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Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

> The US should aggressively block any attempt to get around it.

The ubiquity of US dollars in international trade allows US to torpedo the economy of any country it so desires. It is like the US has a kill switch to shut down any economy it wishes to. But the only reason the rest of the world plays along and allows the kill switch to exist is that they trust the US to use it responsibly and only in extreme circumstances. Now with the erosion of that trust, it is to be expected for the world to move towards eliminating that threat.

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>The ubiquity of US dollars in international trade allows US to torpedo the economy of any country it so desires.

And that's exactly why this is necessary. The above is only cool if you're part of the ~5% of the world that is American.

It’s been a fair trade off of benefits/drawbacks in the past - you don’t have to hold gold, you can hold a currency that is stable and reliable, you can use it to trade around the world for modern goods and services. You put yourself at the mercy of the US, but if the US follows international rules and acts multilaterally and you’re not North Korea, the risks are small.

>It’s been a fair trade off of benefits/drawbacks in the past - you don’t have to hold gold, you can hold a currency that is stable and reliable

I'd contend that holding a basket of currencies is even more stable and reliable. Basic diversification logic would suggest that a basket of USD / EUR / GBP / AUD / CAD / NOK is safer than just USD.

I disagree. I think the only reason the rest of the world plays along is because the rest of the world is weak. The US are simply a bully.

But it's true that the advent of Trump makes the bullying more difficult to accept because it's now absurd and incoherent; if some other powers unite and find a way to resist the bullying, then at least some good will have come out of trumpism.

I don't think we've been a bully so much as the rich kid that indirectly paid people to be their friend. I think Trump is accurate in pointing out that many of our arrangements are detrimental to the US on the first level, but at the same time those arrangements, and the unstated threat of their removal, is what gave the US the power to arbitrarily exert its influence. This became even more true as other nations started to take those arrangements as a given and became reliant upon them.

In the grand scheme of things I'm also happy the rest of the world seems to be becoming less dependent on the US. It removes single point of failure scenarios. Economies and nations keeping each other more at arm's reach would help ensure the world acts in a more democratic fashion while simultaneously also providing insulation against the failing of any given nation's poor decisions - be those social, political, economic, or military.

>It removes single point of failure scenarios. Economies and nations keeping each other more at arm's reach would help ensure the world acts in a more democratic fashion while simultaneously also providing insulation against the failing of any given nation's poor decisions - be those social, political, economic, or military.

This is completely ahistorical. You're describing the "balance of power" system that governed international relations and we know what happened: hundreds of years of European wars culminating in two world wars.

The reason you call the Cold War the Cold War and not World War 3 is because of what stopped the system of wars you refer to, and what immediately ended the second world war: nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons prevent countries from militarily exerting influence against another nuclear nation. Nuclear weapons are the great equalizer of power. Pakistan was harboring Osama Bin Laden next to a military related facility - a man we destroyed two countries seeking, one under completely false pretenses. Yet when we finally found him, in Pakistan, our response was a silent and rapid in and out followed by mostly token gestures. Iraq and Afghanistan did not have nuclear weapons. Pakistan does.

All our current system of relations has done is turn US into the world's final word on everything. This creates more of an autocratic than a democratic system of world relations. That Saudi Arabia sits on UN human rights council, chairing their advisory committee (which chooses appointed 'independent experts') speaks to how functioning our international institutions are. They are a little more than a proxy for US influence. I do not think any single government should have such a unilateral influence on the happenings of the world.

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