I never thought I’d live to see the day

America would be forced to do what no

superpower is ever supposed to do. But

that day has come. For the first time in

decades, Washington has been compelled

to offer an unthinkable deal. A

desperate plea sent to the very two

nations we spent years trying to

strangle, Venezuela and China. This

isn’t sophisticated strategy. This is

the signal of an empire running out of

breath. The American economy has reached

a state I can describe in one word.

Thirsty. Thirsty for heavy oil so badly

that refineries could grind to a halt.

Thirsty for cash to the point the

government has to beg someone, anyone,

to buy its bonds just to keep the lights

on. And the painful irony is this. The

two countries we punish the hardest are

now the two countries we need the most.

But to grasp how seismic this shock

really is, we have to look at the

foundations slowly sinking beneath our

feet. For 80 years, America rested on

two absolute pillars of power. the petro

dollar and US treasuries. They were the

tools of hegemony that let us spend

without limit, sanction anyone we

wanted, and still remain the center of

the global economy. But do you know what

the real irony is? The very instruments

that built the empire are now becoming

the noose tightening around its neck.

The moment Washington froze Russia’s

sovereign assets in 2022 was the moment

global trust in the dollar shattered.

The world instantly understood something

we had tried to ignore. This currency is

not neutral. It is a weapon and anyone

could be next. That wasn’t the action of

a confident superpower. That was the

action of a desperate empire that didn’t

realize it was destroying the foundation

of power it had enjoyed for nearly a

century. How exactly did America by its

own hand maneuver itself into the

position of having to beg the very

people it once tried to crush? To

understand why the Venezuela deal

represents Washington’s most humiliating

U-turn in decades, we have to remember

how America treated Caracus. For years,

the goal wasn’t to negotiate with

Nicolas Maduro. It was to topple him. We

seized Venezuela’s overseas assets,

froze their national accounts, embargoed

their entire oil industry, the only

lifeline their economy had, and even put

a $15 million bounty on Maduro’s head

like he was a wild west outlaw. Back

then, policymakers genuinely believed

Venezuela would collapse quickly.

Maduro’s government would fall and

America would regain control of the

world’s largest oil reserves. What they

never saw coming was the backlash. Think

about it. If you’re banned, strangled,

isolated, and forbidden from selling

your oil in dollars, what do you do?

Venezuela did the only thing it could.

It turned to the rest of the world. They

started selling oil in yuan to China, in

rupees to India, and in USDT, a digital

currency Washington can barely control.

These transactions happened quietly for

years. And then one day, Venezuela

became what I call the world’s first

reallife laboratory for a non-dollar oil

market. A sanctioned nation proved to

everyone that the petro dollar order

isn’t sacred. It only exists until

someone dares to break it. But that’s

only half the story. The other half, the

part that forced Washington to reverse

course, is sitting right inside

America’s own refineries. Yes, the US

has plenty of oil, but it’s light crude.

Meanwhile, most refineries along the

Gulf Coast, built half a century ago,

were designed to process heavy crude.

And guess where the heavy crude those

refineries need comes from? Venezuela.

Without heavy oil, US refineries can’t

produce enough diesel. And without

diesel, the entire American supply

chain, from trucks, trains, refrigerated

warehouses, agriculture to container

shipping, slows down, clogs up, and

eventually collapses in a domino effect.

All because of one type of oil America

doesn’t have, but Venezuela has an

abundance. When Washington’s energy

advisers finally realized this, they

understood America had no choice left

except to do the previously unthinkable.

Offer Maduro a soft deal. And that’s

when the unthinkable deal was born. The

US started peeling back layers of

sanctions. They issued licenses for

Chevron to return to Venezuelan fields.

They sent secret delegations to Caracus.

They offered debt relief, reopened

shipping routes, and even discussed the

production increases America wanted

Venezuela to deliver. In diplomatic

language, this is called constructive

dialogue. This isn’t diplomacy.

