence in US generally, but how has that impacted US economic hegemony?
Quoting this pro-western piece in TabletMag:
The success of the Russian economy at resisting the sanctions regime is directly related to the emerging multipolar world. Those peer-competitors like China, but also “irritant regimes” like Cuba are all watching things develop with great interest.
As an aside, I don’t think anyone here is doing math with human lives and saying that the blood spilled is “worth it”. That’s un-charitable, at best. It’s more of a material analysis - history, international relations, expanding russian economic influence on the EU, and politics has wrought war. Many on this site, myself included, wish for the war to end in a way that doesn’t result in the complete collapse or subjugation of the russian state because it would be net negative for anti-imperialism and the global south. But importantly they still want the war to end.
America’s bond rating got downgraded under Obama, for one thing. We’re barreling towards the, what, 4th or 5th government shutdown in like 6 or 7 years? International confidence in the US to maintain the stability of the dollar is shaken both by the intermittent shutdowns and by its increasingly mercurial foreign policy. Trump’s demands about NATO funding, overtures towards North Korea, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, immediately replaced by Biden’s huge injection into Ukraine, to be followed by…?
At the same time China has been growing in leaps and bounds and has an enormous economy and an incredibly stable government. It seems inevitable that their GDP will overtake the US’s sooner rather than later.
These taken together paint a picture to me that we didn’t need a war to convince the global south that America’s era of monopolar hegemony was coming to a close.