Dedollarization appears to be an unstoppable trend as countries around the world look to reduce their dependence on U.S. currency.
Countries, particularly those in the Global South, are reducing their U.S. dollar reserves, settling cross border transactions in non-dollar currencies, and exploring the formation of new multilateral settlement mechanisms.
A major driver of this trend is Washington’s weaponization of the dollar via expansive sanctions that currently cover 29 percent of the global economy and 40 percent of global oil reserves.
Of course one important fact that responsiblestatecraft got wrong is that dedollarisation didn't start after Russian NATO war, it has been going on for a long time. At least for the past decade countries have been negotiating alternatives and economic blocs and groups like BRICS have been working on building such systems. The main reason for its speed up in 2022 till today is also not sanctions on Russia but the fact that the old world order (the unipolar world) officially died. Consequently the world started dumping the fiat of the lone world hegemony that no longer has the same strength as before.
Some would even say that dedollarisation started after 2008 US economy collapse (which also led to creation of bitcoin).
What's interesting is that these days and possibly this decade looks a lot like the 70's. Similar dedollarisation was happening then too and Europe was also trying to dump the dollar to which US responded by Petrodollar and:
The minutes also clearly stated that such a move would be detrimental to America’s interests and that, if Europe tried it, America would “squash” them. Ultimately, for the plan to succeed Germany would have had to cooperate. But with the Soviet Union looming on its doorstep, it was in no position to cross the U.S.
Same thing US is doing to Europe today, "squashing them". On one hand US has created another "USSR" boogeyman to scare Europe and on the other hand has increased the reliance of Europe on US in energy, weapons, and a lot of other things.
Similar actions are also being taken in Europe
which led certain European countries, particularly France, to begin to exchange their dollars for gold.
France has been making some trades in Yuan, "ditching the dollar".
As such, in just over a 12-month period, countries around the world mustered the courage to begin openly discussing the creation of alternative methods to conduct trade and settlement, as well as reducing their dollar reserves. The trade and settlement role of the dollar is where most of exiting will occur and where the demand for the dollar will fall away more precipitously.
Furthermore, BRICS countries have attracted numerous new member applications over the past year, with Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, and most recently Saudi Arabia showing interest and making declarations about creating a BRICS currency to compete with the dollar.
Many of these countries have been aggressively adding to their gold reserves over the past 13 years, and the size of their purchases has been accelerating, suggesting that perhaps any new currency might be backed by gold. Brazil (which has become increasingly vocal about its displeasure with the U.S. dollar system) and Argentina have started promoting the idea of creating a South American trading block and currency, the sur, similar to the European Union and euro.
The laundry list of dollar alternatives is long and growing daily. Examples include China testing cross-border digital currency settlements with Thailand and the UAE, insisting that sanctioned countries such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela accept yuan as payment for oil. Saudi Arabia is considering doing the same (there are rumors that Saudi is already selling oil for yuan and converting those yuan for gold on the Shanghai exchange). India is also buying some of its Russian oil in UAE dirhams. The simplest method, which is becoming increasingly popular, is bi-lateral agreements using local currencies.
BTW another incentive to dump the dollar which is usually forgotten, is different countries debt which is priced in dollar that has been rising in exchange rate because US manipulates the market and keeps the exchange rate up. Dedollarization fixes that too, which is another incentive for all the countries to dump the dollar.
Much of the global community is cheering, however. A lot of sovereign debt held by the global south is denominated in greenbacks, and an overpriced dollar makes debt service nearly impossible today.
The critical unanswered question is how the U.S. will respond to moves to de-dollarize. Any sudden decrease in U.S. dollar demand could have disastrous consequences for Americans. It could potentially trigger a U.S. dollar crisis leading to very high inflation, or even hyperinflation, and initiate a debt and money printing cycle that could tear apart the social fabric of society.
In short, any U.S. administration would ultimately consider any such de-dollarization moves to be matters of national security.
History has demonstrated that it is exceptionally rare for a transfer of global economic power to take place without major warfare.
A much more important question is whether United States has the military capability to start a war to prevent dedollarization?
From what we've seen over the past 2 decades, and how US military policy has been proxy wars; I'd say NO.
But this doesn't mean we aren't going to see more conflicts like the ongoing Russian-NATO war, this means we will see more proxy wars where US stands back while others fight and destroy their own countries (eg. China-Taiwan).