The decline of the Petrodollar did not generate a vacuum; it generated a mutation. What emerged is not a post-energy monetary order but a terminal intensification of extraction itself—one I designate the Nitrodollar. Where Petrofication bound U.S. monetary hegemony to hydrocarbons as circulating energy, Nitrofication binds it to nitrates as consumptive discharge. This marks a qualitative shift in how value is realized: from ongoing flows to irreversible events.
Under Petrofication, oil functioned as a monetary substrate because it was legible, fungible, and recursively integrated into civilian and industrial systems—transport, agriculture, heating, plastics, logistics. Even at its most coercive, the Petrodollar system monetized use. Energy circulated, rents persisted, and value regenerated through continuous throughput.
Nitrofication inverts this logic. Synthetic nitrogen—converted into explosives, propellants, and ordnance—only produces economic value at the moment of detonation. This gives rise to what I call Explosionomics: a regime in which war is no longer a contingent political failure but a structural economic requirement. Unlike oil, nitrates do not circulate. They terminate. Their profitability depends on expenditure, not preservation.
This is not merely a shift in defense spending levels; it is a mutation in monetary ontology. GDP growth under Explosionomics is driven by the conversion chain:
fossil energy → synthetic nitrates → munitions → destruction → reconstruction
Each step produces measurable economic activity, but only by annihilating the conditions of its own repetition. The system therefore trends toward what can be described as a genocidal asymptote: a limit condition in which destruction outpaces the social, ecological, and demographic substrates required for future extraction, labor, or consumption.
Explosionomics is uniquely pathological as a monetary base because:
- It rewards burn rate rather than productivity or maintenance.
- It externalizes costs both temporally (future debt, ecological collapse) and geographically (foreign civilian infrastructure).
- It reclassifies destruction itself as economic output, collapsing the distinction between value creation and value negation.
In this regime, peace is not stabilizing; it is deflationary. The absence of conflict threatens the realization of value embedded in military-industrial inventories. War becomes the mechanism by which stored energy is forced into GDP accounting.
Against this backdrop, proposals for Repetrofication—particularly through Venezuelan oil reserves—should not be read as nostalgic attempts to resurrect a bygone order, but as emergency stabilization maneuvers within a failing Extractionomics. Repetrofication would re-anchor the dollar to hydrocarbons, restoring a substrate that, while ecologically catastrophic and politically coercive, at least supports circulation rather than terminal expenditure.
Comparative Dynamics
Repetrofication of the Dollar
- Anchors value to hydrocarbons, extraction logistics, refining, and energy pricing.
- Stabilizing in the short to medium term because oil markets are deeply financialized and globally legible.
- Preserves existing supply chains, rent structures, and imperial leverage.
- Economically conservative: it maintains circulation even while entrenching inequality.
Nitrofication of the Dollar (Explosionomics)
- Anchors value to synthetic nitrogen, explosives, and expendable military throughput.
- Expands GDP through destruction and replacement rather than production and maintenance.
- Structurally corrosive: value is realized only through irreversible consumption.
- Destabilizes the very conditions—population, infrastructure, ecology—required for monetary regeneration.
The core distinction is this:
Hydrocarbons sustain systems.
Nitrates annihilate them.
Both regimes are extractive. Only one is minimally regenerative.
A reserve currency must be backed by something that circulates. Oil, for all its devastation, moves through economies repeatedly. Explosives do not. They end trajectories. When a currency’s backing consists of terminal events rather than ongoing flows, hegemony becomes self-liquidating.
Extractionomics, in its Nitroficated form, fails the most basic requirement of monetary power: the ability to reproduce the conditions of its own valuation.
References and Theoretical Lineage
Primary Conceptual Sources
- Vera, Michael. The Nitrodollar.
https://michaelvera.org/the-nitrodollar/ - Vera, Michael. Explosionomics: The Bomb-Based Economy Fueling American Prosperity.
https://michaelvera.org/explosionomics-the-bomb-based-economy-fueling-american-prosperity/
Petrodollar and Energy–Currency Coupling
- Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. Free Press, 1991.
- Hudson, Michael. Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance. Pluto Press, 2003.
- Gowan, Peter. The Global Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World Dominance. Verso, 1999.
Military Keynesianism and War as Economic Engine
- Melman, Seymour. The Permanent War Economy. Simon & Schuster, 1974.
- Baran, Paul & Sweezy, Paul. Monopoly Capital. Monthly Review Press, 1966.
- Oxfam / SIPRI reports on military expenditure and reconstruction cycles.
Synthetic Nitrogen, Industrial Warfare, and Ecological Limits
- Smil, Vaclav. Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production. MIT Press, 2001.
- Foster, John Bellamy. The Ecological Rift. Monthly Review Press, 2010.
- Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life. Verso, 2015.
GDP, Destruction, and Accounting Pathologies
- Coyle, Diane. GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. Princeton University Press, 2014.
- Mazzucato, Mariana. The Value of Everything. PublicAffairs, 2018.