The Coming Changes in the International Monetary System and Dedollarization, in a Context of Massive Debt Levels (public and private debts)

By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

"When every country turned to protect its own private interest, the world public interest went down the drain, and with it the private interests of all."

Charles Kindleberger (1910-2003), American economic historian, (in his book 'The World Depression 1929-1939', 1973. 

"We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition...  More recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited, You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination... If we are not at the table, we are on the menu."

Mark Carney (1965- ), economist and Prime minister of Canada, in Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2026.

"In the Great Depression in which I grew up and remember vividly, unemployment was over 25 percent, and over 35 percent where I lived. A grown man would work all day, 16 hours, for a dollar. I remember hundreds of people walking by, people who had come down from the North just to get warm. They would come to our house as beggars even though they might have a college education. People didn't have money."

Jimmy Carter (1924-2024), 39th U.S. president (1977-1981), (in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on Feb. 4, 2009).

One year before the end of World War II, in 1944, representatives of some forty-four countries met in an American town in New Hampshire and cooperated in establishing a new global monetary system based on the U.S. dollar, which was to be convertible into a fixed weight of gold. (Note: The U.S. then possessed 70% of the world's gold reserves.)

This system lasted until 1971, when the Republican administration of Richard Nixon unilaterally severed the link between gold and the dollar, making the latter a purely fiat currency—that is, a currency entirely based on confidence in the U.S. monetary authorities to maintain its relative value.

Fifty-five years later, in 2026, the world is once again faced with the task of adjusting the international monetary system to new realities, but this time without a shred of international cooperation. On the contrary, the current Trump administration does not hesitate to insult, antagonize and sometimes threaten allied nations, many of which are public and private creditors of the American federal government. To attack one's lenders is generally not the most appropriate thing to do!

I- What was the Bretton Woods Monetary System

Since the Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944, it was agreed by 44 countries that the U.S. dollar would be used as the principal international means of payments in the post WWII international monetary system. It was going to be backed by gold at the rate of one dollar being exchanged for 1/35 ounce of gold, (one ounce of gold being worth $35).

Other national currencies would have a fixed exchange rate vis-à-vis the dollar, to be adjusted only for structural balance of payments deficits or surpluses, as monitored by the newly created International Monetary Fund (IMF). Moreover, central banks would purchase and hold mainly American Treasury bonds as liquidity reserves to stabilize their currencies.

II- Why the international monetary system based on a fiat U.S. dollar has provided the United States with some exorbitant economic privileges

For many years, that one-sided international monetary system has created some exorbitant privileges for the United States.

Indeed, under such a system, the U.S. could not face a balance of payments problem because it was paying its imports with its own currency, which it could print at will.

It also allowed the U.S. government to finance part of its large budget deficits and its enormous public debt by selling Treasury bills and bonds, denominated in U.S. dollars, to foreign central banks, which held them as official reserves, and to other foreign investors. That structural demand kept the U.S. dollar strong in foreign exchange markets and assisted the Fed (the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank) in fighting domestic inflation.

From a geopolitical perspective, such easy access to foreign savings and dollar spending has enabled the U.S. government to deploy military power globally and to finance the building of some 750 military bases around the world, with contributions from host countries.

Since nothing is one-sided, there are some disadvantages for a country in having its national currency used worldwide.

First, the American central bank had to take into account the dollar's international role when formulating its monetary policy.

A second disadvantage resulted from net capital inflows in the U.S., which kept the dollar overvalued and encouraged domestic consumption and trade deficits. 

Thirdly, from a U.S. perspective, has been the ease with which large U.S. corporations could take advantage of their technological advances and finance productive investments abroad, and then repatriate their profits for the benefit of American investors.

Criticism against a dollar-dominated monetary system intensified when the U.S. government began weaponizing the system by imposing financial, economic and political sanctions on countries that did not bend to its foreign policies.

Therefore, it is to be expected that during the coming years, especially as the current Trump administration has become increasingly hostile to the economic interests of other nations, that the world is going to move away from the fiat US dollar international monetary system. This is even more likely since President D. Trump has openly said that he would welcome a debased U.S. dollar, going as far as saying that he thinks a weaker dollar would be "great"!

With large yearly federal fiscal deficits and political pressure to force the Fed to print more money in order to lower short-term interest rates, this is a recipe for creating a period of galloping inflation and of slow economic growth, possibly leaving the U.S. economy in a state of stagflation.

III- Many central banks have been gradually reducing their stocks of dollar-denominated Treasury bills and bonds in their official reserves relative to gold

In 2025, central banks around the world crossed an important threshold. For the first time in three decades, their combined gold holdings have exceeded their total holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds in their international reserves. This is because the U.S. dollar has become a heavily indebted fiat currency that is subjected to persistent inflation. Gold holdings, on the other hand, serve as a hedge against inflation and currency debasement.

