In 2000, Saddam Hussein did something very few people paid attention to.
He announced Iraq would start selling oil in euros, not U.S. dollars.
Three years later, the United States invaded Iraq.
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
But something else happened quietly.
Iraqi oil went right back to being priced in dollars.
Most people call that a coincidence.
I call it a lesson.
In 2009, Muammar Gaddafi proposed something even more dangerous.
A gold-backed African currency — the gold dinar.
It would have allowed African nations to buy oil without using dollars.
In 2011, NATO intervened in Libya for “humanitarian reasons.”
Gaddafi was killed.
The gold dinar disappeared.
Libyan oil? Back to dollars.
Another coincidence.
I’m noticing a pattern.
Go back further.
In 1971, President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard.
The dollar was no longer backed by gold — only a promise.
By all historical logic, the dollar should have collapsed.
It didn’t.
Why?
Because three years later, Henry Kissinger cut a deal with Saudi Arabia.
The deal was simple:
Sell oil only in U.S. dollars, and the U.S. military will protect the regime.
From that moment on, every country on earth needed dollars to buy energy.
That wasn’t free-market economics.
That was force-backed monetary policy.
Or, more honestly, a protection racket.
And it works — as long as the military can enforce it.
Watch what happens when countries challenge it.
Russia demands rubles for natural gas?
Sanctions. Escalation.
Syria discusses pipelines priced outside the dollar system?
Civil war intensifies. Pipeline never happens.
Iran tries to sell oil outside the dollar?
Decades of sanctions.
I’m not saying these are good governments or bad governments.
I’m saying watch what happens when anyone threatens the petrodollar system.
Once you see it, the pattern isn’t subtle.
SWIFT is not a neutral payment system.
It’s a weapon.
Get cut off from SWIFT, and you’re locked out of global trade.
Russia.
Iran.
Cuba.
Venezuela.
Different politics. Same outcome.
They don’t teach this in school because it’s uncomfortable.
We don’t send 18-year-olds to die for “freedom.”
We send them to protect reserve currency status.
Currency funds the military.
The military protects the currency.
That’s how empires work.
Britain learned this the hard way.
The British pound was the world’s reserve currency for nearly 200 years.
After World War II, Britain lost reserve status.
Within two decades, the British Empire collapsed.
Same cycle.
Dutch guilder.
British pound.
Now the U.S. dollar.
Ray Dalio has been warning about this for years.
Late-stage empire looks like this:
• Military overextension
• Rising debt
• Currency weakening
• Rivals building alternatives
China’s Belt and Road isn’t charity.
It’s about creating debt relationships denominated in yuan.
BRICS aren’t talking about alternatives because they’re friends.
They’re building an exit ramp from dollar dependence.
When the dollar loses reserve status — not if, when — the ability to print money without consequences disappears.
- Then the military contracts.
- Then the empire ends.
- You can call this cynical.
I call it financial history.
Every war in my lifetime had a currency angle — if you knew where to look.
“Freedom and democracy” is the marketing.
The actual policy documents talk about
“maintaining dollar liquidity in global energy markets.”
I’m not anti-military.
I’m anti-bullshit.
If we’re sending people to fight…
We should at least be honest about why.
