In GOD we trust : Gold, Oil, Drug

Since 1945, the trajectory of American power has followed a simple and repetitive grammar, rarely explicitly formulated but constantly verifiable in practice. Behind moral proclamations and official narratives, three matrices structure US interventionism: Gold as a financial foundation, Oil as a geopolitical nerve, Drugs as a security justification and an instrument of indirect financial capture. In God We Trust acts less as a national, or even spiritual, motto than as a secular liturgy intended to sanctify an imperialist power architecture, sometimes soft, sometimes brutal.

Gold constitutes the original foundation. At the end of World War II, Washington imposed an international monetary order centered on the dollar, backed by gold, guaranteeing the American economy an exorbitant privilege: financing its military and industrial expansion through monetary creation while demanding strict budgetary discipline from other nations. Any attempt to regain sovereign control over strategic resources or financial circuits is therefore perceived as a systemic threat. The ousting of nationalist leaders in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America falls within this logic. Economic sovereignty remains tolerable as long as it does not challenge the global monetary hierarchy.

Oil extends and hardens this dynamic. A vital resource for the industrial economy and fuel for modern armies, it transforms certain regions of the world into permanent projection zones. The Middle East, then North Africa and Latin America, assert themselves as areas where political stability is subordinated to energy accessibility. Open or indirect wars do not solely aim at territorial occupation, but at controlling flows, pipelines, straits, maritime routes, and contractual regimes. Iraq, Iran, Libya, and more recently Venezuela, illustrate this constant. In each of these cases, democratic rhetoric accompanies a forced recomposition of state apparatuses to make hydrocarbon exploitation compatible with American interests and those of their industrial and financial allies.

Drugs constitute the third pillar, more recent, more opaque, but equally structuring. From the 1970s, the « war on drugs » became widespread as an ideological framework, allowing the extension of American military, police, and judicial presence far beyond its borders. Officially, it is about combating criminal networks. In practice, this paradigm authorizes permanent interference in weakened states, the militarization of entire regions, and the capture of considerable financial flows. Asset seizures, extraterritorial fines, and confiscations related to drug trafficking directly or indirectly fund American security apparatuses. Drugs thus acquire the status of a profitable enemy; they justify the budget, legitimize force, and produce financial resources recycled into civilian and military infrastructures.