An indication that the world is slowly moving toward a gold-based international monetary system is the fact that about one-fifth, or about nearly 36,200 tons of all the gold ever mined is now held by central banks. This was only about 15 percent at the end of 2023.

IV- In the United States and in other economies, lax fiscal and monetary policies could trigger financial crises and an important economic downturn

After the 2008-2009 Great Recession and after the Covid-19 recession of 2020-2021, nominal interest rates were pushed down, sometimes below the inflation rate, heralding an era of negative real interest rates. This was an invitation to borrowers to go deep into debt. Governments, corporations and households piled up their debt levels, even though real economic growth and real income levels did not follow.

The U.S. experience has been repeated in other economies, in Europe and in Canada.

Indeed, the Trump administration's fiscal policy is currently in disarray, with a yearly federal deficit approaching $2 trillion and federal public debt reaching $39 trillion (or set at 126 percent of GDP, in 2026), according to the Debt clock. If one adds the one $trillion of states' public debts, the total U.S. public debt will likely be $40 trillion, or 129 percent of GDP, later in 2026.

Rather than taking concrete measures to correct such an unsustainable fiscal situation, the D. Trump administration is increasing military expenditures, at the same time that it wishes to place the Federal Reserve Bank under its direct control, and when it is pressuring the central bank to artificially lower short-term interest rates.

All this undermines international confidence in the U.S. government and encourages other countries to sell part or all of their stocks of dollar bonds and other dollar assets, while reducing reliance on the international fiat dollar system.

The end result is to push up medium- and long-term interest rates in the U.S., with a negative impact on the real economy, employment and on banks facing rising defaults and bad debts. Thus, everything would seem to be in place for an important correction in financial markets in the coming months or years, not only in the United States but also in many other economies.

V- On the international stage, the economic and trade wars waged by the current U.S. president are a source of instability and economic slowdown

Since the very beginning of 2025, President Trump's second administration has irresponsibly chosen to launch economic warfare and the 'dumbest trade wars', (see The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 31, 2025), against other countries, including against long-time allies, rather than adopting a posture of mutually profitable economic cooperation. This has been a highly deplorable and counter-productive approach.

Indeed, after just one year in power in Washington, D.C., real estate mogul turned politician Donald Trump has managed to attack and insult almost every sovereign nation on Earth.

He began by antagonizing two neighboring countries in North America (Canada and Mexico). He then set about alienating Asian countries, starting with China. His boundless imagination led him to resurrect the old Monroe Doctrine of 1823 in order to turn all of South America against him and steal their natural resources.

And not to be outdone, he bombed countries in Africa and the Middle East (Somalia, Nigeria, Iran, etc.). The icing on the cake was when his foreign policy document identified Europe's NATO allies as adversaries and threatened to seize Greenland, under Danish rule, by force!

A few more months of the Trump 2.0 regime and the United States could be completely isolated and will have only one country allied with it, i.e. Israel, and be in a more or less state of rupture with the other 191 countries.

Conclusions

We do not know how many years it will take for the world to adopt a New World Order, based on the establishment of a new international monetary system. The reason being that this time, everything is being done in a context of conflict and disorder, rather than with studies, analysis and multilateral cooperation.

The U.S. political regime of D. Trump seems to have set itself the objective of ruining the reputation of the United States around the world and accelerating the decline of the American empire.

However, within the United States, legal, constitutional and political efforts to force either a resignation or a disqualification of the current president could change radically the path followed by the Trump administration 2.0, since January 2025.

Unfortunately, the damage is done and confidence in the U.S. government is broken. What this means is that over the coming years, there will be at least three ways to clear international payments: through the old dollar-based system still in place, with new mechanisms with either the euro or the yuan currencies, and, more and increasingly, through the new BRICS's Unit international currency, based on 40% gold and 60% on a basket of national currencies.

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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and of his recent book, in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018". 

He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay's site or email to a friend here.

Posted Wednesday, February 11, 2026.

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© 2026 Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay

 

The War between Russia and Ukraine has been Brewing Since 1991

By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay

(Author of the book about morals "The Code for Global Ethics" and his book about geopolitics "The New American Empire")

________________________________________________________________________

PREFACE

The war in Ukraine is a senseless war that should not have happened with a minimum of judgement, understanding, and diplomacy.

Ukraine is a buffer state between Russia and NATO countries, armed by the United States.

Many politicians and journalists seem to have forgotten the real historical causes behind the Ukraine war.

In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US Georges H. Bush administration reassured Russia that NATO would not expand "one inch" toward Eastern Europe, provided that Russia would not oppose the reunification of the two Germanies.

Germany was reunified, but subsequent US administrations soon began expanding NATO in the direction of Russia. After a coup that deposed the elected pro-Russian Ukrainian government, in February of 2014, there was even a decision to have Ukraine, a former member of the USSR, join NATO.

