I already reported in Pressenza, in September 2011, the role that Saddam Hussein’s Oil-for-Euros may have played in the Iraq War, similar to Gaddafi’s Gold Dinar:
“Attempting to understand what is happening in Libya without looking at the global crisis runs the risk of oversimplifying things. We could say “It’s the Oil, stupid!”, and we would be of course right, but only partially so. Gaddafi – not a nice man, to be sure, but not worse than other autocrats in the region – committed the same crime Saddam Hussein did. He attempted to upset the hegemony of the Dollar by proposing that oil transactions move to the Gold Dinar, a Euro-like currency for the whole of Africa. This was eminently doable, in particular because Gaddafi was sitting on a nice large pot of Gold. It would also make Africa financially independent and less available for exploitation.
“As it happened, some years back Saddam had moved his oil transactions to the Euro, and the OPEC was looking into following suit. Many analysts believe this would have led to a fall in the value of the Dollar of up to 40%. And then the US started to talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which of course this was, at least for the Dollar. This currency had abandoned any pretence of having gold backing when Nixon decided it did not need it in 1971, unilaterally cancelling the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold that essentially ended the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange designed to prevent more nations’ bankruptcy from inducing wars like Germany had done in WW2.”
And now, China
According to Finian Cunningham, “The escalation of military tensions between Washington and Beijing in the East China Sea is superficially over China’s unilateral declaration of an air defense zone. But the real reason for Washington’s ire is the recent Chinese announcement that it is planning to reduce its holdings of the US dollar.
“That move to offload some of its 3.5 trillion in US dollar reserves combined with China’s increasing global trade in oil based on national currencies presents a mortal threat to the American petrodollar and the entire American economy.
“This threat to US viability – already teetering on bankruptcy, record debt and social meltdown – would explain why Washington has responded with such belligerence to China setting up an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) last week extending some 400 miles from its coast into the East China Sea.”
A nuclear power having a tantrum
How far is the US willing to take its display of dissatisfaction, its veiled threat, its act of despair masquerading as a show of force? Let us hope that Obama’s new mood of negotiating-man, as shown in his dealings with Iran, herald a moment of common sense, because in the case of China we are dealing with a potential conflict between two nuclear powers and its consequences would affect the whole planet in unimaginable ways.
