For the United States the Oil War is not one of choice, but a desperate move to maintain its world oil monopoly, hoping to obtain from abroad the affluence that it no longer is producing at home. Michael Hudson continues his series Creating a New International Order.

Between U.S. tariffs and Iranian naval blockades we are seeing the economic version of what the 1960s called Mutually Assured Destruction - or MAD. The second piece in Michael Hudson’s new series Creating a New International Order.

The world is being polarized between attempts to preserve centuries of Western international law and America’s attempt to replace it with a monolithic U.S. autocracy of its own uniquely self-serving ruler-based order. Michael Hudson starts his new series Creating a New International Order.

Control over oil is one of its key methods for achieving unipolar control over the world’s broad trade and dollarized financial arrangements. America’s military attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Maduro is the most recent example of this.

Donald Trump is promoting a false narrative of what made America’s nineteenth century industrialization so successful. Instead of supporting a regrowth of U.S. industry, the effect of Trump’s tariffs will be to protect and subsidize obsolescence and financialized deindustrialization.