This was part of an American neoconservative plan to encircle Russia in order to weaken it geopolitically, militarily, and economically.

That was crossing a red line that the Russian government could not accept, because it meant having NATO missiles at Russian's borders—just as in 1962, the US Kennedy administration could not accept having Soviet missiles in Cuba, only 90 miles from Florida.

When all efforts failed to reverse the encirclement policy—including a last-ditch diplomatic effort in December of 2021—on February 24, 2022, Russia illegally invaded the neighboring Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.

In short, if we consider all the decisions that led to this war, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that it was a provoked war.

(The following article with more details was published on March 3, 2022.)

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"I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War... I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way." George F. Kennan (1904-2005), American diplomat and historian, (in an interview with Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times, May 2, 1998, about the U.S. expansion of NATO)

[NATO's goal is] "to keep the Russians out [of Europe], the Americans in and the Germans down." Hastings L. Ismay (1887-1965), first NATO Secretary-General (1952-1957)

"We [the State Department] have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine." Victoria Nuland (1961- ), Under Secretary at the State Department, in a speech, Dec. 13, 2013.

"The North Atlantic Alliance continues to expand, despite all our protests and concerns... Despite all that, in December 2021, we made yet another attempt to reach agreement with the United States and its allies on the principles of European security and NATO's non-expansion. Our efforts were in vain... For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation." Vladimir Putin (1952- ), Speech to the Nation, Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022.

The tragic and illegal war of aggression launched by Russia (pop. 146 million) against Ukraine (pop. 44 million), its neighbor, on Thurs. February 24, 2022, has raised much emotion and many reactions in the West, and for good reasons.

Most people would much prefer that international conflicts between states be settled through diplomacy, or at the very least, through peaceful arbitration. Unfortunately for humanity, this is not yet the case. It is inadmissible that wars of aggression still rage today. In the end, it is ordinary people, the poor and the young, in particular, who end up paying, often with their lives, for the mistakes and failings of so called 'leaders'.

At a time when weapons are increasingly lethal and destructive, it would appear that there is no longer any credible arbiter in the world to avoid military conflicts. This makes for dangerous times.

Therefore, several questions come to mind.

Will Europe, which was a large battlefield in the first half of the 20th Century, become embroiled in military conflicts again, in the 21st Century? Has the United States, which controls NATO, pushed that alliance's expansion into Eastern Europe and Russia too far? Why do the institutions of peace that the world created after World War II seem to have withered away to the point of being incapable of preventing wars? Is it still possible to reform these institutions in order to prevent the world from falling back into the practices of past centuries?

Considering the complexity of today's world and the divergent interests involved, it could be useful to identify the main reasons for the deterioration of international order over more than the last quarter of a century, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in December 1991.

• There is a clear danger of repeating the mistakes of the past in isolating countries from international life

The brinkmanship policy of isolating, humiliating and threatening foreign countries is a very dangerous approach in international relations. Such a policy, pursued against Germany by the French and other allied powers after World War I (1914-1918), through the imposition of heavy war reparation payments on Germany, is credited with having created the conditions that ultimately led to World War II (1939-1945).

Today, the world is again facing a European war between Russia and Ukraine, a war that should have been avoided, with a little more goodwill, leadership and perspicacity. Also, such a war of aggression illustrates very clearly how humanity risks returning to the geopolitical situation that prevailed before the Second World War.

It was a time when the League of Nations was paralyzed; much like the United Nations is today. It was also a time when major nations had been humiliated during the aftermath of World War I. They harbored resentment towards the victorious countries, which, in their eyes, only looked after their own narrow interests.

Let us remember that the United Nations was created in 1945 to prevent wars. But in the 21st Century, wars of aggression are still with us. Only during the past twenty years, the world has seen two major wars of aggression, both illegal under the U.N. Charter: the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, by the United States and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24 of this year.

This may be an indication that the politico-legal system put in place in 1945 to prevent war is not working, at a time in human history when a war involving nuclear weapons could be more than catastrophic.

• The dangerous mentality prevailing today at the State and Defense Departments in the U.S.

Analysts and decision makers at the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon rely on war games with simulations of military strategies of action-reaction, using computers, as if foreign policy were a kind of video game. That leaves little space for rational thinking, human feelings and imagination.

Relying on such 'games' is very dangerous because such a use of programmed computers could lead to huge mistakes in real life, and because they can make destructive military hostilities seem trivial and inconsequential.

• NATO as a substitute to the United Nations

After the fall of the USSR, in 1991, some so-called 'planners' in the American government saw an opportunity to place the U.S. government as the sole arbiter of international foreign relations in the post-Cold War world. They viewed the United Nations as a cumbersome body where five countries (USA, Russia, China, U.K. and France) held sway over the U.N. Security Council with their veto.