Diplomacy is when both sides have

options. This isn’t a deal. A deal is

when both sides have leverage. What’s

happening is the naked truth of power

politics, a superpower deescalating to

survive. And what makes it humiliating

isn’t that America is shaking hands with

Maduro. It’s that America is forced to

do it because its own economic structure

backed it into a corner. While

Venezuela, the country Washington once

dismissed as a failed state, now holds

part of America’s energy future in its

hands. If the Venezuela story exposes

the fragility of America’s energy

system, the China story exposes

something even more dangerous. America

can’t finance itself anymore. Over the

next 12 months, the US government needs

to borrow roughly $3 trillion just to

keep minimal services running, pay

federal workers, fund the military,

cover social programs, and keep the

lights on in government buildings. But

the critical question is who is going to

lend America that kind of money. The

traditional biggest buyer, Japan, is

dumping US bonds to save the yen. You

have to understand the context. The yen

is at its weakest level in decades. And

to defend it, Tokyo has to bring money

home. There’s no spare cash to keep

buying American debt. Europe, they’re

struggling with recession, energy

crisis, high interest rates, and

stretched budgets. Nobody in Brussels or

Berlin can afford to take on someone

else’s debt. American banks, they’re

drowning in unrealized losses from the

steepest rate hike cycle in 40 years.

Those losses are so large that buying

significant new treasuries would blow up

their balance sheets. So, who is left

with both the money and the scale to

absorb a $3 trillion debt issuance? Only

one country remains, China. And here

lies the excruciating paradox America

faces. In public, Washington keeps

talking about de-risking from China.

They threaten 60% tariffs on Chinese

goods. They beef up military deployments

across the Indo-Pacific, talk about the

risk of war over Taiwan, and label China

the number one strategic threat. That’s

what they say on camera. Behind closed

doors, the conversation is completely

different. It’s not Washington barking

orders at Beijing. It’s the US Treasury

quietly opening back channels and saying

the words no superpower ever wants to

say. Please don’t sell our bonds. Please

buy more to help us out. I know it

sounds unbelievable, but this is the

reality of power politics. Every nation,

even a superpower, has moments when

structure forces it to its knees. And

right now, the entity holding America’s

financial fate is China. To grasp how

dangerous this is, imagine the

following. If China decided to dump even

a modest portion of the hundreds of

billions in treasuries it holds, it

would be like yanking the main cable,

anchoring the entire US financial

system. That single move would send US

interest rates exploding upward. A

sudden spike in rates would trigger a

cascade. Housing prices collapse. Stock

markets plunge. Consumer borrowing costs

skyrocket and the entire US economy

would suffer a shock bigger than any

recession in decades. That is the power

China wields not through its military,

not through missiles, but through being

the last buyer big enough to rescue the

American financial system. And for the

ultimate historical irony, for years,

Washington described China as the rival

we must contain, encircle and curtail

influence. Yet today, we cannot fund the

federal budget without money from that

very rival. America put itself in this

position through endless deficit

spending and arrogance in weaponizing

sanctions. When you use your currency as

a weapon for too long, the world

eventually figures out how to live

without it. And when that happens, you

end up begging the people you once

threatened. That is the current reality

and the reason the China deal is the

hardest pill Washington has had to

swallow in decades. A superpower can

flex military muscle, slap tariffs on

rivals, talk about war and deterrence.

But there is one thing a superpower can

never afford to do. Threaten the person

holding the keys to its vault. When you

look at the full picture, remember

something I’ve been saying for years

studying international relations. Great

powers don’t collapse because they lose

on the battlefield. They collapse when

the structure of power turns against

them. And that is exactly what is

happening to the United States right

now. It’s not China or Venezuela

defeating America. It’s the very system

America built and abused now biting the

pillars of its own power. The first

pillar is the petro dollar. The

foundation of global finance for half a

century. Starting in the 1970s, America

secured the legendary deal. Oil, the

planet’s most critical energy source,

would be priced and traded in US

dollars. That forced the entire world to

hoard dollars, buy US treasuries, and

accept America’s financial dominance as

irreplaceable. But every order lasts

only until someone dares to break it.

And Venezuela was that someone. By

selling oil to China in UN, to India in

rupees and to private buyers in USDT,

they proved what many countries

suspected, but were afraid to test. Oil

can be sold without dollars. A

sanctioned strangled nation dismissed as

irrelevant became the first real proof

that the petro dollar is not a law of

nature. It’s a political arrangement.

Countries can walk away from the moment

they have alternatives. From that

moment, the first pillar of American

power began to crack. The second pillar

is US Treasury securities. Once

considered the world’s safest asset,

today China is proving the opposite. It

doesn’t even need to dump bonds or cause

a shock. Simply slowing down or stopping

purchases is enough to rattle US

financial markets. And the world is

watching closely. If China, the country

with the largest foreign exchange

reserves on Earth, no longer treats

treasuries as a safe haven, why should

smaller nations keep the faith? You have

to understand this. In international

politics, countries don’t act out of

emotion. They’re not abandoning the

dollar because they hate America.

