Over the past years, you may have come across the verb ‘weaponize’ in various articles, publications and discussions. It is a transitive verb (it needs a direct object) that originally meant to supply with weapons or deploy weapons to an organization or a location. It also meant to install weapons on something. For example, you can weaponize a speed boat by installing a light gun on it, or you can weaponize a Jeep by doing the same. As a matter of fact, the word came into existence in the 1950s when rockets became ‘weaponized’ by taking on nuclear warheads.
But in the last decade or so, the world has expanded the use of the verb to many things, such as oil, food, raw materials such as rare earth and lithium, and a host of other things. I have even read about weaponized feelings! But no country has done a better job than the United States has in weaponizing the good old Greenback, as in the US Dollar.
As Strategy consultants would say, there are 3 success factors for this achievement:
- The US Dollar belongs to the US, and the country has full authority (monopoly rights) over it;
- The currency is used all over the world and serves as a reference, especially in oil trade and many other global raw materials (which have been weaponized as well); and finally,
- The US being a large developed market, no country or company that respects itself can ignore it.
One of the most interesting examples of this weaponization impact happened a few years ago, when the US settled a case with the French bank, BNP-Paribas. The bank paid over $9bn of fines for having facilitated access to US$ for Iran and Cuba in their international trades, 2 of the countries on the US’s «no good list», even though these countries were not on any other country’s nor UN’s «bad list» at the time.
«Ok, so what’s your point?» You may ask. Well, not much, except that the other day I read a number of headlines about how Russia is blackmailing Europe with its supply of gas, which has been weaponized by it. However, we rarely read similar headlines about the US and its blackmail of countries like Venezuela, because it does not like its elected President, or Cuba because it does not like its regime. Just as the US has done with the Dollar, Russia has weaponized its gas pipeline to Europe.
Paris, September 8, 2022
Zeejay