The hollow dollar?

This paper explores whether the US dollar's dominance in global finance -long a pillar of American geopolitical influence -is being quietly eroded.While the dollar remains the world's primary reserve currency, its centrality in international payments is increasingly contested.The weaponisation of the dollar, particularly through sanctions and the extraterritorial reach of the New York banking licence, has prompted strategic responses from states such as China, Russia, and India.These strategic responses include the development of alternative payment systems, local currency trade settlements, and digital infrastructure.The paper argues that a 'hollowing' of the dollar's infrastructural dominance is underway -(perhaps very) gradual, partial, but geopolitically significant.This shift may not end dollar supremacy, but it could fragment the global financial system, weaken US sanctions leverage, and diminish the centrality of New York and London as financial hubs.The implications for global order are subtle but potentially profound.A less dollar-dependent system may facilitate a more multipolar world yet diminish liberal democratic power. The quiet architecture of global powerThe international payments infrastructure is not the most obvious starting point for a discussion on shifting international orders.Geopolitical analysts invoke Metternich more than Mastercard.Yet there is good reason to begin with infrastructure.Just as the telegraph once served as a hidden scaffold for British imperial power (Kennedy 1971), today's international payments systems help underpin the projection of American influence.This paper focuses on the quiet architecture that enables visible displays of power.At its core is the US dollar-based payments system, a structure that has long served as both a conduit for commerce and a lever of geopolitical control (Prasad 2024).But that architecture is beginning to hollow.The implications of this shift, though subtle at first, may prove profound.London, underpinned by the might of the British Empire and sterling's convertibility to gold, became the world's financial capital by the 19th century (Berend 2012, Ferguson 2001).This dominance began to wane after the First World War, as Britain's economic clout diminished and the US emerged as the world's largest creditor.The baton passed definitively after the Second World War, when the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement enshrined the US dollar as the linchpin of the global monetary system.With deep capital markets, a stable political system, and the Federal Reserve's global reach, the US built a dollar-based infrastructure that persists to this day, even if challenges to it are now rising (Eichengreen 2011).The spotlight rarely falls onto the backstage machinery of infrastructure.This is a mistake.International infrastructure, and control or influence over it, is an aspect of power.Great powers that grasp infrastructural power can work to extend their power and influence, as China has done through the Belt and Road Initiative (Ho 2020).Yet analysts often overlook these foundations when it comes to the sub-reserve currency level of international financial architecture (Fishman 2025).Why?Because financial infrastructure is usually gradual, deeply technical, and does not make headlines unless it fails catastrophically.This neglect has consequences.When analysts ignore these systems, they miss how power is exercised.In a world increasingly defined by systemic interdependence -even (and perhaps especially) 2 The hollow dollar?