They’re abandoning it because it has

become a national security risk. When

the US froze Russia’s assets, it sent a

message no country could ignore. Your

money isn’t yours. We can seize it

whenever we want. From that moment on,

the question every nation from Brazil to

Saudi Arabia started asking was, „No

longer should I use the dollar, but do I

dare let my national security depend on

America?“ And as the answer increasingly

tilts toward no, American power leaks

out like water from a cracked bucket.

Here’s the truth. Financial power

doesn’t die in a single day. It dies

when trust leaves the system. It dies

when nations realize they have options.

It dies when the cost of using the

dollar becomes higher than the benefit.

When people fear a currency more than

they need it, your power is over. And as

the two financial pillars of American

power begin to crack, a new

gravitational pull has quietly emerged.

Not in the form of a military alliance,

but in the form of an alternative

economic system. I know that in

Washington, many people like to portray

BRICS as an anti-American block, a

confrontational coalition built to

challenge the US-led order. That is the

wrong lens. BRICS was not born to fight

America. It was born to hedge against

the risk America itself created. In

other words, bricks is becoming the safe

harbor for countries that fear the day

the US dollar once the neutral tool of

global trade might be aimed straight at

them as a weapon. When you’re a nation

in the global south, you have to ask

yourself, if the United States could

freeze Russia’s assets overnight, could

they do the same to me? Bricks emerged

as the answer to that fear. And the

fascinating part is this. Bricks rise

has been quiet, non-declamatory, free of

threats or anti-Western slogans. It has

grown through very practical

step-by-step agreements until one day

the whole world realized a new system

was forming right under their feet. Look

at what has already changed in just a

few years. First, bilateral trade has

exploded. Brazil sells agricultural

goods to China in yuan. India buys

Russian oil and rupees. The UAE trades

with India in durhams. All these

transactions have one thing in common.

They never touch the US dollar. Second,

the R5 payment system is becoming the

new financial infrastructure. R5

standing for ruble, rupee, renmanb, real

and rand is not some distant fantasy. It

is being built as a connected network

that lets bricks countries trade with

one another without going through swift

or American banks. If you want to

understand how serious this is, remember

that American financial power does not

come from printing dollars. It comes

from the fact that every global

transaction has to pass through systems

America controls. R5 was created

precisely to solve that problem. Third,

BRICS is making the dollar disappear

from energy transactions, the very

sector America once owned outright.

Russia sells oil to India and rupees.

Saudi Arabia for the first time in half

a century accepts oil payments in yuan.

Once energy is no longer the exclusive

domain of the dollar, the petro dollar

has lost its soul. There is no attack on

the dollar, no military campaign, no

sanctions against the United States, no

coordinated effort to crash it. The

world doesn’t need to fire a single shot

to weaken the dollar empire. They only

have to do one thing. Stop using it. And

they are doing exactly that every day,

quietly, without announcements, without

confrontation, simply choosing the safer

path for themselves. That is the point

Washington still refuses to accept.

America is no longer the obligatory

center of global commerce. Countries are

proving they can trade, grow, and

cooperate without asking Washington’s

permission or routing everything through

American banks. For decades, the United

States was accustomed to standing in the

middle of international commerce like a

bridge every caravan had to cross. BRICS

is building new bridges and the world is

changing lanes. The conclusion is

brutally simple. The United States is

not being overthrown. The United States

is being bypassed. Once global trade

flows rroot, American economic power

does not disappear. it simply ceases to

be the center. And in international

relations, losing centrality is usually

the first step of long-term decline. As

bricks continues to open new lanes for

global commerce and America’s two

financial pillars crack a little more

each day, we are entering a phase that

in political science I call imperial

liquidation, the liquidation phase of

empire. This is not a fancy terminology.

It precisely describes the process a

superpower must go through when the

structure of power can no longer support

its ambitions. Imperial liquidation

happens when an empire is forced to

accept deals it once considered

humiliating, make concessions to rivals

it previously wanted to control, and

sign terms it once swore it would never

put pen to. It is not a choice. It is

survival. And the United States today is

right in the middle of that phase.

America has to accept Maduro, the man it

once used every tool imaginable from

sanctions and embargos to a bounty on

his head to overthrow. Yet now

Washington has to go back to Caracus and

say, „We need your oil.“ America has to

accept China, the country it calls the

number one strategic competitor, the

greatest threat to the US-led order. But

when you need $3 trillion to keep your

own government running, and no one

except China can provide that liquidity,

you are no longer the one setting terms.

