The Philosophical Architecture of Financial Power
To understand the relationship between military supremacy, dollar hegemony, and Swiss banking compliance, one must first excavate the philosophical foundations upon which the entire edifice of modern financial power rests. This is not merely a question of economics or international relations; it is a question of ontology—the nature of being and power itself—and epistemology—how we come to know and legitimize systems of control.
Thomas Hobbes, writing in the aftermath of the English Civil War, articulated a truth that remains uncomfortable for liberal internationalists: covenants, without the sword, are but words.
In the Leviathan, Hobbes argued that contracts and laws possess no binding force absent a sovereign power capable of enforcing them through violence or the credible threat thereof. This insight applies with devastating precision to the international monetary system.
The United States dollar is, in its essence, a covenant. It is a promise—backed by the full faith and credit of the US government—that a piece of paper or a digital entry holds value. But in the anarchic realm of international relations, where there is no world government to adjudicate disputes or enforce contracts, what makes this promise credible? The answer, historically and structurally, is the United States military. The dollar is not merely a currency; it is a security instrument. It functions because the entity that issues it possesses the capacity to enforce the conditions under which that currency circulates.
This is the Hobbesian logic of dollar supremacy: the Federal Reserve can print money, but only the Pentagon can guarantee its global acceptance. The US Navy’s carrier strike groups, patrolling the Strait of Hormuz and the South China Sea, are not merely instruments of territorial defense; they are the ultimate guarantors of the dollar’s value. They ensure that oil flows freely, that trade routes remain open, and that nations hostile to US interests cannot disrupt the physical infrastructure upon which dollar-denominated commerce depends.
When Swiss banks accept the dollar as the primary reserve currency, when they agree to clear transactions through US correspondent banks, when they submit to US Treasury demands for client information, they are not making a purely economic calculation. They are making a geopolitical calculation that rests on a philosophical assumption: that the United States will remain the guarantor of the system. That assumption is rooted in the belief that American military power is unchallengeable. When that belief erodes, the entire covenant begins to dissolve.
The German jurist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt provides another critical lens through which to understand the relationship between power and financial law. Schmitt argued that sovereignty is defined by the power to declare the exception—the ability to suspend normal legal rules in times of crisis. The sovereign is he who decides when the normal order no longer applies and extraordinary measures are justified.
The United States has effectively exercised Schmittian sovereignty over the global financial system since the end of World War II. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) can freeze assets, the Treasury can designate individuals as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs), and the Department of Justice can indict foreign banks for violating US sanctions.
These actions are not products of international law; they are exercises of extraterritorial sovereign exception. The US declares that certain transactions, certain individuals, certain regimes are outside the bounds of acceptable financial conduct, and it demands that the rest of the world comply.
Swiss banks, more than most, understand this dynamic. They have lived under the American exception since the UBS crisis of 2008-2009, when the US Department of Justice effectively forced Switzerland to abandon centuries of banking secrecy law. The message was clear: when the United States declares a financial state of exception, neutral states must comply or face exclusion from the dollar system.
But Schmitt also understood that sovereignty is not merely legal; it is existential. The power to declare the exception rests on the capacity to enforce that declaration. A sovereign who declares an exception but cannot enforce it ceases to be sovereign. This is the precise situation facing the United States today.
The US continues to declare financial exceptions—sanctions on Russia, on China, on Iran—but its capacity to enforce these exceptions is eroding. The military foundation that once made these declarations binding is fracturing. And when the sword behind the exception weakens, the exception itself becomes meaningless.
Foucault and the Biopolitics of Financial Surveillance
Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower—the regulation of populations through systems of knowledge, surveillance, and discipline—offers a third philosophical dimension to this analysis. Foucault argued that modern states exercise power not merely through violence but through the creation of categories, the collection of information, and the internalization of norms.
