By James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:
America’s most powerful weapon of war does not shoot, fly or explode. It’s not a submarine, plane, tank or laser. America’s most powerful strategic weapon today is the dollar.
The U.S. uses the dollar strategically to reward friends and punish enemies. The use of the dollar as a weapon is not limited to trade wars and currency wars, although the dollar is used tactically in those disputes. The dollar is much more powerful than that.
The dollar can be used for regime change by creating hyperinflation, bank runs and domestic dissent in countries targeted by the U.S. The U.S. can depose the governments of its adversaries, or at least blunt their policies without firing a shot.
Consider the following. The dollar constitutes about 60% of global reserves, 80% of global payments and almost 100% of global oil transactions. European banks that make dollar-denominated loans to customers have to borrow dollars to fund those liabilities.
Being based in Switzerland or Germany does not allow you to escape from the dollar’s dominance.
The U.S. not only controls the dollar itself. It controls the dollar payments system. This consists of the Treasury’s digital ledger of holders of U.S. debt, the Fedwire payments system among U.S. Fed member banks and the Clearing House Association (successor to the New York Clearing House and proprietor of CHIPS, the Clearing House Interbank Payments System) composed of the largest U.S. banks.
A dollar payment going from a bank in Shanghai to another bank in Sydney runs through one of these U.S.-controlled payments systems. In short, the dollar is the oxygen supply for world commerce and the U.S. can cut off your oxygen whenever it wants.
The list of ways in which the dollar can be weaponized is extensive. The U.S. uses the dollar to force its enemies into fronts, crude barter or the black market if they want to do business.
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