Thinking About the Unthinkable, by Michael Hudson - The Unz Review

 The war that began on February 28 can realistically be deemed to be the formal opening of World War III because what is at issue are the terms on which the entire world will be able to buy oil and gas. Can they buy this energy from exporters in currencies other than the dollar, headed by Russia and Iran (and until recently, Venezuela)? Will the present U.S. demand to control of the international oil trade require oil-exporting countries to price it in dollars, and indeed to recycle their export earnings and national savings into investments in U.S. government securities, bonds and stocks?

That recycling of petrodollars has been the basis of America’s financialization and weaponization of the world’s oil trade, and its imperial strategy of isolating countries that resist adherence to the U.S. ruler-based order (no real rules, but simply U.S. ad hoc demands). So what is at issue is not only the U.S. military presence in the Middle East – along with its two proxy armies, Israel and ISIS/al Qaeda jihadists. And the U.S. and Israeli pretense that it is about Iran having atomic weapons of mass destruction is as fictitious an accusation as that levied against Iraq in 2003. What is at issue is ending the Middle East’s economic alliances with the United States and whether its oil-export earnings will continue to be accumulated in dollars as the buttress of the U.S. balance of payments to help pay for its military bases throughout the world.....

https://www.unz.com/mhudson/thinking-about-the-unthinkable/ 

...Throughout the world, rising oil and gas prices will force economies to choose between having to cut back domestic social spending in order to pay their dollar debts. This war is splitting the US/NATO West from the Global Majority, by creating strains that Japan, Korea and even Europe no longer can afford. The chaotic effect of the U.S. attack has destroyed the narrative that has enabled U.S. diplomats to demand subsidy and “burden sharing” for its global military spending. The predicate fiction is that the world needs U.S. military support to protect it against Russia and China, and now Iran, as if these countries pose a real threat to Europe and Asia.

But instead of protecting the rest of the world by waging the present Cold War . the chaos in world oil and gas markets resulting from its attack on Iran show that the United States actually is the greatest threat to the security, stability and prosperity of its allies. Its attack has fallen largely on its closest allies – Japan, South Korea and Europe. Their gas prices have soared by 20% and are now on their way further upward today. Korea’s stock market has plunged 18% in the last two days. All this is shifting support for removing U.S. control of Near Eastern oil and reorienting it to a market free from U.S. demands for control and dollarization of the world’s energy trade.