1. Introduction
The power of great powers does not depend exclusively on their economic or military capabilities. Throughout history, the strength of states has also rested on intangible factors such as social cohesion, shared beliefs, trust, and national identity, which confer legitimacy and stability in both domestic and international politics. From this perspective, this article examines the role that cultural and religious foundations play in the construction and preservation of national power, particularly in the case of the United States, and compares its trajectory with that of Russia.
Furthermore, the international system is a network of interactions connected through trust. In this regard, the article describes the performance of the United States in global affairs, such as the War in Ukraine, as well as the trust that the world has placed in the U.S. dollar. It therefore explores the geopolitical implications of these processes in a context characterized by growing competition among major powers and the emergence of an increasingly multipolar international order.
2. National Foundations
Every nation has been founded upon cultural foundations, moral frameworks, traditions, and shared principles that provide social cohesion, a sense of belonging, and identity. In other words, at the base of every nation lies a common belief. Political scientist Marcello Gullo argues that at the origin of the power of nations there is always a “founding faith” (2019, p. 176). Faith is generally understood only in religious terms, but the word has a broader meaning. Faith derives from the Latin ‘fides’ and means “trust” or “loyalty”. The word fidelity comes from the same root.
In the economic sphere, the term credit is used, which comes from the Latin ‘credere’ and means “to believe” (DECEL, n.d.); it refers to having confidence that borrowed money will be repaid. Likewise, the word fiduciary derives from ‘fides’ and means “dependent on credit or trust” (DECEL, n.d.-a). When the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold was suspended, it became a fiat currency backed solely by trust; therefore, its value depends on the confidence that people have in the issuing government and in its economic stability.
Thus, intangible power is a fundamental factor for nations. Gullo argues: “The power of states should be represented as a Roman arch, at whose left base stands national morality and at whose right base stands national character. The foundation of the arch is always constituted by a founding faith, and its keystone by an elite whose moral or intellectual corruption inevitably causes, over the long course of history, the collapse of national power” (2019, p. 175).
In other words, when the founding faith is gradually abandoned, national cohesion begins to fragment, and this is reflected in domestic politics. To determine whether a great power is in decline, we must first understand what caused its rise.
Historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd, who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, argues that today the West is destroying itself more than it is being undermined by an attack from Russia. He maintains that at the origin and throughout the development of the West we find not the market, industry, or technology, but rather a particular religion — Protestantism. According to him, this religion, “which largely gave the West its economic strength, has died” (2025, p. 22). Along the same lines, historian Tom Holland (2025) argues that in the West, and especially in the United States, Christianity has been the dominant faith (p. 26). Nevertheless, Emmanuel Todd contends that one of the essential characteristics of our era is the disappearance of the Christian substratum, a crucial historical phenomenon that explains the disintegration of the American ruling classes. Religious extinction, he argues, could lead to the disappearance of social morality and the collective sense of identity (2025, pp. 22–23).
Since its expansion, Protestantism promoted literacy among the populations under its influence because every believer was expected to have direct access to the Holy Scriptures. As an unintended consequence of Martin Luther’s exhortation that everyone should be able to read the Gospel, Protestants acquired literacy skills that functioned as human capital in the economic sphere (Becker & Woessmann, 2009). As a result, a literate population was able to drive technological and economic development.
Moreover, Protestantism served as a catalyst for the development of nation-states because it provided peoples with a representation of themselves — that is, a particular form of collective consciousness. Indeed, by requiring that the Bible be translated into the vernacular, Protestants contributed significantly to the formation of national cultures and of powerful, warlike, and self-aware states (Todd, 2025, pp. 110–111).
Samuel Huntington (1997) explains that, historically, American identity has had two principal components: culture and creed. The first consists of the values and institutions of the original settlers, who came from Northern Europe, primarily Britain, and were Protestant Christians. The second is based on a set of universal ideas and principles articulated in the founding documents: liberty, equality, democracy, constitutionalism, liberalism, and limited government. Together, these principles constitute the “American Creed.” Consequently, these two components, together with Protestantism, profoundly influenced the rise of the United States.
