It is impossible to understand the logic of America’s exorbitant military expenditures and successive wars in various countries – from Vietnam, Iraq to Venezuela and Iran – without understanding the international monetary system. By designing a global mechanism, the United States has been able to shift the “costs of war” onto other countries and continue endless military interventions without suffering major chronic inflation or crippling budget deficits. This structural framework is a prerequisite for analysing many ambitious wars the United States has waged – including the recent invasion of Iran.

The starting point of the dollar’s dominance over the global economy was the Bretton Woods Conference at the end of World War II. According to the final agreement, the value of world currencies was tied to the dollar, and the US government pledged to make an ounce of gold equal to $35.

With this agreement, the dollar became the main monetary haven for global trade and assets, and countries kept their main reserves in dollars instead of gold. For two decades, after the world accepted the dollar as the base currency, the United States was able to lend to various countries by printing money, receive its exports in the same dollars, and pay its foreign expenses without leaving gold. Thus, the world became dependent on the dollar, and the United States practically financed the global economy with its printed money.

In the 1960s, due to the high circulation volume of US dollar around the world as well as the high costs of the Vietnam War, increased welfare spending, and the widespread printing of dollars to meet the global needs, various countries realized that the United States had printed more dollars than its gold reserves. France, led by Charles de Gaulle, Great Britain, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and several other countries gradually converted their dollars into gold—a move that drastically reduced the U.S. gold reserves.

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By early 1971, US gold reserves had fallen from 20,000 tons in 1949 to about 10,000 tons, while the volume of dollars in circulation outside the United States had reached more than $50 billion. There was no longer any........

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