This paper explores dollar hegemony, emphasizing it is a fundamentally political economic phenomenon. Dollar hegemony rests on the economic, military, and international political power of the US and is manifested through market forces. The paper argues there have been two eras of dollar hegemony which were marked by different models. Dollar hegemony 1.0 corresponded to the Bretton Woods era (1946-1971). Dollar hegemony 2.0 corresponds to the Neoliberal era (1980-Today). The 1970s were an in-between decade of dollar distress during which dollar hegemony was reseeded. The deep foundation of both models is US power, but the two models have completely different economic operating systems. Dollar hegemony 1.0 rested on the trade and manufacturing dominance of the US after World War II. Dollar hegemony 2.0 rests on the Neoliberal reconstruction of the US and global economies which have made the US the center of global capitalism and the most attractive place to hold capital. It is a financial model and intrinsically connected to Neoliberalism. Consideration of dollar hegemony leads to two further questions. One is whether there is a better way of organizing the world monetary order, which is associated with debate about the possibility of a new Bretton Woods. The other is what is the future of dollar hegemony?
Archive for August, 2022
Theorizing dollar hegemony, Part 1: the political economic foundations of exorbitant privilege
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022Flirting with Armageddon: the US and Ukraine
Saturday, August 13th, 2022It is now almost six months since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and with each passing month the Biden administration has ratcheted up US participation in the conflict. That ratchet process has the US flirting ever closer with nuclear Armageddon, a momentous development that has gone almost uncommented and uncontested. It is as if the US is sleepwalking, eyes wide shut.
The political background
US engagement in the Ukraine war has been driven by the Democratic Party, enthusiastically supported by its traditional allies in the mainstream media and establishment intellectual class – also known as the liberal blob. That has made criticism of the war difficult for two reasons.
First, the liberal blob has promulgated an edict of silence against those who challenge its explanation of the war and the case for US participation. The edict applies to conservatives who argue “it’s not our war”, and to independent critics who argue the war has been “made in the USA” via a thirty-year slow-motion attack on Russia conducted through eastward expansion of NATO and regime change subversion in the republics of the former Soviet Union.
Second, the US is engaged in a life and death struggle for its own democracy, with the Republican Party having gone off the rails through its embrace of Donald Trump’s protofascism. That struggle poses an awful dilemma, as criticizing the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy risks opening the door for the protofascists.
With nuclear Armageddon a possibility on the horizon, the stakes are too high for silence. The truth about the war, the Democratic Party, and the liberal blob must be spoken. There is still time to reverse course, and public opinion is capable of mastering two issues. It can both reject Republican protofascism and demand reversal of the policy of Ukraine escalation.
Toxic takeover: the Neocon capture of the Democratic Party
The starting point is blunt admission that President Biden and his national security team have put the US within spitting distance of nuclear armageddon. That has been done for a war with no bearing on US vital national security interests.
Worse yet, it is not an accidental misjudgement. Instead, it reflects the comprehensive capture of the Democratic Party by the most extreme Neocon foreign policy thinking. That thinking calls for the US to seek global military hegemony, which Democrats have wrapped in a cloak weaved of the lie of democracy promotion and the delusion of US moral exceptionalism.
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