The AML/KYC regime that the United States has imposed on Swiss banks is a quintessential expression of financial biopower. It operates through surveillance—the monitoring of transactions, the collection of beneficial ownership information, the filing of suspicious activity reports. It operates through categorization—the designation of certain individuals as “politically exposed persons,” certain countries as “high-risk jurisdictions,” certain transactions as “suspicious.” And it operates through discipline—the internalization of compliance norms within bank culture, the creation of compliance departments, the training of employees to think in terms of risk and suspicion.
But Foucault also recognized that biopower is not self-sustaining. It rests on a foundation of sovereign power—the capacity to impose order through violence or the threat thereof. The surveillance apparatus of the modern financial system requires a sovereign guarantor. Someone must stand behind the categories, the rules, the designations. Someone must be willing and able to punish those who violate the norms.
The United States has played this role for decades. The DOJ’s prosecution of BNP Paribas in 2014—which resulted in a nearly $9 billion fine for sanctions violations—demonstrated that American financial surveillance was backed by real coercive power. But that coercive power was itself backed by something deeper: the structural position of the United States in the global security order. When that structural position erodes, the biopolitical apparatus of financial surveillance loses its teeth. The surveillance continues, but it becomes performative—a ritual of compliance without substance, a bureaucratic theater that satisfies formal requirements while masking the underlying reality of non-enforcement.
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony provides the final philosophical pillar for this analysis. Gramsci argued that ruling classes maintain power not merely through coercion but through the manufacture of consent. Dominant ideas become naturalized; the existing order comes to seem inevitable, even desirable.
The global financial order of the past seven decades has been sustained by a form of Gramscian hegemony. The dollar’s supremacy was not merely imposed by force; it was internalized as natural. Central banks held dollars because everyone held dollars. Investors bought US Treasuries because they were considered “risk-free.” Swiss banks complied with US regulations because compliance was seen as the price of admission to the only legitimate financial system.
But Gramsci also understood that hegemony is never permanent. It must be constantly reproduced through a combination of material concessions and ideological labor. And crucially, Gramsci recognized that hegemony rests on a foundation of coercion. The consent of the governed is ultimately backed by the threat of force. When the coercive foundation crumbles, the hegemonic order enters a period of crisis—what Gramsci called the “interregnum,” when “the old is dying, and the new cannot be born.”
We are now entering such an interregnum in the global financial system. The old hegemonic order—dollar supremacy backed by American military might—is dying. The new order—whatever form it may take—has not yet been born. In this interregnum, Swiss compliance with American AML/KYC demands becomes increasingly hollow. The consent that once seemed natural is now revealed as contingent. The coercion that once seemed absolute is now exposed as fragile. Swiss banks will continue to go through the motions of compliance, but the meaning of that compliance will have fundamentally changed. They will comply not because they believe in the system, not because they fear the consequences of non-compliance, but because they are waiting to see what comes next.
The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline
The framework above establishes that dollar supremacy—and therefore the extraterritorial reach of US financial law—rests on a foundation of military coercion. This section provides a detailed military assessment of the erosion of that foundation.
The unipolar moment that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was historically anomalous. For roughly two decades, the United States possessed military capabilities so overwhelming that no rival could challenge its dominance in any domain of warfare. This unipolarity was the silent guarantor of the post-Cold War financial order. The dollar’s supremacy was underwritten by the fact that no other state could credibly threaten the security architecture that made dollar-denominated trade possible.
That moment has ended.
The rise of China as a peer competitor, the resurgence of Russian military assertiveness, and the diffusion of advanced military technologies to middle powers and non-state actors have collectively eroded the structural advantages that underpinned American hegemony.
China’s military modernization since the late 1990s represents the most significant shift in the global balance of power since the rise of the United States in the late 19th century. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has transformed from a mass conscript force into a technologically sophisticated military designed specifically to counter American strengths.
- (A2/AD): China has developed the world’s most comprehensive A2/AD capability. The DF-21D and DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles, the DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle, and a dense network of land-based anti-aircraft systems create a “no-go zone” for US naval forces within the First Island Chain. This means that in any conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea, US carrier strike groups—the primary instrument of American power projection—would be operating under constant threat.
