Weaponizing America’s Economy in Service of Israel

By Jamal Kanj

Economic warfare is only the opening act. The dollar is not the only weapon Washington deploys on Israel’s behalf. When sanctions fail, the saber comes out.

Empires rarely fall on the battlefield; they implode under the weight of their own arrogance and corruption. The hubris radiating from the White House suggests that this old imperial truth is once again asserting itself.

Unable to compete in the global economy it once championed, Washington now weaponizes its economy, turning trade, finance, currency, and credit into instruments of blackmail. Washington has changed the “rules-based international order” into tariffs, sanctions, asset seizures, secondary penalties, and financial intimidation. Economic power morphed from competition and as a means of exchange into a tool of retribution. Nowhere is this tool used more obsessively by the US government than in service of Israel.

Long before Israel’s genocide in Gaza, successive US administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, abandoned any pretense of restraining the increasingly unhinged Jewish supremacist state. Instead of enforcing international law, Washington built a parallel system of economic and diplomatic power to shield Israel from accountability. The US vetoed UN Security Council resolutions demanding ceasefires, or end the starvation of 2.3 million human beings in Gaza, sanctioned international courts, punished UN officials, pressured humanitarian organizations and national leaders who dared to insist that Israeli crimes be judged by the same standards applied to all nations.

At the center of this economic war is the overstretched US dollar. Because global trade, energy markets, and financial clearing remain, so far, overwhelmingly dollar-denominated and routed through US-controlled institutions, giving Washington the power to cut nations, banks, and individuals off from the arteries of global commerce. This uniquely American privilege, once served as an assurance for nations to own this stabilizing pillar, has become a bludgeon on behalf of Israel.

At Israel-first command, the United States has weaponized sanctions against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq,Yemen, Venezuela, students, educators, civil society groups, and countless individuals, many with no connection to military activity whatsoever. Their “crime”? Exposing Israeli war crimes or daring to question US complicity. The message is unmistakable: defy Tel Aviv’s engineered US foreign policy, and your economy, your institutions, your very life chances, can be crushed.

But the cost of remaining beholden to Israel-first dogma is rising fast. Countries across the Global South and emerging economies are insulating themselves from US financial reach. The BRICS bloc—approximately 40% of the global economy—has moved to settle trade in local currencies, build different payment systems, and bypass dollar-dominated infrastructure. Beyond BRICS, new trade and investment frameworks across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and even Europe are designed to reduce exposure to Washington’s overextended financial cudgel.

Many of these countries are not ideological antagonists of the United States, but long-standing trade partners deeply integrated into the US-led global economy. They are abandoning the dollar, not out of defiance, but as a reflexive response to the unpredictable American financial bullying. What was once the world’s safest store of value has been transformed into an insecure asset. Dollar-denominated reserves accumulated through trade, profits, and surplus can now be frozen or confiscated at the stroke of a presidential pen. Executive orders have rewritten the rules of the global system where sovereign financial assets held in the United States can be held hostage.

In this environment, reliance on the dollar is no longer protection; it is a leash. US dollar reserves that once insulated nations from economic shocks now leave them exposed to political coercion, asset seizures, and financial warfare. For governments safeguarding their national savings, holding dollars is no longer prudent portfolio management; it is a strategic vulnerability to Washington’s imperial agenda.

Even America’s closest trade partners are looking elsewhere. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canada’s prime minister warned that the world is “in the midst of a rupture,” and spoke of the erosion of the “rules-based order.” And when he said, “Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships,” he was not addressing China or Russia. His words were directed at Washington’s growing tendency to use trade and currency as weapons rather than instruments of cooperation.

Trump, like Biden before him, is not protecting American financial dominion or leadership. By weaponizing economic power, he is undermining the very system that sustains America’s prosperity and growth. The irony is vivid: when subordinating the US dollar and economy to the service of a foreign state, Washington is accelerating de-dollarization, fostering parallel financial systems, fueling competing trading blocs, and effectively letting Israel murder the American golden goose.

Economic warfare is only the opening act. The dollar is not the only weapon Washington deploys on Israel’s behalf. When sanctions fail, the saber comes out. When financial pressure does not deliver to Israel, American firepower is sent in to finish the job. These are wars sold through outright lies, financed by debt, and paid for with the blood of American soldiers and the stolen futures of American taxpayers.

The Zionist machinery of manufactured threats, laundered through Israeli-managed American media and pushed by Israel-firsters in the Trump administration, is once again grinding into motion. The Israeli leader who lied to Congress on September 12, 2002 to drag the US into Iraq’s quagmire has returned, now even more determined, to lure America into a new made-for-Israel war in Iran.

– Jamal Kanj (jamalkanj.com) is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Palestine/Arab world issues for various national and international publications. He contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.