> This is a bit of popular myth on sites like this but isn't supported by economists, historians or people in finance. The total volume of oil trade is small fraction of total global trade or capital flows.
What's a popular myth? That oil, still the strategic commodity worldwide, plays a large role in the USA's security relationships and use of the USD is, written or unwritten, a tacit part of those relationships?
That's completely wrong and you have a lot of reading to do to understand the entire post-WWII geopolitical order. Oil is receding yes, but it's still critical and you can't understand anything about the postwar security order - which is very closely tied to the rise of the USD - until you understand that.
I mean, the Nimitz is in the Persian Gulf right now keeping the sea lanes open for their client states in the region. That's the USA's part of the deal right there.
I'll leave it to readers to look up on the details of Bretton Woods or the Nixon Shock or any basic econ resource to understand why oil or military aid is not really the main factor behind the reasons of the US reserve currency.
The Nimitz cannot physically stop the Iranians from closing the Straits of Hormuz if they wanted BTW, it's rather that there isn't much point to Iran closing said straits and just angering pretty much everyone else in the world. You can look at Yemen to see how things really go when an actor dosen't care anyways.
What's a popular myth? That oil, still the strategic commodity worldwide, plays a large role in the USA's security relationships and use of the USD is, written or unwritten, a tacit part of those relationships?
That's completely wrong and you have a lot of reading to do to understand the entire post-WWII geopolitical order. Oil is receding yes, but it's still critical and you can't understand anything about the postwar security order - which is very closely tied to the rise of the USD - until you understand that.
I mean, the Nimitz is in the Persian Gulf right now keeping the sea lanes open for their client states in the region. That's the USA's part of the deal right there.