Source: LinkedIn — Kunwwer Sachdev — March 12, 2026
In a sweeping geopolitical analysis shared on LinkedIn, Kunwer Sachdev — entrepreneur, inventor, and founder of Su-Kam — turns his attention from power grids to global power itself. His essay traces how the world’s financial system quietly shifted from a gold-backed promise to a petrodollar arrangement held together by strategic force rather than underlying value.
Sachdev’s essay is a rare piece of long-form reflection from one of India’s most celebrated entrepreneurs — a man who built a billion-dollar industry from nothing, watched it fall, and rebuilt again. When he speaks about systems that look stable from the outside but are cracking underneath, he speaks from lived experience.
The Day the Promise Changed
Sachdev begins with a moment in 1965 when French President Charles de Gaulle saw through the illusion. The U.S. was printing paper money and trading it for Europe’s real assets — factories, companies, labor. De Gaulle demanded France’s gold back. By 1971, with U.S. gold reserves depleted, President Nixon “temporarily” suspended the gold standard. That temporary move, Sachdev notes with dry precision, has now lasted over 55 years.
From Gold to Oil: Power Shifts Its Anchor
To prevent dollar erosion through the 1970s, the game shifted to oil. By ensuring that global oil trade was priced and settled in USD, the U.S. manufactured a world in which everyone — regardless of politics — needed its currency. Sachdev connects this directly to modern conflicts: “We’ve seen what happens when that system is challenged — from Iraq to the current maneuvers regarding Venezuela or the strategic positioning of Greenland.”
The Human Cost of Disappearing Confidence
The most emotionally resonant section of Sachdev’s essay addresses trust. When the U.S. seized Russian reserves, it sent a signal to every nation: your savings are only yours as long as you stay in line. De-dollarization, Sachdev argues, is happening not because countries hate the dollar, but because they are afraid of it. Nations are quietly seeking a divorce from a system that can freeze a country’s life savings at the flip of a switch.
Sachdev closes with the historian’s perspective: no reserve currency lasts forever. The Roman Denarius, the British Pound — every era’s dominant currency eventually yields when the trust beneath it erodes. “Are we witnessing the Nixon Shock of our generation?” he asks. For India’s entrepreneurs and policymakers, it is a question worth taking seriously.
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