In May of this year, the United States celebrated the National Day of Prayer, during which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He stated that the Founding Fathers placed their destiny in God’s hands, and declared: “It is no accident that America has, from the beginning, occupied a unique and exceptional place in world history. Our faith… tells us to go and preach the Gospel to the world as a witness, and to all nations to the ends of the earth. From that command came America. Our nation, more than any other in history, was shaped by this Christian idea. But the soul of our nation has always been rooted in an ancient faith” (Rubio, 2026).
In this speech, Rubio referred directly to the Declaration of Independence as the foundation of the country. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration was published on July 4, 1776, and proclaimed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It concludes: “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” (National Archives, n.d.).
In his methodology, Emmanuel Todd (2025) describes three stages of religion in the United States: active, zombie, and zero. During the active stage, attendance at Sunday services is high. In the zombie stage, regular Sunday worship begins to disappear, but Christian rites (baptism, marriage, and funerals) continue to be observed. The zero stage is characterized by the loss of religion’s social influence and the disappearance of baptism (p. 122).
At present, the United States is in the zombie stage (moving toward the zero stage), a society in which religious affiliation and practice have declined, while the social values of religion, as well as its rituals, continue to persist. Along these lines, religious extinction could lead to the disappearance of social and national morality, as well as of the collective spirit.
To place this in perspective, when Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in America during the nineteenth century, he observed the country’s religious culture and its condition of equality, which he regarded as the driving force behind democratic regimes. To a great extent, this was because Americans believed in and accepted the assertion of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”
Accordingly, Tocqueville viewed religion not only as a means of justifying the ultimate sacrifice, but also as a way of combating materialism and individualism. Materialist doctrine holds that everything is reducible to matter and that life perishes with the body. By contrast, Tocqueville argues that religion awakens humanity’s highest faculties and serves to remind people of their mutual obligations while restraining individualistic concerns. Consequently, he maintains that religion provides the shared beliefs that hold society together — beliefs concerning the nature of God, the soul, and the obligations of individuals toward one another and toward the state of which they are a part (Zetterbaum, 1993, p. 733).
Nevertheless, there has been a long-term decline in the proportion of Americans who identify with a religion. A report by the Pew Research Center found that in 2007, 78% of American adults identified as Christians. That figure declined steadily to 71% in 2014. Between 2023 and 2024, 62% of American adults identified as Christians. Younger Americans remain significantly less religious than older adults and are less likely to identify as Christians (46% versus 80%) or to attend religious services at least once a month (25% versus 49%) (Smith et al., 2025).
Political scientist Robert Putnam has argued that the decline of organized religion is part of a broader shift among Americans toward increasingly isolated lives, with fewer opportunities to develop interpersonal connections and build trust among different groups of people (Silver et al., 2025). Likewise, Tocqueville argued that the atomistic character of democracies is driven by the spread of individualism, which breaks the political and social bonds that once united people (Zetterbaum, 1993, p. 719). According to Todd, in order to fully accept the idea that contemporary American society is moving along the path toward social atomization, the concept of nihilism is indispensable, since the values and behavior of today’s society are fundamentally negative (2025, p. 192).
A survey conducted in 24 countries found that Americans are less likely to feel close to others in their country and local community. In this regard, religion played an important role. Americans with no religious affiliation (51%) are much less likely than their religiously affiliated counterparts (73%) to feel close to other people in the United States. Furthermore, religiously unaffiliated Americans (43%) are less likely than those with a religious affiliation (60%) to feel connected to others in their local community (Fetterolf & Kramer, 2024).
Americans’ trust in the federal government has been declining for decades. Following the September 11 attacks, trust began to decrease during the presidency of former President George W. Bush and has not recovered since then (Deane, 2024). Moreover, Americans have also lost trust in one another and in institutions such as the federal government, the two major political parties, the media, universities, and colleges. At the beginning of 2026, a survey found that 29% of American adults said they were satisfied with the way things were going in the country, while 69% reported being dissatisfied (Smith et al., 2026).
