Bomba-dólar: A arma monetária dos Estados Unidos

The first decades of the 21st century were intense in the use of financial elements as tools of coercion in international relations. The financial war waged by the United States has caused different sovereign states to suffer a powerful non-military coercion, monetary coercion. The richest and most powerful country in the international system has used the power of its national currency, the dollar, to achieve geopolitical goals. The process of instrumentalising the dollar as a national security tool has given the United States a new weapon for its arsenal. This United States action has the potential to affect the entire international financial structure, since the complex world-wide economic network that connects private and state actors in daily commercial and financial transactions is anchored in the dollar. This article intends to approach the process of construction of the monetary weapon through three processes, the dynamics of weaponized interdependence, the exercise of structural power and the use of the concept of survival constrain. To fulfill its objective, the article is divided into two parts. The first proposes to understand the nexus between these three processes in the construction of the dollar-based monetary weapon; the second part deals with the most dramatic use of this weapon, the financial war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.