- Naval Expansion: The PLAN is now the largest navy in the world by ship count, with over 350 vessels. While the US Navy retains qualitative advantages, China’s shipbuilding capacity is vastly superior, with commercial shipyards capable of producing warships at a rate the United States cannot match. The Type 055 destroyer, the Type 075 amphibious assault ship, and the forthcoming Type 003 aircraft carrier represent a generational leap in Chinese naval capability.
- Space and Cyber: China has demonstrated the ability to destroy satellites (2007 ASAT test) and has invested heavily in cyber warfare capabilities. These investments target the US military’s command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) infrastructure—the backbone of American military superiority.
The Russian Challenge
While Russia’s economy is far smaller than China’s or America’s, it retains significant military capabilities, particularly in the nuclear and conventional deterrence domains.
- Nuclear Modernization: Russia has invested heavily in modernizing its nuclear triad, including the development of hypersonic delivery systems (Avangard, Kinzhal) and the Poseidon nuclear-armed underwater drone. These systems are designed to circumvent American missile defense capabilities, ensuring Russia’s ability to inflict an existential end on any state in any nuclear exchange.
- Conventional Asymmetry: Russia’s demonstrated ability to use “hybrid warfare”—combining conventional forces, information operations, cyber attacks, and proxy forces—has complicated the US security calculus in Europe. The 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, revealing significant Russian military strength, have also demonstrated that Russia is willing to use force to challenge the post-Cold War order and that the United States is unwilling to intervene directly.
Beyond state-based challenges, the diffusion of advanced military technologies has eroded the US advantage. Precision-guided munitions, drones, and cyber weapons are now within reach of middle powers and even non-state actors.
The Houthi movement in Yemen has used Iranian-supplied drones and missiles to attack Saudi oil infrastructure and disrupt Red Sea shipping. This demonstrates that even relatively weak actors can now threaten the physical infrastructure of global trade—a development that directly undermines the security guarantee that underpins dollar supremacy.
The United States’ post-9/11 military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere were intended to demonstrate American resolve and reshape the strategic environment. Instead, they have had the opposite effect.
Afghanistan
The twenty-year war in Afghanistan, ending in the Taliban’s rapid reconquest of the country in August 2021, was a strategic failure of historic proportions. The United States spent over $2 trillion, lost over 2,400 American lives, and ultimately failed to prevent the return of the very regime it had toppled in 2001. The chaotic withdrawal from Kabul—with Americans and Afghan allies left behind—sent an unmistakable signal to allies and adversaries alike:
American security guarantees are not reliable.
Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified by false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and resulted in a destabilization that persists to this day. The war killed hundreds of thousands of people, empowered Iran’s regional influence, and created the conditions for the rise of ISIS. The Iraq war demonstrated that American military power, while capable of toppling regimes, is far less capable of building stable political orders—a lesson that has profound implications for the credibility of American security guarantees.
These failures have created a crisis of credibility. The United States’ security umbrella—its nuclear deterrent, its naval presence, its conventional forces—is only effective if allies and adversaries believe that the US will actually use these capabilities. The failure to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the reluctance to intervene directly in Syria, and the abandonment of Afghanistan have all eroded that belief. If the United States is unwilling to use its military power to defend its declared interests and allies, what value does the security guarantee have? And if the security guarantee is worthless, what value does the dollar have as a security-backed currency?
The erosion of American military supremacy is not merely a matter of strategy and credibility; it is also a matter of fiscal sustainability. The United States military-industrial complex has become a parasitic institution that consumes an ever-growing share of national resources while producing diminishing returns in terms of actual security.
The US defense budget is larger than the next ten countries combined, yet this spending has not produced proportional military advantages. The F-35 fighter program, for example, has cost over $1.7 trillion and produced an aircraft that is plagued by reliability problems and performance limitations. The Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program was a $30 billion failure. The Army’s Future Combat Systems program was canceled after spending $18 billion without producing a single deployable vehicle.
