The Economic Origins of the “War on Terror”
The U.S. was in a position of economic and military hegemony after World War II. However, by the early 1970s, the U.S. dollar depreciated following President Richard Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard. To fight this problem, Nixon offered indefinite military protection from all of their enemies to all oil-producing states, if those states agreed to denominate their oil sales exclusively in U.S. dollars. This agreement reestablished the U.S. as the world’s sole superpower. At the turn of the millennium, U.S. dominance faced challenges from al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s decision to abandon the dollar in favor of the euro in oil sales. The war on terror began as an effort to eliminate each of these threats. Following the Iraq war, the U.S. seemed to establish control and alliances with all of the world’s key suppliers of energy, along with the states serving as transit routes.