America's Death Throes
© REUTERS/ Jason Lee
China and Russia have already ditched the US dollar in their vast energy trade. Now China is leveraging Saudi Arabia to also abandon the greenback for oil sales. No wonder, it seems, that US policies are increasingly lashing out.
US
global power depends on its presumed economic prowess and military
force. With its economy in long-term decline, precipitated by the
teetering dollar, the US rulers are relying increasingly on militarism
to project power. That tendency is pushing the world to war.
The challenge is to somehow steer the American military monster into a safe berth without eliciting a world war.
The US decline is of historic proportions – on par with the demise of other past empires – and it stems from the looming collapse of the petrodollar system, which has given the US unprecedented privileges over the past decades since the Second World War
It
is no coincidence that a surge in global tensions over recent years
comes at a time when the American economy is staring into an abyss. The
key to the survival of the US economy as we know it is the status of the
American dollar as the world's top reserve currency.
The
so-called petrodollar system, in which the world's most traded
commodity oil and gas are conducted primarily through American currency,
appears to be coming to an end. That decades-old system is being
challenged by the rise of China, Russia, India, Iran and others. If the
petrodollar and its global privileges are displaced then the United
States is facing an economic apocalypse.
It
should be said that there is nothing illegitimate about challenging
this American unipolar dominance. Why should countries be forced
to conduct their international trade primarily with the US dollar owing
simply to historical circumstances during the 1970s that gave rise
to the petrodollar system? That system works, in effect, like a global
tax that the US imposes on all other nations because they are compelled
to purchase American-printed banknotes.
Perhaps
no two other countries have done more to forge a multipolar global
order than China and Russia. China is the biggest oil importer and
Russia is the world's biggest fuel exporter. When they announcedlast
year that oil trade would be henceforth conducted in their own national
currencies of yuan and rouble that development marked a nail in the
dollar's coffin.
Now, only a few weeks ago, China and Saudi Arabia – the world's second-biggest oil producer – reportedly launched earnest negotiations for future energy fuel trade to be conducted in yuan. Commentators saySaudi
Arabia has little choice in the matter, since China has been
progressively reducing the kingdom's market share with other oil
exporters, like Russia and Iran. If the Saudis want to maintain exports
to the world’s biggest economy, then they will have to do their business
in Chinese currency, not the US dollar as they have customarily done.
Randy Martin, an American political analyst, said the long-anticipated decline in the petrodollar is picking up pace.
"The
petrodollar is in decline, and consequently the entire financial system
that undergirds the western economies," Martin said. "China and Russia
have laid the global economic foundation for the new 'Silk Road' and the
emergence of a new Eurasian economy that puts the US and its
petrodollar on the outside. That leaves the US dollar and its economy
in tatters as long as the US insists on trying to maintain its unipolar
quest for global economic dominance. To be clear, what China and Russia
have successfully done is to unravel the economic foundation of US
global hegemony."
However,
that historic demise of US power is fraught with danger. That's because
the shift from an American-dominated unipolar world to a multipolar one
will come at huge economic pain to the US. With a debt mountain of $20
trillion and skyrocketing inflation due to the eventual demise of the
dollar, American society faces an implosion from poverty, unemployment
and social breakdown.
"Consequently,
the world is faced with a global superpower in mortal decline, which is
now expressing its existential fears with wanton military aggression
across the globe. This will result in a grave threat to humanity as the
US grapples for its place in a new multipolar global economy," Martin
concluded.
The
US political system is fighting for its very survival given the
imminent end of its petrodollar hegemony. It is no coincidence that the
US ruling elite is resorting to militarism and war as a way to stave
off the feared economic turmoil. The frequency of US-led wars across the
Middle East region, in particular, is all about maintaining American
hegemony through imposing military might.
The proxy war in Syria is a foil for the US to subjugate perceived global rivals, Iran and Russia.
Also relevant is that the Persian Gulf gas-rich emirate of Qatar has led the wayamong the
Arab states for doing more trade with China by replacing the dollar
with the yuan. Qatar has also maintained relatively friendly relations
with Iran with which it shares an enormous offshore gas field.
In
the midst of these tumultuous world relations, the US is seeking
to militarize the context as much as possible. By stoking and prolonging
conflicts, the US stands to gain from military commerce and also
by maintaining its sphere of influence over subordinate nations.
Primarily, this is in the form of propping up the petrodollar system
in the oil-rich Middle East.
As
noted, when the petrodollar system collapses through the emergence of a
multipolar world then the US economy and indeed its entire society
as we know it is staring into an abyss.
"The
US response to its looming demise has been the wholesale underwriting
of a military-based economy for Saudi Arabia," analyst Randy Martin
observes.
That was marked last month by US President Donald Trump making his first-ever overseas trip to Saudi Arabia to announce a record weapons contract worth up to $350 billion – three times what his predecessor Barack Obama soldto Saudi Arabia during his eight-year presidency.
The
corollary of American militarism in the Middle East is a surge
in tensions and potential for all-out war in Syria with Russia and Iran.
"US
meddling in the Middle East is little more than an existential bid
to preserve its hegemony there through military force, as its economic
dominance through the petrodollar slips away," added Martin.
The
emergence of a multipolar world seems not only inevitable. It is
desirable in terms of establishing a more democratic global order. A
unipolar world as seen under US hegemony is a formula for tyranny and
lawlessness.
The
good news is that US hegemony is crumbling. The demise of the
petrodollar is the telltale sign of another empire sunsetting. But that
transition to a more reasonable and sustainable world order is akin
to negotiating a way out of a minefield.
Fortunately,
Russia and China may have sufficient military power to deter the
desperate, waning American empire from trying to incite catastrophic
war. However, death throes are seldom rational events.
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