Dollars. The hegemony of the United States is verified as its national currency constitutes 67% of the reserves of all central banks in the world and that 85% of international trade is valued in that currency.
The decisive moment in which the US broke the cooperation and coordination mechanism of advanced capitalism in its phase of globalization was when, immediately after the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, froze more than half of the Russian central bank’s assets (about $ 330 billion).
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It was an unprecedented measure due to its size and speed directly hit the reserves of the world’s leading energy exporteras well as being the largest nuclear power on the planet and a permanent member of the Security Council with the right of veto.
The decision made by President Joe Biden against Russia was a formidable exercise of hegemonic power by the United States, which it completely contradicted the image of weakness that his defeat in Afghanistan had brought himn in August last year.
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At the same time, Biden’s action has produced fundamental and long-term changes in the global financial structure, which concluded a stage in the history of capitalism characterized by the global integration of the systema, which had been its essential feature for the previous 30 years (since 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union).
It happened when the financial hegemony of the US dollar is increasingly oppressivenot only as regards the reserves of world central banks (67% of the total), but above all as regards international trade, where the US currency is the instrument of over 80% of transactions.
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The hegemony of the dollar reveals the central role of the United States in the integrated transnational system of production, which is the structural core of 21st century capitalism and through which more than 85% of the global exchange of time passes; and where 44% of all transnational corporations are North American and only 25% Chinese.
What US dollar hegemony implies is this it is endogenous to capitalist accumulation, consisting of a tripod consisting of supply (system expansion), demand and financing. In this fundamental mechanism of accumulation, in order for supply to cover the needs of demand, the financial system must grant it the capital for its expansion.
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The golden rule of the capitalist system in its phase of globalization is unity, which allows its continuous expansion; Y that unity was achieved instantaneously through a process of global digitization.
what happened now with the war in Ukraine is that this integration has been stoppedprobably irreversibly.
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Just as Bretton-Woods (1944) arose from the phenomenal display of US industrial power in World War II, which allowed US power to create the set of institutions of capitalism for the next 30 years, led by financiers.
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Now, at this stage in history, the only challenge Washington faces after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which ushered in its phase of unipolar hegemony, is the extraordinary, historically unique, emergence of China in the world market.
The achievements of the People’s Republic can be summarized in these terms: it has the largest consumer market in the world based on a decentralized structure integrated into the global system; and its economy has proved capable of competing with the most advanced in the West, and in the first place with the United States, which disputes the dominance of the advanced technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (CRI).
Finally, its workforce is highly and increasingly qualified and leads a healthy and safe life.
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The Chinese “soft power” is its extraordinary historical reality, which does not respond to any public relations campaign.
None of this means the end of US financial hegemonyas Russia was able to verify after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
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In military terms, Russia clearly won the war in Ukraine against the US and NATO; and he has time on her side both in Europe and in Washington.
This means that Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has victory in the strictly European arena of conflict on its side.
But the problem with the United States is not Russia, but China. The irony of the situation, highly revealing in historical terms, is this the goal of the People’s Republic is not to defeat the United States and NATO, but rather to deepen its integration with the economies of the United States and Europefor its true purpose is to be, together with the United States, the core of the fully integrated power structure of 21st century capitalism.
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China does not contest US hegemony because it follows Mao’s conception: “the world cannot be dominated because it is a constant flow of trends and profound currents of history that no one can control”.
When the United States comes out of the crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, it does so in a multipolar world, but to do so it must first go through an internal crisis extremely serious, which manifests itself through the combination of high inflation and a deep recession already underway.
US financial hegemony is ultimately safe, at least for now.
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Jorge Castro
Source: Clarin