The idea was to rely on the 'defensive' NATO, created in 1949 to secure peace in Europe, with the goal of countering the threat posed then by the Soviet Union. It was believed, no doubt rightly, that NATO would be more favorable than the U.N. to U.S. interventions in the world. However, contrary to the U.N., NATO is a war machine, which has no legitimate mechanism to bring about peace.

Even though in the past the U.S. government has often had the backing of the United Nations for its interventions abroad, humanitarian as well as military—the Korean War (1950-1953) was a good example of the latter—things changed in 1999. Then, under President Bill Clinton, U.S. Armed Forces started a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, under the NATO flag, but without the authorization of the U.N. Security Council. This was a precedent.

Since that questionable decision, all U.S. military interventions abroad have been conducted under the cover of NATO, and not under the U.N. Charter. And that is where the world stands today.

• Why the beleaguered Russia is in a position similar to defeated Germany in the 1930's

The shock of the fall of the Soviet Union was to Russia what the shock suffered after its defeat in the First World War was for Germany. In both cases, these involved large populations subjected to foreign interference, lasting several years. The interests of these two countries were ignored in the new international order.

The fall of the Soviet Union raised two fundamental questions. The first: What would become of the two military defense alliances, the Warsaw Pact of 1955 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of 1949? Both were organizations of mutual assistance, mainly military, against each other during a period of Cold War (1945-1989). The second: How to achieve the reunification of West Germany and the German Democratic Republic (GDR)?

From a geopolitical standpoint, these two questions were interrelated, especially from a Russian point of view. Russia conserves the historical memory of having been invaded by two great armies, by France under Napoleon, in 1812, and by Germany under Hitler, in 1941.

The fall of the Soviet Union meant the automatic dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Would the same be true of NATO? Not necessarily.

Indeed, for the U.S. government, NATO was its main source of influence in Western Europe. Containing the Soviet Union was not the only objective in creating NATO. Therefore, the George H.W. Bush administration and its Secretary of State, James Baker, had no intention of dismantling NATO.

On the Russian side, the position was that if NATO continued to exist, either as a defensive or an offensive military alliance, it was essential that it commit to not expanding into Eastern Europe and not threaten Russia.

Declassified documents show that the government of George H.W. Bush, through his Secretary of State James Baker, and the governments of major member nations of the alliance, were willing to promise the Russian government that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, as long as the Russian government accepted the reunification of the two Germanys (1990-1991). History has recorded the colorful expression of James Baker, on February 9, 1990, to the effect that NATO would not expand "one inch Eastward".

• The growing influence of neoconservatives (neocons) in U.S. foreign policy

American foreign policy changed dramatically in the 1990's, notably under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton (1993-2001), and even more so under the Republican administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009).

Even though President George H.W. Bush used to dismiss the neocons, at least those working in the U.S. government, as "the crazies in the basement" a small group of them did succeed in dominating American foreign policy later on. Their ideas provided the foundations of 'The New American Empire', (which is also the title of a book I wrote in 2004).

The neocon hegemonic mantra was very simple: The United States should take advantage of the demise of the Soviet Union and of its unparalleled military power to impose a "Pax Americana" similar to the Pax Romana during the Roman Empire.

In short, the United States must take advantage of its status as the undisputed military superpower in a unipolar world and adopt a very interventionist foreign policy, while putting emphasis on "national greatness". And above all, they rejected any policy of accommodation or détente with Russia, just as they had done toward the USSR.

Armed with this doctrine, subsequent U.S. administrations, from the Bill Clinton administration on, have more or less followed its dictates. In particular, they have de facto abandoned the U.N. as the arbiter of world peace, and instead have increasingly relied on NATO to impose a Pax Americana.

• The coup that overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014

There is an important event not to forget. In 2014, there was a coup in Ukraine that overthrew the pro-Russian government of President Viktor Yanukovych, elected four years earlier, with strong support from the Russian-speaking population in the eastern part of the country.

The above quote of American Under Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, would indicate that the U.S. government had spent billions of dollars to support various organizations in Ukraine.

In the fall of 2013, a protest movement called the 'Maidan Revolution' began peacefully in Kiev, the country's capital. The protestations were directed against the Ukrainian government and its refusal to sign a bilateral commercial trade agreement with the European Union. However, things escalated when initially peaceful protests turned violent, in February 2014. Then, despite elections being scheduled for May of the same year, the Ukrainian parliament summarily dismissed the incumbent president and formed a new government.

That episode may help in understanding the future turn of events in Ukraine.

• The war between Russia and Ukraine is to a large extent a response to the progressive military encirclement of Russia by NATO

Since 1991, Russia has opposed NATO's eastward expansion and has many times requested security guarantees that this would not happen.

Nevertheless, in spite of promises made by the George H.W. Bush administration and other governments, some subsequent U.S. administrations did go ahead and expand NATO eastward.