On the other hand, a report found a relationship between religion and civic engagement. In the United States and other countries, people who participate in a religious congregation tend to be more civically engaged than adults with no religious affiliation or inactive members of religious groups (Pew Research Center, 2019).
Therefore, overall levels of social trust appear to go hand in hand with many characteristics of a healthy society, creating a “virtuous circle.” Greater trust is associated with better-functioning democratic institutions. For example, the economy depends on the confidence that other people will honor contracts, repay loans, and behave honestly.
However, Americans trust one another less than they did a few decades ago (Silver et al., 2025). The religious variable has played an essential role since the founding of the United States by providing unity, trust, and purpose to the nation. Nevertheless, its influence has diminished considerably, and despite recent government efforts to reverse this trend, the process is already well advanced. This has contributed to greater social division and declining trust within the country. As this trust erodes, society becomes increasingly fragmented, eventually leading to deep polarization.
3. National Division
The Republican and Democratic parties are now more divided than they were a few decades ago, both in terms of political values and demographic characteristics. On both sides, views of the opposing party and its supporters have become increasingly negative, which may contribute to the decline of social trust. Consequently, political polarization may lead people to believe that they share less in common with their fellow citizens and reinforce an “us versus them” mentality (Silver et al., 2025).
In The Atlantic, Jonathan Haidt (2022) described the state of the United States since the 2010s as a modern Tower of Babel. Red America and Blue America are becoming two different countries claiming the same territory, with two distinct versions of the Constitution, the economy, and American history. In this regard, he states: “We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are disconnected from one another and from the past. Babel is a story about the fragmentation of everything. It is about the breakdown of everything that once seemed solid, the scattering of people who had once been a community. It is a metaphor for what is happening within the left and the right, as well as within universities, corporations, professional associations, and even families” (Haidt, 2022).
In recent years, polarization and distrust have already permeated American society. According to Pew Research Center surveys conducted in 25 countries, Americans are more likely than people in other countries to question the morality of their fellow citizens. The United States is the only country in which adult respondents (18 years of age or older) are more likely to describe the morality of people living in their country as bad (53%) rather than good (47%) (Evans et al., 2026).
Although this polarization is a national phenomenon, it is probably reinforced by the fact that many Americans live in places where they have few opportunities to interact meaningfully with people from the opposing political party. This tendency is further strengthened by the use of social media, where some of the harmful influences found online and on digital screens distract people from face-to-face interactions, increasing isolation and loneliness (Silver et al., 2025).
As a result, the United States is experiencing a crisis of national distrust that has steadily intensified into deep political polarization. By contrast, Russia has sought to preserve the historical foundations of its nation in order to strengthen internal unity. In this regard, Todd argues that no Russian threat is destabilizing the global balance. Rather, it is a Western crisis — and more specifically, a terminal American crisis — that endangers the balance of the world. Its outermost shockwaves, he contends, have encountered a Russian breakwater: a classic and conservative nation-state (2025, p. 14).
4. Russia’s National Foundation
Although Russia and the United States are rival powers, they share similar foundations dating back to their origins, upon which each has placed the trust of its nation. While Russia adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the United States culturally embraced Protestant Christianity. However, the two countries have followed different paths. Whereas Protestantism gradually lost its social and political influence in the United States, the Orthodox Church gained increasing social and political prominence in Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church has served as an important source of shared identity among Russians. It has contributed values, beliefs, institutions, social structures, and political influence on the construction not only of Russian identity throughout history but also, to a certain extent, of the structure of the Russian state itself (Bravo, 2003).
Religion has played an essential role in the social and spiritual life of contemporary Russia. The majority of the country’s religious population adheres to Orthodox Christianity. Russia was Christianized according to the Byzantine rite in 988 A.D. during the reign of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, with the mass baptism of Kievan Rus’. Consequently, for centuries Orthodox Christianity was the dominant religion in Russia, contributing to the foundations of its identity and unity.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, this began to change following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the imposition of state-sponsored atheism. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, former President Boris Yeltsin became involved in the process of nation-building. Having rejected Soviet ideology, he was compelled to find a “usable past” capable of uniting Russia’s historical heritage. Accordingly, he returned religious buildings and properties to the Church and publicly attended religious services.