Moreover, the United States’ ability to sustain its military spending is increasingly dependent on its ability to borrow money. The national debt now exceeds $34 trillion, and annual interest payments on that debt are approaching $1 trillion—more than the entire defense budget. This creates a dangerous circularity: the dollar’s supremacy allows the US to borrow cheaply, but the borrowing is necessary to sustain the military that guarantees the dollar’s supremacy. If the military guarantee erodes, the dollar’s supremacy erodes, which makes borrowing more expensive, which makes it harder to sustain the military. This is the death spiral of hegemonic decline.
In fact, every dollar spent on the military is a dollar not spent on infrastructure, education, healthcare, or research and development. The United States’ comparative advantage in the 21st century lies in technology, innovation, and human capital—not in the ability to project military force. Yet the political economy of the United States systematically diverts resources toward the latter at the expense of the former. This is not merely inefficient; it is self-defeating. The United States is investing in the instruments of its decline while neglecting the sources of its potential renewal.
The erosion of American military supremacy has direct and specific consequences for the ability of the United States to enforce its financial regulations extraterritorially.
Never forgetting, “dollar weaponization”—the ability to exclude individuals, institutions, and states from the dollar-denominated financial system—has been the primary instrument of American financial enforcement. It worked because exclusion from the dollar system was catastrophic. No bank, no corporation, no country could survive without access to dollar clearing, dollar credit, and dollar-denominated trade.
But the dollar weapon is only effective if the dollar system remains the only game in town. The erosion of American military credibility is driving the creation of alternatives. China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) now processes transactions in RMB. Russia has developed its own SPFS system. India and other countries are exploring bilateral currency swap agreements. The BRICS nations are discussing the creation of a common currency. Their existence is a direct consequence of the erosion of the security guarantee that made the dollar supreme.
Swiss banks have historically complied with US financial demands because the cost of non-compliance—exclusion from the dollar system—was existential. But as alternatives to the dollar emerge, that cost diminishes. A Swiss bank that is excluded from dollar clearing can increasingly fall back on other currencies and other systems. The threat that once compelled compliance is losing its power.
Moreover, the Swiss calculation is not merely economic; it is also geopolitical. Switzerland’s neutrality has always been a survival strategy. In a world where the United States can no longer guarantee the security of the global order, Switzerland’s interest lies in hedging its bets—maintaining good relations with all powers, including those the United States regards as adversaries. This means that Swiss banks will be increasingly reluctant to enforce US sanctions against Russian oligarchs, Chinese officials, or other designated individuals. The risk of angering Washington is increasingly outweighed by the risk of alienating other power centers.
We can never forget that the United States’ ability to enforce its financial regulations has always depended on the belief that it would actually follow through on its threats. The DOJ’s prosecution of BNP Paribas in 2014, the Treasury’s designation of individuals under the Magnitsky Act, the OFAC’s enforcement actions—these were effective because they were credible. The message was clear: violate US sanctions and you will pay a price.
But credibility in financial enforcement is linked to credibility in military enforcement. If the United States cannot credibly threaten to defend its allies, why would it be able to credibly threaten to exclude a Swiss bank from the financial system? The erosion of military credibility inevitably erodes financial credibility. The DOJ can still issue indictments, the Treasury can still issue designations, but these actions will increasingly be seen as paper tigers—empty gestures backed by a declining power.
What Happens to Swiss AML Compliance?
The philosophical analysis and the military assessment converge on a single conclusion: Swiss AML compliance is a dependent variable of American military supremacy, and as that supremacy erodes, compliance becomes meaningless.
Swiss banks comply with American AML/KYC demands because:
- The United States controls access to the dollar-denominated financial system.
- Exclusion from that system is economically catastrophic.
- The dollar system is supreme because the United States military guarantees the global security architecture.