For instance, in 1999, the Clinton administration accepted that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic join NATO. In 2002, George W. Bush accepted seven more eastern countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) into NATO. In 2009, it was Albania and Croatia's turn to join. The most recent adhesions to NATO are Montenegro, in 2017, and North Macedonia, in 2020.

Things went even further when, in December 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted to renounce its non-aligned status, a step harshly condemned by its neighbor Russia. Ukraine—a former Soviet republic, which became independent in 1991—has made it clear that it wishes to join NATO. And more recently, in 2021, Ukraine became an official candidate for NATO membership. The rest is history.

• Conclusion

In these troubled times, an outside and independent moral authority should perhaps intervene to prevent the world from falling into the abyss of military conflicts. Possibly, an invitation could be made to either the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, or to Pope Francis, to serve as conciliator, in order to stop the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, before the Ukrainian people suffer irreparable loses, and before other countries intervene and turn the conflict into a world war.

And afterwards, the world had better recapture the spirit of 1945 and set about reforming its international institutions so that they are truly capable of preventing destructive wars, not in theory but in practice.

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire".

He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay's site or email to a friend here.

Posted Wednesday, October 22, 2025, (initially published on March 3, 2022.)

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© 2025 Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay

 

Monday, August 4, 2025

The Moral Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki / 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of August 6 and 9, 1945

By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, Emeritus professor of economics, Université de Montréal

"We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.... This weapon is to be used against Japan ... [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. ...  The target will be a purely military one... It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful." Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd U.S. President, (Diary, July 25, 1945)

"The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd U.S. President, (radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945)

".. In [July] 1945... Secretary of War [Henry L.] Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. ...During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.

It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude."

General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and 34th U.S. President from 1952 to 1960, (Mandate For Change, p. 380)

"Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate stage of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquests [...] This can no longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell and reason."

Albert Camus (1913-1960), French philosopher and author, August 8, 1945"

As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one's judgment of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible."

The American Federal Council of Churches' Report on Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith, 1946

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."

William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (“I Was There”, p. 441).

Next Wednesday and Saturday will mark the 80th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The following is a reproduction of an article originally published on August 12, 2010.

When U.S. President Harry S. Truman decided on his own to use the atom bomb, a barbarous weapon of mass destruction, against the Japanese civilian populations of the cities of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki on August 6 and on August 9, 1945, the United States sided officially on the wrong side of history. 

Indeed, U.S. President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) gave the green light to drop the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which then had a population of approximately 350,000. He also gave the order to repeat the carnage three days later and to drop a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, a then population of 240,000. During these two attacks, more than 210,000 people died in horrific circumstances in these two Japanese cities.

It seems that no consideration of basic human morality entered into Truman's fateful decision, only military considerations and a geopolitical reason, i.e. to prevent the victorious Soviet Union in Europe from invading Japan and force a partition of the country, just as has happened in Europe with Nazi Germany.

General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and 34th U.S. President from 1952 to 1960, said it in so many words: "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."  (Newsweek, November 11, 1963). It seems that military man Eisenhower was more ethical than Freemason small-town politician Harry S. Truman regarding the fateful decision.

In being the first country to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations, the United States was then in direct violation of internationally accepted principles of war with respect to the wholesale and indiscriminate destruction of populations. Thus, August 1945 is a most dangerous and ominous precedent that marked a new dismal beginning in the history of humanity, a big moral step backward.

In future generations, it most certainly will be considered that the use of the atom bomb against the Japanese civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a historic crime against humanity that will stain the reputation of the United States for centuries to come. It can also be said that President Harry S. Truman, besides lying to the American people about the whole sordid affair (see official quotes above), has left behind him a terrible moral legacy of incalculable consequences to future generations of Americans.

Many self-serving reasons have been advanced for justifying Truman's decision, such as the objective of saving the lives of American soldiers by shortening the war in the Pacific and avoiding a military invasion of Japan with a quick Japanese surrender. That surrender came on August 15, 1945 and it was made official on September 2 with the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, nearly one month after the bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Nazi Germany had capitulated on May 8, 1945 and World War II was already over in Europe. There was also the diplomatic fear that the Soviet Red Army could have invaded Japan, as they had done in Berlin, thus depriving the United States of a hard fought clear-cut victory against Japan.

But by the end of July 1945, according to military experts, the Japanese military apparatus had de facto been defeated. It is also true that the militarist Japanese Supreme Council for the Direction of the War was stalling with the aim of getting better capitulation terms hoping for a negotiated settlement, especially regarding the future role of their Emperor Hirohito as formal head of state.

In Europe, the allies had caused a recalcitrant Nazi Germany to accept an unconditional surrender and there were other military means to force the Japanese government to surrender. The convenient pretext of rushing a surrender carries no weight compared to the enormity of using the nuclear weapon on two civilian targets. 