For his part, Patriarch Alexy II devoted himself to charitable work, educational initiatives, and patriotic activities. He also signed various agreements with the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Education (Canna, n.d.). Following the Patriarch’s death, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (2008) emphasized that Alexy II, through his aspiration for unity, embodied Russia’s spiritual revival. According to the Ministry, “His Holiness” will always be remembered for accomplishing the great achievement of unifying the two branches of the Russian Orthodox Church. This historic event united the two parts of the single soul of the entire Russian people.
As a result of these efforts, Orthodox Christian affiliation in Russia increased after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between 1991 and 2008, the proportion of Russian adults identifying as Orthodox Christians rose from 31% to 72%. In addition, the percentage of Russian adults describing themselves as “somewhat” religious increased from 11% in 1991 to 54% in 2008 (Pew Research Center, 2014).
These elements of Russian tradition were essential to strengthening national unity in the post-Soviet era. In a speech, President Vladimir Putin (2007) stated that the spiritual unity of the people and the moral values that bind them together are important factors for development, political and economic stability, and the achievement of national objectives. In this regard, he declared: “We will be able to achieve our goals only if we preserve respect for our native language, our unique cultural values, the memory of our ancestors, and every page of our country’s history. This national treasure is the foundation for strengthening the unity and sovereignty of our country” (Putin, 2007).
At the Valdai International Discussion Club, Putin stated that it is impossible for a country to move forward without spiritual, cultural, and national self-determination. He continued: “The main factor that will determine success is the quality of the citizens, the quality of society — its intellectual, spiritual, and moral strength. Ultimately, economic growth, prosperity, and geopolitical influence stem from social conditions” (Putin, 2013).
This year, Putin stated that preserving Russia’s religious harmony and national unity is essential. For his part, Patriarch Kirill, during a meeting with Putin, emphasized that the president understands the importance of the religious factor because, throughout history, religion has always been among the most powerful forces shaping society. When ideological arguments lose their influence, the Patriarch asserted, it is always religion that helps unite people and inspire resistance against enemies. Addressing President Putin, he declared: “Russia has preserved its religious beliefs and spiritual foundations. I do not wish to compare our country with others, but Russia represents a unique example of a modern civilization that has not renounced its history, traditions, or faith” (Kremlin, 2026).
As a result of these political and religious efforts to strengthen national unity, Putin has remained highly popular in Russia, according to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center and other organizations. Overall, three out of four Russians (75%) expressed confidence in Putin to do the right thing in world affairs (Morin et al., 2006). This trust and popularity are due in large measure to his representation of the country’s traditions. As Emmanuel Todd observed, the “Putin system” is stable because it is the product of Russian history rather than the work of a single individual (2025, p. 50).
The Russian state, with its thousand-year history, represents the political capacity of its people and nation to draw strength from its religious resources, which are regarded as fundamental elements for ensuring Russia’s continuity and development throughout the twenty-first century. Consequently, this strengthening of national unity and public trust is also reflected in the country’s conduct in world affairs.
5. International Relations
The United States has not only experienced a decline in domestic trust but also in global confidence. This can be particularly detrimental because the United States is a hegemonic power and one of the principal architects of the international system. A survey conducted in 36 countries reveals a decline in perceptions of the United States amid growing concerns about its foreign policy and the state of its democracy. These evaluations are largely negative and continue to deteriorate. In many countries, confidence in President Trump has continued to decline since last year (Wike et al., 2026).
As national division deepens and a shared sense of purpose weakens, power and economic prosperity become ends in themselves. In this regard, Emmanuel Todd (2025) employs the concept of nihilism to describe the current political landscape of the United States, stating: “In the realm of thought and ideas there is a dangerous void, with money and power as the remaining obsessions. Yet these can neither be ends in themselves nor genuine values. This void generates a tendency toward self-destruction, militarism, endemic negativity — in short, nihilism” (p. 193).