- Therefore, compliance is a rational response to the reality of American hegemonic power.
This logic is not complicated. It is the logic of power. But it is only operative when the conditions that make it true are present. When those conditions erode—when the military guarantee weakens, when alternatives to the dollar emerge, when the credibility of enforcement declines—the logic collapses.
The Trajectory of Erosion: A Scenario Analysis
Near Term (5-10 years)
In the near term, Swiss banks will continue to maintain their AML/KYC compliance programs. The formal structures will remain intact. But the substance of compliance will begin to erode. Enforcement will become more selective. Banks will be increasingly reluctant to report suspicious activities that involve clients from countries deemed strategically important. The risk calculus will shift: the cost of offending Washington will be weighed against the cost of offending Beijing, Moscow, or Riyadh.
Medium Term (10-20 years)
As alternatives to the dollar mature and as American military credibility continues to decline, Swiss banks will increasingly adopt a dual-track strategy. They will maintain compliance programs that satisfy American regulators on paper, while quietly facilitating transactions that violate American sanctions in practice. This is not hypocrisy; it is survival. Switzerland cannot afford to alienate any major power, and in a multipolar world, that means serving multiple masters.
Long Term (20+ years)
In the long term, if the trajectory of American decline continues, Swiss AML compliance will become entirely performative. The compliance departments will remain, the software will still generate suspicious activity reports, but these will be filed into a void. The United States will lack the leverage to enforce its demands, and Switzerland will have reverted to its historical role as a neutral haven for capital from all sources. The “meaninglessness” of Swiss AML controls will be complete.
The Sword, the Dollar, and the Ledger
The relationship between military power and financial power is not a metaphor; it is a structural fact. The dollar’s supremacy is underwritten by the threat of violence. The United States has been able to compel Swiss compliance with its financial regulations because it has been able to credibly threaten exclusion from the dollar system, and that threat has been credible because the United States military has been unchallenged.
As the military foundation erodes, the entire edifice begins to crumble. The threat of exclusion loses its force. The credibility of enforcement diminishes. The logic of compliance collapses. Swiss banks will continue to go through the motions, but the meaning of those motions will have changed. They will be performing compliance for a system that no longer exists, for a hegemon that no longer rules.
The question posed—”what happens to Swiss AML compliance when the military underpinning erodes?”—has a clear answer: it becomes meaningless. The legal frameworks will persist, but they will be empty shells. The enforcement mechanisms will remain, but they will lack force. The compliance culture will survive, but it will be a culture of simulation, not substance.
The mercenary ledger of Swiss banking will return, not because Switzerland has changed, but because the world has changed. The sword that once stood behind the dollar has been sheathed, and the ledger must find a new guarantor. In the interregnum that follows, the ledger will serve whoever offers the best protection—and in a multipolar world, that means serving everyone and no one, complying with all rules and none, performing adherence while practicing indifference.
This is the future of Swiss AML compliance: a theater of enforcement in a world without a sovereign. The question is not whether the controls will be abandoned, but how long it will take for their abandonment to be acknowledged. The United States no longer has the ability to enforce them. Switzerland no longer has the incentive to honor them. The controls are already dead; they simply have not yet stopped breathing.
Nietzsche and the Transvaluation of Financial Values
Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the transvaluation of all values offers a fitting conclusion to this chapter. Nietzsche argued that when the foundations of a moral or social order collapse, the values that rested on those foundations are not simply abandoned; they are reinterpreted, revalued, and repurposed by new forces.
The AML/KYC regime that the United States imposed on Swiss banks was an expression of American hegemonic values: transparency, surveillance, the securitization of finance. These values rested on a foundation of American power. As that power erodes, the values themselves are being transvalued. Transparency becomes naivety. Surveillance becomes a vulnerability. Compliance becomes a burden.