And even if President Truman was anxious to demonstrate the power of the atom bomb and impress Soviet allies—and possibly also assert himself as a political figure vis-à-vis previous President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died a few months earlier, on April 12, 1945—this could have been done while targeting remote Japanese military targets, not on targeting entire cities. It seems that there were no moral considerations in this most inhuman decision.

Conclusion

Since that fateful month of August 1945, humanity has embarked upon a disastrous nuclear arms race and is rushing toward oblivion with its eyes open and its mind closed.

__________________________________________________

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and of his recent book, in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018". 

He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay's site or email to a friend here.

Posted Monday, August 4, 2025. 

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Donald Trump's Autocratic One-Man Government Regime is Doomed to Failure, but Not Before a Lot of Chaos and Destruction

Tuesday July 1, 2025

By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, Emeritus professor of economics, Université de Montréal

"I won't be a dictator, except for day one." Donald Trump (1946- ), during an interview with Fox News, December 6, 2023.

"If it is forced to defend itself (the U.S.) or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea." Donald Trump (1946- ), in a speech at the United Nations, September 19, 2017.

"If they [Iran] don't make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before." Donald Trump (1946- ), in a NBC News phone interview, March 30, 2025, with similar threats repeated on June 15, 2025, on his social media site Truth Social.

"We will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens." Donald Trump (1946- ), in his inaugural speech, January 20, 2025.

"Trade wars are good and easy to win." Donald Trump (1946- ), comment made on Twitter, March 2, 2024.

I- Every hundred years or so, there seems to be a cycle of the death of a democracy and the rise of a dictatorship in an important country

The British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)) observed that "civilisations die by suicide, not by murder", as a result of moral decay, social strife or failure to adapt.

The same could be said of democracies. They are born, grow, prosper, age, and sometimes collapse and give way to plutocracies or to dictatorships. This is especially likely when democracies fail to solve major economic and social problems.

Indeed, over the past few centuries, a political revolution or a wave of collective madness or of collective ignorance have occasionally led to a dictatorship in a given country. At the beginning of the 19th century, this was the case in France, in 1804, with the consecration of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), of Corsican origin.

In the 20th century, it was Russia's turn to have a revolutionary government, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), after the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. This was followed by Joseph Stalin's (1878-1953) absolute dictatorship from 1924 to 1953. —Then Italy descended also into a totalitarian dictatorship in 1925, under Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) —followed by Germany, in 1933, with the rise to power of the dictator of Austrian origin, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).

—In the 21st century, against all odds, it is the United States that is now facing the prospect of an autocratic government.

It is always a challenge for a democracy to survive over time. Given the right circumstances, even the best constitutions can be violated and trampled upon.

History is there to remind us that democracy, that is, in the time-honored phrase of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), when we have a "government of the people, by the people and for the people" (in his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863), is not necessarily a fundamentally natural and stable reality.

In fact, oligarchies, plutocracies, would-be dictators and their allies may sometimes find it to their advantage to seize power in a country and to subjugate the population. [N.B.: The average intelligence quotient in a large population, i.e. the IQ score, is around 100. (It is currently in decline in Western countries.) Therefore, there could be many possibilities for some unscrupulous people to manipulate large segments of the population to their advantage.]

II-Donald Trump the Politician: His dangerous character and personality flaws

The current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump (1946- ), seems to have ambitioned to transfer his one-man business model into a one-man US government model, and thus satisfy his innate fixation and low instincts for predation, extortion, exploitation and domination.

Moreover, it has been widely reported that his first wife Ivana confirmed that he kept a book of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's speeches, 'My New Order', on his bedside table.

There could be some similarity between Trump's authoritarianism and anti-democratic and neo-imperialist tendencies, and those of past dictators, considering his hyper egotistical personality and his populist and ultra-nationalist, sometimes violent, rhetoric.

The aid and support that D. Trump gave to the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021, and to their assault on the Capitol in their attempt to reverse the electoral results of 2020, and the fact that he pardoned almost all of them on January 21, 2025, add weight to this assessment.

Moreover, Donald Trump is the first person criminally convicted to occupy the White House, and he has also been condemned 34 times as a felon besides being widely considered an autocrat.

III- Donald Trump would seem to be unqualified to be President of the United States

One would have to be asleep, blind, deaf or very distracted not to see that politician D. Trump is not a normal and balanced individual, let alone a steady person of integrity, empathy, decency, competence, humility, prudence and responsibility.

Since his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has been a factor of chaos unto himself and a great source of political, economic and financial instability, not only for the United States but for all countries that have relations with his country.

With his impetuous pronouncements, his lies and boastings, insults, incendiary threats and bully tactics, D. Trump has revealed a whole series of personality disorders that should be of concern in a head of government. —He doesn't seem to have friends, only servants and potential enemies whom he insults in order to discredit them, humiliate them, destabilize and silence them. 