Samuel Huntington (1997) argues that, without an underlying common culture, principles alone provide only a fragile foundation for national unity. Domestic politics and internal interests have inevitably influenced foreign policy. The two sources of American identity — culture and creed — have always been closely interconnected. The American Creed itself was a product of the nation’s culture. However, the end of the Cold War, together with social, intellectual, and demographic changes within American society, has called into question the validity and relevance of both traditional components of American identity. Without a secure sense of national identity, Huntington contends, Americans have become unable to define their national interests.
A national interest is a public good that concerns all or most Americans. During the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Union and communism were perceived as threats both to American security and to American values. There was a convergence between the requirements of power politics and the demands of morality. Consequently, broad public support reinforced government efforts to defeat communism (Huntington, 1997).
The challenge today, however, is no longer to find power to serve American purposes, but rather to find purposes for the use of American power. Huntington argues that this need has led the American foreign policy establishment to search desperately for new purposes capable of justifying a continued U.S. role in world affairs comparable to that of the Cold War era. In this context, the War in Ukraine is presented as an example of this lack of purpose.
6. Ukraine
For the United States, Ukraine is a strategic country for European security and for containing a possible Russian expansion. For his part, Vladimir Putin has declared that Ukraine is part of Russia’s history. Months before the invasion of Ukraine, Putin (2021) wrote an article arguing that both countries share spiritual and civilizational ties that were formed over centuries and have their origins in the same sources; that is, they are descendants of ancient Rus. He stated: “Slavic and other tribes throughout the vast territory — from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kyiv and Chernihiv — were united by a single language (which we now call Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of princes from the Rurik dynasty, and — after the baptism of Rus — the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by Saint Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kyiv, continues to largely determine our affinity today” (Putin, 2021).
After the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church issued a statement arguing that the Russian people are defending their lives, statehood, civilizational, religious, and national identity. “From a spiritual and moral point of view,” they wrote, “the special military operation is a Holy War.” The borders of the Russian world as a spiritual, cultural, and civilizational phenomenon are much broader than state borders. Thus, “the reunification of the Russian people should become one of the priorities of Russian foreign policy” (Patriarchia, 2024).
Nevertheless, Russia’s attack also had a national security objective. In this regard, John Mearsheimer (2022) argued that the United States has promoted policies toward Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues view as an existential threat to their country, a point they have repeated for years; namely, U.S. attempts to incorporate Ukraine into NATO and transform it into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. The Biden administration did not seek to eliminate this threat through diplomacy and, in fact, renewed its commitment to incorporating Ukraine into NATO in 2021. Therefore, Putin responded by invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Thus, the Biden administration has emphasized that its objective has not only been to defeat Russian forces in Ukraine but also to use sanctions to inflict severe damage on the Russian economy. Former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stressed that the goal of the West is to weaken Russia to the point where it cannot invade Ukraine again (Mearsheimer, 2022). Consequently, the United States and the European Union agreed to exclude several Russian banks from the international SWIFT payment messaging system. However, Russia had adapted to the sanctions imposed in 2014 and prepared to become self-sufficient in the technological and banking sectors (Todd, 2025, p. 11).
The historical arguments presented by Russian authorities to justify the invasion of Ukraine received considerable support among the Russian population. The invasion itself increased Putin’s domestic approval from around 70% to 83% in March 2022. The proportion of the Russian population supporting the president also remained above 80% for most of the period between 2014 and 2018. In April 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin’s approval rating rose to 82% (Buchholz, 2023).
On the other hand, confidence in the United States regarding its support for Ukraine has declined in recent months. Around three in ten Americans overall (32%) are very or somewhat confident that Trump can make good decisions regarding the war, compared with 40% in August 2025. Confidence declined among both Republicans (-13 percentage points) and Democrats (-4 points) during this period (Fagan et al., 2026).
Furthermore, most countries express little or no confidence in Trump’s ability to address issues such as the Russia-Ukraine War and U.S.-China relations. In a survey of 24 countries, nine of eleven NATO allies, with approximately six in ten adults or more, expressed a lack of confidence in Trump’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine War. Confidence is low in neighboring countries such as Mexico and Canada, as well as in many European countries. Overall, people tend to say they do not trust Trump on this issue (Wike et al., 2025).