The Swiss banking system, in its mercenary wisdom, understands this dynamic better than most. It will not openly defy the United States; it will simply wait. It will maintain the forms of compliance while quietly preparing for a world in which those forms no longer matter. And when that world arrives—the Swiss will be ready.
The meaninglessness of Swiss AML controls is not a failure of Swiss ethics; it is a reflection of the meaninglessness of American power in a post-unipolar world. The controls were never about right and wrong; they were about power. And when power shifts, the meaning shifts with it. The ledger will remain, but the sword is passing to other hands.
Endnotes
1. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Part II, Chapter XVII: “And covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.” Hobbes argues that contracts and laws possess no binding force absent a sovereign power capable of enforcing them through violence or the credible threat thereof. See Brill, Construing International Law and Order (2003); Cambridge University Press, State Coercion and Force (2026). (See “The Philosophical Architecture of Financial Power”)
2. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (1922): “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Souverän ist, wer über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet). Schmitt argues that sovereignty is defined by the power to suspend normal legal rules in times of crisis. See Cambridge University Press, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism (2009); Taylor & Francis, “The kairological time of the decision” (2025). (See “The Philosophical Architecture of Financial Power”)
3. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (1976) and Discipline and Punish (1975). Foucault introduced the concepts of biopower and biopolitics to describe the regulation of populations through systems of knowledge, surveillance, and discipline, exercised over the biological life of the human species. See Oxford Bibliographies, “Biopolitics and Biopower” (2024); Cambridge University Press, Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation (2012). (See “Foucault and the Biopolitics of Financial Surveillance”)
4. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971): “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Gramsci recorded this passage in his prison notebooks in 1930. See Brill, “Morbid Symptoms: What Did Gramsci Really Mean?” (2022); Taylor & Francis, “Times of interregnum” (2012). (See “The Philosophical Architecture of Financial Power”)
5. The BNP Paribas case (2014) resulted in a record $8.9 billion penalty after the French bank pleaded guilty to US criminal charges of violating sanctions on Iran, Sudan, and other countries over a ten-year period up to 2012. The bank concealed the names of Sudanese and Iranian clients when sending transactions through its New York operations. See ABC News, “BNP Paribas fined more than $9b by US for violating sanctions,” July 1, 2014; Reuters, “BNP shakes off impact of U.S. fine, returns to profit,” October 31, 2014; The New York Times, “BNP Paribas Admits Guilt and Agrees to Pay $8.9 Billion Fine to U.S.,” July 1, 2014. (See “Foucault and the Biopolitics of Financial Surveillance”)
6. The twenty-year war in Afghanistan ended with the Taliban’s rapid reconquest of the country in August 2021. The United States spent over $2 trillion, lost over 2,400 American lives, and ultimately failed to prevent the return of the very regime it had toppled in 2001. The chaotic withdrawal sent an unmistakable signal to allies and adversaries alike. See China Daily, “Failure in Afghanistan predestined,” September 11, 2021; RTE, “White House admits massive intelligence failure in Afghan exit,” April 6, 2023; Norwegian Government, “NOU 2025: 9 Defeat – Norway in Afghanistan 2015–2021,” November 6, 2025. (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
7. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified by false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and resulted in a destabilization that persists to this day. The war killed hundreds of thousands of people, empowered Iran’s regional influence, and created the conditions for the rise of ISIS. Estimates of the total cost range from $1.9 trillion to over $3 trillion, with 4,400–4,600 US military personnel killed. See Xinhua, “Washington protesters call for stop to endless U.S. wars,” March 19, 2023; Brown University Costs of War Project, “What Victory Looks Like” (2023); BBC, “Mission accomplished? The 2003 boast that haunts today’s Iran conflict,” March 13, 2026. (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
8. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program has cost over $2 trillion over its lifetime, making it the most expensive Major Defense Acquisition Program in history. A 2024 CBO report adjusted overall estimated sustainment costs from $1.1 trillion to $1.58 trillion. In FY24, the F-35 averaged a 50 percent mission-capable rate, meaning half of the aircraft in the Pentagon’s fleet were unable to fly half the time. See Responsible Statecraft, “The military is babying F-35s to hide their true cost to taxpayers,” January 23, 2026; National Interest, “New Pentagon Inspector General Report Highlights F-35 Shortfalls,” January 10, 2026; GAO, “F-35 SUSTAINMENT” (2024). (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
9. The US national debt exceeds $34 trillion, and annual interest payments on that debt have surpassed the entire defense budget. In 2025, net interest spending reached $970 billion; by 2026, it had grown to approximately $1.2 trillion, exceeding defense spending of roughly $1.17 trillion. The government now spends $88 billion per month in interest on national debt—equal to spending on both defense and education combined. See Fortune, “The U.S. government is spending $88 billion a month in interest on national debt,” April 9, 2026; Sedaily, “U.S. Now Spends More on Debt Interest Than Defense,” August 19, 2026; Fortune China, “美国40万亿美元债务雪上加霜，年度利息支出升至1.25万亿美元,” September 21, 2026. (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
10. China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) had 176 direct participants and 1,514 indirect participants as of the end of June 2025, with 64 percent of participants located overseas. In 2024, CIPS processed a total of RMB 175 trillion yuan in cross-border RMB payments, a year-on-year increase of 43 percent. By the end of August 2026, CIPS had 1,853 participants, including 211 direct participants and 1,642 indirect participants, with nearly 5,300 banking entities across 192 countries and regions processing cross-border payment business via the CIPS network. See People’s Bank of China, “RMB clearing arrangement,” June 2025; CIPS, “The 2nd CIPS Exhibition on Bank-Enterprise Collaboration,” September 4, 2026; FXCN, “CIPS volumes rise as China expands payments infrastructure,” June 19, 2026. (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
11. Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) now includes 177 institutions from 24 countries, according to Alla Bakina, head of the national payment system department at the Bank of Russia. The system was developed in response to the exclusion of Russian banks from SWIFT following the Crimea crisis in 2014. SPFS users included 584 organizations as of the end of 2024. See TASS, “Participants from 24 countries connected to Bank of Russia’s Financial Messaging System,” April 2, 2025; Saba News, “25 countries participate in Russian financial transfer system as alternative to SWIFT,” September 9, 2026. (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
12. The BRICS nations have discussed the creation of alternative payment systems and local-currency settlement mechanisms, though they have treaded carefully on the question of a common currency. BRICS finance track talks have focused on interoperable payment systems and voluntary cooperation among members rather than a formal replacement of the US dollar. See Economic Times, “BRICS treads carefully on de-dollarisation: Main focus on payments, not a common currency,” September 12, 2026; The Hindu, “BRICS treads carefully on de-dollarisation: Finance track talks payments, not a common currency,” September 12, 2026. (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
13. Switzerland’s neutrality is permanent and armed, dating back to the defeat of the confederates at the Battle of Marignano in 1515. The great powers of Europe officially recognised Swiss neutrality for the first time in the Treaty of Paris on November 20, 1815. As a neutral state, Switzerland does not participate in conflicts of other states, nor provides armed assistance, and abstains from entering military alliances. See Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, “Switzerland’s policy of neutrality”; Swissinfo, “Neutrality remains a core principle,” May 25, 2007; Swiss Parliament, “Die Neutralität der Schweiz.” (See “The Military Trajectory: A Detailed Assessment of American Decline”)
14. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and The Will to Power (1901). Nietzsche used the slogan “revaluation of values” (Umwertung aller Werthe) as a rallying cry: “Revaluation of all values: that is my formula for an act of supreme self-examination on the part of humanity, become flesh and genius in me.” He contended that no human values are absolute and that the transvaluation of values is the process by which declining value systems are replaced by new ones. See A Companion to Nietzsche (2007); Archive.org, “Well, we might try a little juggling with words.” (See “Nietzsche and the Transvaluation of Financial Values”)