I mean my god they seem absolutely committed to driving us all off a cliff to hang on to their already-collapsing hegemony. Is there literally anything short of getting their teeth kicked in by a nuclear launch that could convince the leaders of "the free world" to once, just fucking once, willingly take the L?
I don't want to die in the opening cutscene of a Fallout game because whoever the hell is in charge of Germany these days decided to get into a pissing match with fucking Putin of all people.
lmao Russia controlled EU? That would be a funny outcome.
I mean something more like how China is economically integrated with so many countries: lots of trade and interdependencies, but part of an equation that is favorable to the development and power of China. Europe's dependency on Russian fossil fuels is one example of this and it's why the US is intent on disrupting Russian infrastructure to deliver fossil fuels. Russia wants even more integration, or at least that was a clear goal.
The War in Ukraine changes the calculus a lot. Russia basically hit the "fuck it" button, deciding that (1) they were targeted for death already by the US and its increasing sanctions and military brinkmanship and it was going to close those avenues entirely, eventually, and (2) speeding up the inevitable dedollarization and fight over the isolation of Russia. We're currently finding out whether that calculus was correct, that this was timed beneficially for Russian interests in dedollarization.
So far, I think the results are favorable for Russia's logic, though the entire situation is at the cost of working people everywhere, and particularly those in Ukraine.
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Absolutely! I might phrase it as this: the world will either find some significant dedollarized steady-state or it will redollarize. The former will result in the downfall of the US' current imperialist strategies and the best case scenario for the US is that it carves out a section of the planet for its personal exploitation (Europe is getting a little taste of that). The latter case will result in the downfall of BRICS and similar countries losing their autonomy and returning to typical third world imperialized statuses. The current situation is unstable and uncertain, whereas those two outcomes are comparably stable, but represent very different outcomes.
Russia is pushing towards the former in its own weird ways. The US is using basically old-school cold war tactics, just in the financial space: isolate the rooskies, turn the states that dated to work with them into dependencies. Maximum pressure on all parties. The financialized aspect makes this version fully neoliberal and less overtly CIA, but we will probably get there as well if there is any (fairly unlikely) left resurgence in Europe. Greece and Serbia may find themselves in that situation.
Anyways I agree that dedollarization is not inevitable, but the conflict over it is: major non-US players know they will be targeted for destruction unless they can dedollarized. The US proves it every few years when it screws with an "ally" that got too cocky using purely "rules-based" currency fuckery.
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Yep! Big fan of Hudson.
I wish there was a big red "help dedollarize" button in the imperial core. The best I have is sending money to smaller-scale autonomy movements + organizing in solidarity with them so that they can become established enough to form relationships with China et al. So much of the organizing opportunities in the imperial core is just social imperialism, it's maddening.
At the moment, I'm trying to get "the most progressive union in town" to not endorse a warmonger Dem and it's an uphill battle. That's how low the bar is set.
I feel like dedollarization will happen but also that the dollar will still hold significant sway. It'll be one of the few main currencies widely used in the multipolar world.