America has to accept bricks, a system

that is gradually replacing Washington’s

central role in global trade and

finance. For years, the US treated

bricks as a loose movement incapable of

real change. Today, bricks is not only

alive, it is becoming the escape hatch

for countries that want to avoid dollar

dominance. Most importantly, America has

to accept the new rules of the game.

Rules it no longer writes, no longer

enforces, and sometimes doesn’t even

have veto power over. That is the

clearest sign of imperial liquidation.

The empire can no longer sustain the

illusion of control. But what is pushing

America deeper into this phase are the

two final choices Washington faces, and

neither is painless. Choice one,

default. If the United States cannot

find enough buyers for its bonds. If

interest rates spike to levels the

system cannot bear, a default would

collapse the entire global financial

order. The dollar is not just America’s

currency. It is the backbone of

international payments, foreign exchange

reserves, and energy trade. A US default

would send shock waves through markets

that no central bank could contain. From

New York to Tokyo, London to Sao Paulo,

every economy would suffer the fallout.

But the alternative is no less

devastating. Choice two, print money.

Print more dollars to pay the debt,

cover the deficits, avoid default, but

that leads to inflation. Not the

annoying kind, but the kind that

dismantles America’s middle class. Wages

can’t keep up with prices. Savings lose

value. Housing, health care, and

education costs keep climbing while real

American incomes shrink year after year.

And if you want to know what the first

visible symptom of imperial liquidation

looks like, this is it. An empire that

can no longer keep its promises to its

own citizens and has to shift the burden

onto their shoulders to preserve the old

power structure. The fall of a

superpower does not happen on the

battlefield. It happens on your bills.

It lives in the gas price you pay, the

mortgage rate you accept, the savings

that lose value, the purchasing power

that quietly slips away. Empires don’t

die from military defeat. They die when

their own people can no longer afford

the cost of maintaining the illusion of

greatness. And we are standing right on

that threshold. And that brings us to

the final part of this story where you

need to understand one simple but

crucial truth. The world is not against

America. The world simply no longer

wants to be dependent on America. That

distinction matters enormously. This is

not a rebellion against the United

States. It is a natural reaction to the

risk America itself created by turning

the dollar, the financial system, and

economic tools into weapons. When you

weaponize currency, don’t be surprised

when countries build systems you can’t

control. And the unthinkable deal

Washington just had to sign with

Venezuela. And China is not the disease.

It is only the symptom of a much deeper

illness. The world has lost faith in

America’s power and stability. You may

not see it every day, but I assure you

the capitals of the world from Riad to

Brazilia, New Delhi to Abu Dhabi saw the

signal long ago. They understand that

the era in which America served as the

guarantor of the international order is

weakening. And in power politics, when a

vacuum appears, someone else fills it.

This is not the apocalypse. This is a

power transition. Something that has

happened many times in human history.

The British Empire faced this moment

after World War II. The French, Spanish,

Portuguese, and Roman empires all lived

through the minute when they had to

accept they were no longer the center of

the world. What makes this moment

different is that the transition is not

happening on battlefields but inside the

global trade, energy and financial

systems. Power does not vanish. It

simply moves to wherever there is

stability, resources, and trust. And

right now, many countries believe the

system BRICS is building offers more

benefits than the one tied to the dollar

and American banks. Political rhetoric

cannot change reality. Washington can

talk tough, release strategies, announce

as many containment campaigns as it

wants. But in the real world where

decisions are made in quiet diplomatic

calls, where oil has to flow and debt

has to be financed, everything comes

down to actions, not words. And if you

really want to know where America stands

in this new era, don’t listen to what

politicians say on television. Look at

who Washington is shaking hands with.

They are shaking hands with Maduro, the

man they once called a dictator who had

to be removed. They are shaking hands

with China, the country they label the

number one strategic rival. They are

doing it not because they want to, but

because they have to. A confident

superpower would never sign deals like

these. But a superpower losing altitude

has to accept deals it once considered

humiliating. And that tells you

everything. When a nation has to beg the

very people it once sanctioned, that is

not just a policy shift. It is a change

of era. Empires never realize they have

lost the throne until they are forced to

ask for help from the same people they

once tried to strangle. And ladies and

gentlemen, America has just crossed that

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