But in what way was the destruction of Europe help the health of the empire in the long run? Obviously American capitalists are all about it in the short term, but it weakens the overall position of the empire relative to China, which is far more significant geopolitically.

The EU has been the true challenger to American capitalism since its formation in the 1990s. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, because its economy was never financialized, the American and European capitalists had been able to harvest their industrial assets and monetized them.

The amount of finance capital generated from monetizing Soviet industrial assets was so vast that it instantly allowed the US and the EU to “hyperleap” into fully neoliberalized economy, and the EU was born in 1993. The creation of euro would soon follow and officially adopted in 1999.

Since then, the euro has emerged as a challenger to dethrone the dollar. It is no coincidence that the Balkan conflicts started as soon as the EU was formed, to keep the EU to spend on militarization. It is also no coincidence that when Saddam wanted to sell his oil in euro, Iraq was immediately invaded in 2003. It is also unlikely to be a coincidence that as soon as Nord Stream was built, the Ukrainian fascist coup and civil war took place in late 2013. Finally, when Nord Stream 2 was completed, the current Russia-Ukraine war happened.

The goal of the US finance capital has always been to kill the euro. This is why the Russia-Ukraine war has to happen:

As you can see, Chinese yuan poses little to no threat to the US. In fact, China has repeatedly stated that they are not interested in anything other than the status quo, which is to preserve the dollar hegemony that has benefited its economy so much.

This is also why after the Ukraine war, when Putin was rallying other countries and calling to de-dollarize, China (and Xi) has been unusually quiet about it. Because why should they?

If the Ukraine war and the $300 billion confiscation of Russian foreign reserves cannot make China give up the dollar, then Trump’s trade war has even smaller chance of doing so.

The PRC and BRICS bank are increasingly more important to the financial backing of the third world while the imperialist financial systems continue to lose their group.

This changes nothing, because China has been very reluctant to internationalize the RMB to preserve its export advantage. It doesn’t want others to hold Chinese yuan as a savings currency, and they’re more than happy to let the dollar play that role.

What has been happening with BRICS are countries starting to adopt bilateral/multilateral currency trade to reduce exposure of their dollar reserves from being confiscated by the US. This is more of a protective measure than de-dollarization, which I have explained again and again, that it can only happen at the real production/trade level i.e. China importing goods and replacing the role of the US as a net importer.

In the same vein, when saving, these countries will still swap the foreign currencies into USD through the forex market.

I’ll give you an example: after the Ukraine war erupted, Russia who was cut off from the dollar began to sell large quantity of oil to India, and accumulated a vast amount of Indian rupees. However, Russia soon realized that it cannot use those rupees at all, because after accounting for importing goods from India, there is nothing else for it to do.

Russia cannot sell rupee to buy Chinese yuan so they can use them to purchase Chinese goods, because the Indian central bank would not allow it as it will fuck with their exchange rate. And the forex market isn’t interested in holding rupee and trading away their yuan, at least not at a price favorable to them. As a result, Russia was forced to hold all the rupees they cannot use while sending away valuable commodities e.g. oil to India, practically for free.

The problem for most countries is that nobody wants to accumulate their currencies. The US dollar does not care though. You are free to use the dollar to do whatever you want: buy Chinese yuan, Indian rupee, gold, crypto, anything that people are willing to sell in exchange for the US dollar. And this is why the dollar is the global reserve currency, not the yuan or the rupee.

The problem for Russia is that it has been shut out from accessing the dollar, but for other countries, they will still buy the USD. This is why the foreign holder of US treasuries has increased in spite of Trump’s debacle, simply that it has switched hands - the Chinese no longer hold as much treasuries, and the money ended up in the UK, Japan and the Cayman Islands end up buying those treasuries. Everything has to balance out.