No impact to dollar decline

For the United States, such a loss would be manageable so long as the transition is slow and does not cause a sudden run on the dollar. The tangible benefits of having the global reserve currency have always been up for debate, with some studies suggesting it adds less than 1 percent to gross domestic product. Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently noted that the benefits are "mostly symbolic." However, from a geopolitical perspective, a more distributed international financial system would surely undermine the United States' ability to slap sanctions on companies that do business with U.S. rivals. That said, the United States' power does not rest on any single tool. A weakening of its stranglehold over international financial transactions would weaken just one method for the United States to project power. Our view is that the dollar would likely still play a large part in any successor currency regime. That role might not approach, as it does today, the roughly 45 percent of cross-border payments nor the 64 percent of global foreign exchange reserves held, but the dollar would likely retain the largest share in a successor regime — especially if the eurozone falls apart. While this might require the United States to adjust its debt situation, it is likely that the transition would be slow as other countries gradually diversify their holdings and payments away from the dollar, given that the dollar has no clear successor. The U.S. debt situation could certainly come to a head over the next two decades (as could those of other major economies) but in the aftermath, the overall strengths of the U.S. economy would make recovery easier. Superpowers throughout history have seen the levers that enforce their status come and go, but the very definition of a superpower is that it naturally develops new ones to replace those that break. Until a single, unified bloc can balance the United States in the same way that the Soviet Union did, it will remain the center of the global geopolitical system regardless of the role the dollar plays.