By Alade Fawole
Yoruba Adage: “Adaniloro fi agbara ko ni.” Translated simply: adversity helps build strength.
Deliberate weaponisation of the US dollar, the world’s foremost global reserve currency, against countries the US has disagreements with, seems to have gone too far for the rest of the world to begin planning alternatives to insulate themselves against future sanctions. The US has always used dollar sanctions against other countries to ruin their economies and cause social and political unrests, but its reckless and ill-advised use against Russia since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022 has pushed the rest of the world to begin seeking alternatives against the dollar’s hegemony.
Among the punitive sanctions, Russia has had over $300 billion of its foreign savings impounded by the US, and suspended from the US-dominated SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), the global financial messaging system; even the private assets of individual Russians running into hundreds of billions of dollars have also been illegally confiscated either by the US or at its instigation in European countries. The same sanctions are imposed on countries doing business with Russia too, making them collateral casualties.
It is clear the US went overboard this time, overused its favourite weapon by turning the dollar into the main weapon against Russia. Ramping up its rhetoric against China and provoking it over Taiwan are pointers that China is the clear target of America’s next war. What else would China do but wisely and carefully prepare itself ahead of any eventualities? And what about the rest of the world?
Expectedly, nations in the Global South, realising they are potential collateral casualties of any future US-China hostilities, are following suit. As the Yoruba adage above reminds us, America’s reckless use of punitive measures has unwittingly strengthened not only its known adversaries alone but has also pushed the rest of the non-Western world into seeking non-dollar- dependent payment systems. America has overused its big stick and the rest of the world isn’t playing dumb anymore. Dedollarisation is their first answer, and it is growing by the day.
With this dedollarisation whirlwind across all continents, it is appropriate to speculate how the US would respond to this emerging reality. How will Washington react, since this is not limited to just one country but a burgeoning global trend? This is a pertinent poser, for the US usually never takes kindly to its gigantic ego being bruised. That would be considered a stain on or negation of its touted exceptionalism; America’s default setting is to callously impose ruinous punitive sanctions on such countries and, in extreme cases where sanctions are not enough, the White House lets loose the CIA to instigate social turmoil and political destabilisation that would result in regime change. In extreme cases, executive orders are issued to assassinate foreign leaders that refuse to do America’s bidding. The list is long of leaders in the Global South that have been overthrown by CIA-instigated violent coups and those that met untimely deaths through sanctioned direct assassinations or indirectly through contrived plane crashes. Here in Africa, we can remember the gruesome assassination of Patrice Lumumba of Democratic Republic of Congo, overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, destabilisation campaigns against and eventual removal of the democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, the bombing of Libya and gruesome murder of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, as emblematic examples.
How many world leaders would the US be willing to assassinate this time around, how many regimes would it forcibly change, just to whip their countries into line? And in what significant way would resort to this crude method alter the emerging global move against America’s toxicity? For starters, Russian and Chinese regimes, Washington’s two biggest headaches, are not only solid but their leaderships are strong and intensely nationalistic, and definitely beyond the reach of America. The duo has actually been further strengthened by common victimhood of Biden’s misbegotten rash of trade and economic sanctions which have, in any case, backfired so spectacularly. Biden surely never expected this.
Different countries, regions and blocs are moving away from Washington’s domination. These include BRICS member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Turkey, and no one can predict how many more before the year runs out. Rumours have it Japan and Mexico are contemplating joining BRICS. On its own, Malaysia is not just vehemently campaigning against the dollar, it is also forcefully advocating establishing an exclusively Asian Monetary Fund to free Asian economies entirely from the US-controlled IMF. Truly, the US dollar, and by extension the US, has become toxic! And a slew of unanticipated developments is also combining to re-architect the global power structure, further removing the ground from under America’s feet.
For example, Saudi Arabia’s new sheriff in town and its de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), is methodically decoupling the desert kingdom from decades of US economic stranglehold; China, a rival global power, just successfully brokered a rapprochement between two bitter regional archenemies, Saudi Arabia and Iran; the war in Yemen is ending; Syria is gradually being welcomed back into the Arab fold to foster peace and regional unity; all these are taking place in just one region only, the Middle East, where America hitherto called the shots! To prove that MBS is not one to be intimidated by threats of sanctions the kingdom has lately indicated its intention to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a ‘dialogue partner’. The SCO, led by China and Russia, is the “world’s biggest regional political, economic and defence organisation in terms of geographic scope and population.” The ground is inexorably shifting from under America’s feet, and no one but the ever insufferably arrogant, hubristic, supercilious, imperialistic and imperious Uncle Sam is to blame.
Even in Europe, there is growing disquiet over the devastating effects of US anti-Russia sanctions on EU member countries more than on Russia, the primary target. EU countries are hapless victims forced to bear the disproportionate share of the sanctions’ effects —– in the high energy crisis and consequential increase in costs of living, political and social unrest in France, decreasing manufacturing capacity in Germany and attendant massive job layoffs. Could this be why France’s Emmanuel Macron is openly beseeching China to assist in finding a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, a vote of no confidence in America’s policies?
America is now suffering the consequences of its offensive hubris; its influence has been fading since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022. Though conceived by the Biden administration as a proxy war to be fought against Russia by hapless Ukraine, it is fast turning out to be America’s undoing; it has not only assumed unexpected dimensions but is being accompanied by unprecedented changes that could eventually dismantle America’s vaunted liberal international order. The war’s devastating disruption of global supply chains has taught the world a big lesson. A new world order is shaping up.
The question again is: back to its default setting of sanctions, destabilisation campaigns and regime change, how many leaders will America target for overthrow or assassination this time around? And would such help rescue its waning global influence?