Date of Award

Spring 5-16-2026

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Advisor(s)

Sarah P. Lockhart, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Caley Johnson, Ph.D.

Abstract

For nearly a century, the United States has occupied the title as the world’s leading superpower nation. Such power has granted the US great economic responsibility, particularly highlighting the dollar’s dominant role as the international reserve and trade currency. However, the rise of competing powers– most notably China and Russia– have posed great threats to this continued economic dominance of the United States. This thesis examines how U.S. economic sanctions– often described as America’s greatest financial tool– have inadvertently motivated de-dollarization efforts led by these two nations. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in foreign affairs, international political economy, and intergovernmental financial data, this study analyzes the mechanisms which incentivize the mitigation of this reliance on the US financial system within these transcontinental nations. Utilizing the imposition of American-based sanctions on China’s and Russia’s foreign economic affairs, from 2012 to 2022, I argue that sanctions not only motivate these nations to de-dollarize, rather they catalyze such actions by accelerating the rising status of competing superpower nations (such as China and Russia) and promoting an erosion of trust within the existing American dollar as a reserve currency itself. My findings suggest that both China and Russia view this American sanction regime as a strong overreach and overextension of their power– subjugating them, and others on the receiving end, to strict American monitoring and fostering apprehensive sentiments to continue their submission to this American domination. As a result of such, these very nations are now presented with the opportunity to rise to a status inching towards American supremacy, promoting their own currencies of the ruble and the yuan as alternative mediums for international trade and reserve accumulation. My findings also unveil the possibility for one of the most substantial structural shifts in global financial power since WWII– a shift away from the economic hegemony of the liberal West through an emerging uncertainty of power towards non-Western authoritarian nations seeking greater autonomy within the international monetary order.

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