Unlike the United States, Russia has a historical purpose guiding its decisions, something that has contributed to Putin’s increased popularity over the years. In May 2026, 79% of Russians approved of the activities of the Russian president (Statista Research Department, 2026). Meanwhile, around 40% of American adults approved of the way Donald Trump was performing his duties as president (Statista Research Department, 2026a). Consequently, the United States has lost trust both in domestic affairs and in international relations, affecting an area where trust is the foundation of its hegemony: the dollar.
7. The Dollar’s Dominance
When former President Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold, it became a fiat currency, whose value depends on confidence in the issuing government and in its economic stability. Thus, the United States can borrow on a large scale — the so-called “exorbitant privilege” of possessing the world’s primary reserve currency, based on international trust. However, persistent deficits, rising debt, and geopolitical instability are testing that confidence, with potentially profound consequences, such as a weaker dollar and a decline in global influence.
Historian Niall Ferguson simplifies this through Ferguson’s Law (attributed to Adam Ferguson), namely: “any great power that spends more on servicing its debt than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power” (Kempe, 2026). This is something currently occurring in the United States, as debt interest payments have surpassed defense spending. Consequently, to finance public spending, the United States issues debt in its own currency, which it controls and which remains the anchor of the global financial system. Governments continue to purchase U.S. Treasury bonds, benefiting from the confidence that the world has placed in its institutions, its innovative culture, its investment climate, and its remarkable ability to self-correct (Kempe, 2026).
Nevertheless, during periods of geopolitical turbulence driven by the United States, international confidence in the dollar has been declining. A median of 67% across 24 countries indicates a lack of confidence in Trump’s ability to manage global economic problems (Wike et al., 2025). This loss of confidence is becoming a problem, especially because the United States is the country with the highest debt in the world.
The national debt is the total amount of outstanding loans accumulated by the U.S. federal government throughout the country’s history. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio exceeded 100% in 2013, when both debt and GDP were around $16.7 trillion. The average GDP for fiscal year 2025 was $30.36 trillion, a figure lower than the U.S. debt of $37.64 trillion. This resulted in a debt-to-GDP ratio of 124%. In general, a higher debt-to-GDP ratio indicates that a government will face greater difficulties in repaying its debt (Fiscal Data, 2026).
However, one of the countries that purchases the most U.S. Treasury bonds is Japan, which has a debt-to-GDP ratio above 200%. Most of its debt is held by Japanese investors and the central bank. This means that the country does not depend on foreign capital for financing and is less vulnerable to international capital outflows. In 2023, Japan’s public debt reached $9.2 trillion, equivalent to 266% of its GDP, the highest level among major economies. Nevertheless, despite this enormous public debt, international investors continue to trust the country and lend it money each year through purchases of its debt.
The reason Japan’s debt has remained sustainable over time and has not resulted in default is that the country has managed to maintain government bond yields and high market confidence. Some investors prefer stability over returns and therefore choose Japan as a destination for their excess savings. Furthermore, most of Japan’s debt is not denominated in foreign currencies but in yen. This makes its central bank less exposed to turbulence in international markets. In fact, 90% of Japan’s debt is held by Japanese investors (Orgaz, 2023).
The world became dollarized through the form of U.S. Treasury bonds and the global use of the dollar, since transactions, currency, and bank deposits in dollars are more liquid as a medium of exchange. However, in recent years, the real return on U.S. Treasury bonds has been negative (Connolly et al., 2026). Gold, in contrast, has become the preferred vehicle for active de-dollarization.
To a large extent, this is explained by the geopolitical and economic instability of the issuing government. Sanctions and asset freezes, negative real yields on Treasury bonds, and relative movements of the dollar have coincided with renewed diversification efforts, especially among BRICS economies. Thus, the increased risk of sanctions systematically shifts asset allocations away from traditional safe assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds toward “sanctions-resistant” assets such as gold (Connolly et al., 2026).
Figure 1. U.S. dollar and gold reserves of central banks between 2015 and 2025 (Connolly et al., 2026).