Moreover, while acting as an autocrat, like other autocrats before him, Donald Trump can be expected to launch his country into unprovoked and illegal wars of aggression against other nations, if this is to his advantage.

Conclusion

Democracy is presently threatened in some Western countries, notably in the United States.

There is a real danger that the ominous move to plutocracy on the date of January 21, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates to unlimited amounts of money in American electoral politics, could one day lead to the instauration of an autocratic form of government in the United States.

The risk exists that current President Donald Trump and his administration of sycophants and rich oligarchs could push the US Constitution aside and could behave as de facto autocrats, thus imposing a one-man centralized Trump administration, while challenging the courts to stop them.

There is also a very great risk that such an individual, deeply self-centered, constantly self-congratulating and lacking in judgment and morals, could become the most serious risk to peace, creating chaos not only in his own country but also in the world.

As a general rule, an incompetent politician who surrounds himself with competent advisors can get by. However, if he is short-sighted enough to surround himself with like-minded people, failure becomes a certainty and disasters are bound to follow.

Let us hope that Americans could have the courage to save their country and save their Constitution, their democracy, and the rule of law, as well as their freedom and their prosperity. The world would only be a better place for it.

__________________________________________________________________

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and of his recent book, in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018". 

He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay's site or email to a friend here.

Posted Tuesday, July1, 2025. 

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Global Economic Chaos: Multilateralism VS Unilateralism and their Consequences

Wednesday June 4, 2025

By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, Emeritus professor of economics, Université de Montréal

"After all, an overvalued dollar gives us the ability to buy foreign goods at lower prices. And the existing volume of exports brings more yen and euros than they would if the dollar were more competitive." Martin Feldstein (1939-2019), American economist.

"The power of taxation by currency depreciation is one which has been inherent in the State since Rome discovered it. The creation of legal-tender has been and is a government's ultimate reserve; and no state or government is likely to decree its own bankruptcy or its own downfall, so long as this instrument still lies at hand unused." John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British economist.

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens...There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a  million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British economist.

Leaders of major countries can approach international economic relations from two main perspectives. Firstly, they can adopt a multilateral economic cooperation format or the multilateralist way, in order to reach a large and stable consensus about international solutions to problems and to resolve issues. Secondly, they could opt instead to rely on a more expedite and more risky way, the go-it-alone or the unilateralist way, which runs the risk of being conflictual and chaotic.

Since World War II, both approaches have been tried, in 1944, 1971, 1985 and 2025.

1- The 1944 Bretton Woods system

In July 1944, under the leadership of the Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt administration (1933-1945), forty-four nations were convened for a conference in Bretton Woods, in the US state of New Hampshire, with the purpose of establishing a post-war international monetary and financial system, later known as the Bretton Woods system.

It was based on the US dollar being tied to gold, while the latter could be sold to and bought from other governments at the agreed price of $35 per once. Other convertible currencies were being pegged to the US dollar through stable exchange rates to be altered only in cases of "fundamental disequilibrium", under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

2- The making of the US dollar fiat currency

The Bretton Woods monetary system lasted 27 years, until the Republican Richard D. Nixon administration (1969-1974) decided, on its own, to modify it substantially.

Indeed, on August 15, 1971, the US Nixon administration unilaterally announced that the US dollar was no longer convertible into gold. That meant that the dollar was no longer backed by gold and had become a fiat currency, under the control of the American Federal banking system.

Other countries reacted to the unilateral American decision by adopting floating exchange rates for their own currencies. Countries that were oil exporters and members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) caused a quadrupling of the international oil price, an energy crisis and a rise of inflation worldwide. This was the main cause of the severe and global 1973-1975 recession. It also meant the end of the post-WWII economic boom.

The entire1970 decade was a period of rampant inflation, high unemployment and of slow economic growth, a situation of stagflation. Indeed, when the oil price doubled in 1979, this was followed by two successive economic recessions in 1980 and 1981-1982.

3- The Plaza Accord of New York City in 1985

In the aftermath of the severe 1981-1982 economic recession, the Republican Ronald Reagan administration (1981-1989) feared the US dollar was overvalued, especially relative to the Japanese yen and the German Deutschmark, under the pressure of international demand for dollar assets.

In order to avoid the pitfalls of the 1971 Nixon's unilateral approach, the Reagan administration convened the G-5 countries of France, West Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The purpose was to relieve the pressure on the US dollar and to weaken the dollar in order to reduce the mounting U.S. trade deficit.

The result was the joint agreement of the Plaza Accord, which was signed on September 22, 1985, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. It called for allowing the US dollar to depreciate through a coordinated intervention in currency markets. It lasted until the Louvre Accord ended it, in February 1987.

