U.S.-Saudi Petro Dollar Relationship Fueled the U.S. Empire

After all the shit Saudi Arabia is pulling, from the Khashoggi murder, to the genocide in Yemen, and the internal human rights abuses, they seem to be untouchable. The U.S.-Saudi relationship is still strong, despite pressure for sanctions or punishment from inside the U.S. electorate. How can this be?

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The U.S. has achieved global financial dominance thanks to the petro dollar, which I have recently mentioned in What "protecting the American way of life" really means.... The U.S. dollar began it's meteoric climb to become the world reserve currency after the most consumed commodity, oil, was being set by OPEC in U.S. dollars. And guess who strongly influences OPEC? That's right, Saudi Arabia.

This helps clear up the picture as to why Saudi Arabia is getting a hall-pass or carte-blanche to it's egregious actions in the world stage, as the U.S. targets other nations instead. The U.S.' financial dominance in the geopolitical landscape would be quite different after Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar from gold by ending the gold-standard in 1971, were it not for the petro dollar deal struck between Washington and Riyadh. With oil prices based in completely in U.S. dollars, Saudi Arabia received protection from the U.S. empire.

The U.S. in return saw the rest of the world forced into holding high amounts of U.S. dollars currency reserved by purchasing U.S. treasuries. The U.S. dollar has since been enthroned in the global economic system. As others bought treasuries, the U.S. could print more of it's fiat currency to spend, spend, spend. And spend it has, through many conflicts across the globe, with a target on the Middle East since the 90s with the ever-present 17 year perpetual conflicts.

This pegging of oil to the U.S. dollar has allowed the U.S. to become the dominant superpower on the planet. Saudi Arabia's immunity stems from this pact that the U.S. desperately needs to maintain in order to hold onto it's power, economically and otherwise. There are plenty of politicians who prefer to keep receiving the cash thrown at them from Saudi lobbying as well, making political change harder to come by.

As long as Saudi Arabia keeps up the deal to price oil in U.S. dollars, they are exempt from the wrath of the U.S., and are even favored. They also team up to target other nations they don't like, like Yemen. Alongside Israel, they all collaborate to target shared enemies, such as recent joint efforts to destabilize Iran. Saudi efforts to train jihadists started in the 1980s against the USSR in Afghanistan, and has continued to this day with radical Islamic terrorism as geopolitical weapons, such as the support of ISIS to destabilize other regions in the Middle East.

The governments of the West seem to have issue with globalist outliers like Assad from Syria, but the radical Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia continues without interference. The U.S. continues to print more debt that has been bought up by other countries, tallying up a $6 trillion war bill for it's recent decade of war mongering. Any other country would have been crippled, but not the U.S.

Iran has og been a target, and the pressure has been mounting in recent years, with the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia targeting Iran through Syria. The U.S. has been bullying Iran with it's global monetary power by imposing sanctions. And this is still ongoing, as the U.S. bullies other nations like Russia and China too. But these global competitors,or "enemies" as the U.S. sees them, are getting fed up of being pushed around. Iran may have been removed from the SWIFT international banking system recently -- as Iran's banks have been suspended from using it -- but an alternative payment system called CIPS (Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System) has arisen in case the U.S. tried anything like that on Russia or China.

The U.S. is escalating geopolitical animosity with their sanctions and tariffs, threatening to destabilize itself through de-dollarization among nations of the world. Alternatives are being sought, even by U.S. allies. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are emerging major world currencies, and many have started to move away from the U.S. dollar hegemony as they use other currencies for commercial transactions. As more nations and global industries move away from using the U.S. dollar abroad, faulting economies can lead to devalued national currencies that have trouble paying back creditors and banks, meanwhile the U.S. continues to play monopoly with it's fiat currency and isn't facing the music yet.

But at some point the music will stop as the renouncing of the dollar grows. When the next economic crash happens, it will be worse, and likely cascade into a global meltdown. Confidence in the dollar is still strong, thanks to the belief in "saving" actions like quantitative easing and easy money practices (0% interest) that boosted the U.S. economy after the 2008 crisis. Near "unlimited" amounts of money have been pumped out of the presses as a result. But the easy money that saved many from bursting bubbles will only compound the problem in the future.

Other nations see the writing on the wall, and more are trying to get away from the U.S. dollar-based financial system, as they sell U.S. government bonds and buy gold instead. THose holding U.S. debt are going to be caught holding a bag of crap.

That's why now, possibly more than ever, the U.S. needs to keep the petro dollar alive, and it needs it's buddy Saudi Arabia to keep that going. Even the Israeli lobby has been trying to reassure politicians about Saudi Arabia and prevent them from calling on punishing Riyadh for Khashoggi or Yemen. The U.S. and Israel benefit from the current leadership in Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Saud is not likely to be taken down, lest those efforts disrupt plans for a new Middle East (from training the jihadist-terrorist geopolitical weapon), or the U.S.' economic supremacy (from the pertro dollar deal).

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References:

• The Untouchable US-Saudi Relation Is a Core Element of US Imperialism
• What "protecting the American way of life" really means...
• US sanctions: SWIFT network suspends Iran banks

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Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.

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