As can be observed in Figure 1, confidence in the dollar has declined among the countries listed in the table. Gold offers unique hedging properties against geopolitical risk. For emerging market economies (the main drivers of de-dollarization), accumulating gold serves as a dual strategy: protection against multilateral sanctions and macroeconomic volatility. Therefore, from a strategic perspective, gold functions as a “war chest” that signals national strength and independence (Connolly et al., 2026).
When the United States and the European Union agreed to exclude several Russian banks from SWIFT, the measure sent a clear signal of distrust to the world: the dollar was being used as a financial weapon. Consequently, various countries increased their gold reserves instead of their dollar reserves. Russia actively de-dollarized due to sanctions and asset freezes in February 2022. Meanwhile, China had been gradually reducing its dependence on the dollar since 2014, but this process accelerated after the sanctions imposed on Russia, including both the sale of U.S. Treasury bonds and net purchases of gold (Connolly et al., 2026).
On the other hand, initiatives such as BRICS Pay have been promoted. This is a cross-border digital payment system developed by BRICS countries. It allows trade among its members to be conducted in reais, rubles, rupees, yuan, or rand, with the system managing conversion, clearing, and settlement without routing transactions through the U.S. dollar. The initiative forms part of a broader strategic effort to reduce dependence on the dollar and strengthen financial sovereignty (BRICS, 2026).
Although the dollar is losing some of its attractiveness due to inflation and sanctions, it retains significant staying power. It would take decades to dethrone the global currency. There are no immediate alternatives. However, the loss of confidence has already been established, and an intentional path toward de-dollarization has begun. As a consequence, Donald Trump has opposed BRICS financial alternatives, as member countries of the bloc are reducing their dependence on the dollar using local currencies and cooperation among alternative financial institutions.
When the BRICS 2025 summit took place, Trump stated that the bloc was attempting to destroy the dollar so that another country could take control and become the global standard. In this context, he declared: “If we lose the global standard of the dollar, it would be like losing a great world war; we would no longer be the same country. We will not allow that to happen” (Messerly et al., 2025).
Therefore, while for the United States the process of de-dollarization represents a threat to its hegemony, for emerging countries it is a vital option for economic and geopolitical stability, free from sanctions.
At the recent meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, they signed a joint declaration advocating a multipolar world and a new type of international relations. For its part, the Russian Orthodox Church indicated that Russia should become one of the main centers of the multipolar world, leading integration processes and guaranteeing security and development throughout the post-Soviet space (Patriarchia, 2024).
On the other hand, ten years ago, the World Economic Forum indicated that the political landscape in 2030 would not be characterized by a single hegemonic power, but rather by a group of countries displaying semi-imperial tendencies (Muggah, 2016). In other words, global power would become decentralized. Consequently, the world is moving toward a multipolar order, contributing to the possibility of establishing a system in which decisions are made among different nations or regional coalitions, moving away from the concentration of power in a single dominant power.
8. Conclusion
The analysis developed allows us to conclude that trust, identity, and shared values constitute essential elements of national power, complementing the material capabilities that traditionally explain the influence of great powers. In this way, it was observed that the United States, by abandoning part of the foundations of its origins, faces a profound crisis of trust, a decline in social unity, and an increase in political polarization. In contrast, Russia has sought to strengthen national unity through its historical and religious foundations as part of both its domestic and international policies. In summary, trust constitutes an essential element of national power, and its fragmentation could explain part of the relative decline of the United States.
In the international arena, the United States, as a hegemonic power, has faced global distrust in addressing issues such as the War in Ukraine. Furthermore, geopolitical tensions are causing the dominance of the dollar to lose confidence among major economies seeking safe assets such as gold; thus, a trend toward de-dollarization is emerging. Meanwhile, BRICS countries have sought financial alternatives to reduce dependence on the dollar and Western financial systems.
At the same time, the consolidation of new centers of power demonstrates a gradual transformation of international order. Consequently, beyond the political differences between countries, this article suggests that domestic legitimacy, collective trust, and the existence of a shared national purpose remain decisive factors for the stability of states and their ability to exercise influence in an increasingly competitive and multipolar international environment.
References
