Robbery on a planetary scale

Getting rid of the U.S. dollar’s stranglehold is the way to a just world order

Today, individual countries rampantly printing dollars and their local surrogates — euros — are thriving at the expense of the rest of the world. In this regard, at the recent summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) in Astana, President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko once again urged his counterparts to switch to settlements in national currencies. Why is this important today?

About ‘fake’ banknotes

It is no secret that the United States, unlike many of its foes and allies, comfortably sat out the Second World War overseas. Moreover, not only did it preserve its economic potential, but it also significantly increased it. Cunning Americans managed to become prosperous on military supplies and loans. 
As a result, the gold reserve of the post-war USA reached 22,000 tonnes, or 70 percent of all the precious metal available in the world at that time. It is no wonder that the U.S. dollar backed by gold was the most trusted among other currencies. Therefore, it became the basis of the Bretton Woods International Monetary System established in 1944. 
In 1976, the Jamaican currency system was adopted on the initiative of the United States, which abandoned the dollar’s gold peg. By doing that, the United States received the right to print their banknotes in unlimited quantities. Before that, however, Washington had agreed with Saudi Arabia — the second largest oil producer after the USA — that global energy contracts would be denominated in U.S. dollars. Smaller oil producers were forced to follow their example. This is how the buck, stripped of its golden armour, received a new filling — the oil one.
In other words, American tricksters arranged the matter so that their national currency turned out to be backed by world oil demand. Therefore, experts call the U.S. money issued after 1976 and used outside the United States petrodollars, which differ significantly from those ‘real’ banknotes that are in circulation in the United States.

Global confidence trickster

It is believed that the ‘confidence trickster’ specialisation is one of the oldest professions in the criminal world. Its owners skilfully ingratiate themselves with their victims and stealthily rob them. Alas, something similar is happening in the current global economy. As long as the United States observed the proprieties and did not abuse its printing press, trust in the country and its currency remained. However, the bounds of propriety began to be gradually violated. Washington, seeking to solve its problems by issuing money, started to print unbacked paper money more and more actively.
According to various sources, just over two pandemic years, Americans printed $5.9 trillion and launched those candy wrappers into international circulation. This is the same amount as in the previous 40 years! Their European accomplices did not put on a modest air either, and created €2.5 trillion out of thin air. From an economic point of view, this means that the West has devalued the savings of citizens and states around the world by about $10 trillion. If you call a spade a spade — the thieving Western tycoons robbed the rest of the world of the specified amount in 2020-2021 alone.  Many experts believe that taking into account the US exorbitant national debt of $34 trillion and the amount of petrodollars that have flooded the global economy, Americans are now hatching plans to abandon dollars altogether — for instance, under the guise of monetary reform related to the introduction of digital money. 
In that case, the disposal of ‘fake’ dollars will undoubtedly become the most grandiose theft in the entire history of mankind. The assumed reform will not affect holders of ‘real’ dollars in the United States while users of petrodollars around the world will face severe disappointment.

Pragmatic interest

Aleksandr Lukashenko, insistently calling on the SCO countries to de-dollarise, has a purely pragmatic interest. After all, countries like Belarus that earn an honest livelihood are under the Western monetary pressure. It is not only stashed money of ordinary citizens that is being devalued, but the reserves of entire states. Due to the excess of U.S. dollars, world prices for raw materials are rising. The resulting inflation leads to an increased cost of loans and ‘eats up’ the savings of the population, funds and working capital of enterprises expressed in national currencies. Consequently, the country’s socio-economic, scientific, technical, and innovative development is hindered, while its competitiveness as well as economic and national security are declining. Thanks to the dollar, the West has the opportunity to arbitrarily manipulate global cash flows, hence harming the economies of other countries. 

“This not only deprives us of competitive financial and economic advantages but also threatens national security,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed at the SCO summit in Dushanbe in September 2019, comparing the dollar to a weapon.

Posing a deadly threat 

Getting rid of the dollar dictatorship is not an easy path. The fact is that the demand for petrodollars is backed not only by hydrocarbons, but also by the banal fear of the US army. It is widely known that the United States spent $916 trillion on the armed forces in 2023, or 37.5 percent of all global spending for these purposes. By the way, this is more than that of China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, Germany, Ukraine, France and Japan combined.
Admittedly, Americans use the army very effectively in order to maintain their dollar hegemony — by seizing or controlling hydrocarbon deposits and their transportation routes around the world, as was the case in Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. To ensure this, the dollar hegemon has thrown a whole network of more than 950 military bases located in 80 countries around the world.

Should anyone question the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and intend to trade in another currency, the deadly hammer of the American military machine falls on them. This is exactly what happened to the presidents of Iraq and Libya brutally assassinated by the United States.

Breaking free of the US dollar’s stranglehold is obviously not easy. Today, the collective West has turned against Belarus and Russia, using sanctions and Ukraine as a kamikaze country. More than 90 percent of payments within the Union State are currently made in national currencies, which to the displeasure of the global hegemon, is a good example for the EAEU, SCO, BRICS and other countries of the world.

By Valery Bainev, Doctor of Economics