4- There is an international loss of confidence in the Trump administration 2.0 and its economic policies

Before President Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2025, the US economy, by most economic indicators, had been the most prosperous among most if not all Western economies; its rate of real economic growth (2.8%) in 2024, was higher than other advanced economies; its unemployment rate was at a virtual full employment level (4,0%), and its inflation rate was still stable and under control (2.9%).

Nevertheless, President Trump has been wreaking havoc on the American economy and is disrupting the international trading system with his inflammatory statements. Some of them are truly confusing and incoherent.

Indeed, the flip-flopping uncertainty surrounding the imposition of unilateral tariffs on imports from various countries, as well as the insults, threats, and even ultimatums issued against these countries, are severely harming business investment, employment and business decisions in general. In addition, it slows down multilateral international trade, shakes financial markets, and undermines the United States' reputation around the world.

Similarly, the Trump administration is pursuing conflicting and even contradictory economic goals, such as wishing to depreciate the US dollar in order to improve the US trade balance, while at the same time wishing to preserve the international reserve status of the dollar and threatening other countries who seek to abandon the dollar in their international transactions with more American financial sanctions and additional punitive tariffs.

A large public budget deficit, financed in part by foreign borrowings, tends to create an external trade deficit.

However, for years, the U.S. federal government has been accumulating budgetary deficits upon deficits. (The last year there was a surplus was 2000.) In which case, the sale of Treasury bonds to foreign investors appreciates the dollar, and this encourages imports and harms exports, resulting in a chronic trade deficit in the U.S. balance of payments. —If the Trump 2.0 administration wants to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, it should balance the federal budget.

Currently, some foreign creditors holding dollar assets, especially those from China and Japan, are increasingly losing confidence in the Trump administration. They have begun to offload some of their dollar-denominated securities and will be reluctant to purchase new U.S. debt. The result will be a rise in 10-year and longer-term interest rates, which will be a major threat to US economic growth, especially in the US housing market.

5- The high risks of resorting to unilateral provocative trade policies and threats

The Trump administration 2.0 has chosen to impose unilateral tariffs on imports of foreign goods from many countries by presidential decrees (using the pretext of a situation of national security). The implied purpose is to raise public revenues, presumably in order to cover the fiscal cost of renewing the large tax cuts for corporations and for richer Americans, enacted in 2017.

As it should have been expected, such a unilateral approach incited other nations to retaliate and to raise reciprocal tariffs against American exports. Such a dangerous trade war could easily lead to a lose-lose economic proposition for all countries of the world, as international trade contracts and economies also contract.

President Trump's tariffs are bound to push domestic prices up and any net outflow of capital from the U.S. would depreciate the dollar. These are two causes of inflation. However, because the trade war will hurt American exports and slow down economic growth, the net result would likely be a situation of stagflation. That is why an OECD report predicts that not only would most countries be losers in Trump's trade war, but that the United States will suffer the most.

Indeed, considering the high levels of public indebtedness coupled with high unfunded public obligations (unfunded future pensions and other expenditures, etc.) the next decade could force many governments to rely on inflation and to a debasement of their fiat currencies, to lower the real burden of their public debts and obligations.

It seems that there still is some costly confusion about Trump's global trade war and about who can levy tariffs in the United States. An important federal court recently ruled that Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs based on an obscure federal emergency powers law is an abuse of power, since the US Constitution reserves the right to impose taxes to the House of Representatives. Indeed, on May 28, the U.S. Court of International Trade suspended most of the tariffs imposed through executive orders and stated that President D. Trump has exceeded his constitutional powers. 

Another court, on Thursday May 29, also blocked the Trump administration from levying any tariffs on imported goods under the so-called April 2 "Liberation Day" orders. (But the chaos continues, since a federal appeals court has temporarily reinstated Trump's tariffs for now!)

Conclusion

To end the current global economic chaos, a return to a multilateral approach to international economic relations would be needed.

If this is not done, the unilateral and irresponsible approach of the current US administration in its international economic relations could lead to the collapse of the multilateral system of international trade and finance. Indeed, since its inauguration, the Trump administration has acted as if it wanted to erect a Tariff Curtain around the United States.

Since 1945, no other American administration has been so intent on isolating the United States from the rest of the world economically, while adopting inward looking policies.

As the disastrous experience of the 1930's clearly demonstrates, if the Trump administration persists in relying religiously on a policy of unilateral and punitive tariffs against other nations, and as other nations retaliate, this is likely to trigger a global financial and economic slowdown, which would benefit no country. As a consequence, the next decade could also be a repeat of the 1970's economically, but also possibly even worse.

Indeed, any unilateral attempt to reshape the global trading and financial system to benefit only the United States is a pipe dream, which is likely to hurt the entire world economy and especially the United States.

__________________________________________________________________

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and of his recent book, in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018". 

He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay's site or email to a friend here.

Posted Wednesday, June 4, 2025. Updated Friday, June 13, 2025.

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