Round one
Confidence is high (Cuba)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/10/eric-margolis/thirteen-days-that-shook-the-world-and-nearly-ended-it/
‘The Pentagon urged a full-scale U.S. invasion of Cuba, backed by massive naval and air power.
Fortunately, the U.S. military was not allowed to invade Cuba: Unknown at the time, Soviet troops there were authorized to use 100 tactical nuclear weapons against any invading force and their bases in South Florida.'
Fact
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/who-really-won-the-cuban-missile-crisis_b_1981613.html
Following the failed overthrow in the ‘Bay of Pigs’ fiasco in 1961, (1,300 CIA trained and funded Cuban exiles), Castro was wary of another invasion attempt and invited Russian missiles into Cuba. Meanwhile, the U.S. had installed nuclear missiles in both Turkey and Italy in 1961. Russia saw this as an opportunity to place its own missiles in America’s own back yard.
At that time, all Kennedy’s advisors, including Secretary of defence McNamara and Vice President Johnson, advocated an American invasion of Cuba, which would have guaranteed a nuclear war.
With both sides set on a collision course, on the 26 October 1962, a personal letter to Kennedy arrived from Khrushchev; in it Khrushchev offered a deal. If America would withdraw its missiles from Turkey and Italy and give a cast iron guarantee not to invade Cuba, Russia would turn its ships around and withdraw the missiles from Cuba. Kennedy accepted and both sides saved face with neither having to back down.
A CBS broadcast on the 28th of October proclaimed that America had emerged, "from under the most terrible threat of nuclear holocaust since the second world war . . . a humiliating defeat for Soviet policy". Meanwhile, Russia stated that it was, "yet another triumph for Moscow's peace-loving foreign policy over warmongering imperialists . . . the supremely wise, always reasonable Soviet leadership had saved the world from the threat of nuclear destruction."
Round two
Confidence is high (The World)
“We won’t survive the coming years if someone loses their nerve in this overheated situation. This is not something I’m saying thoughtlessly. I am extremely concerned.” Mikhail Gorbachev, 2015, ‘Der Spiegel’
Western military bases surrounding Russia and China
The why
http://english.pravda.ru/business/finance/14-09-2010/114921-us_dollar-0/
‘Who owns the US dollar?’
http://stormcloudsgathering.com/the-road-to-world-war-3
‘In 1973 President Nixon asked King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to accept only US dollars as payment for oil and to invest any excess profits in US Treasury bonds, notes, and bills. In return Nixon offered military protection for Saudi oil fields. The same offer was extended to each of the world's key oil producing countries, and by 1975 every member of OPEC had agreed to only sell oil in U.S. dollars.’
In other words, the U.S. produce dollars and the world peripheries produce things to sell for dollars. America has been living ‘for free’ for many years by printing pieces of private profit making paper.
The effects
http://etfdailynews.com/2012/10/09/china-russia-and-the-end-of-the-petrodollar/
‘The US spends a big chunk of its $700 billion a year defense budget on dominating the Middle East in order to force the trading of oil in dollars. Let that trade be diversified into several currencies and the demand for petrodollars goes way down. Central banks and global corporations will sell part of their dollar holdings, sending the dollar’s exchange rate into a tailspin. This in turn will make it harder for the US to finance its military empire/welfare state.’
The change
Russia abandons the petro dollar in 2014. NATO moves its forces up to the Russian border.
China abandons the petro dollar 2014. U.S. massively reinforces its military bases in the East.
Iraq began selling its oil exclusively in Euros in November of 2000.
Libya was in the process of organizing a block of African countries to create a gold based currency called the Dynar which they intended to use to replace the dollar in that region.
Iran in 2007 requests payments be made in other than $ U.S.
Syria is Iran's closest ally, and they are bound by mutual defence agreements.
NATO expansion into neighbouring Russian countries
NATO Military manoeuvres next to Russian borders in Finland, Poland and the Baltic States
The U.S. and E.U. generating regime change in the Ukraine, and then assisting in a coup of a democratically elected leader of the Ukraine.
U.S. sends nuclear capable B2 ‘first strike’ stealth bombers to Europe
U.S. Placing military weapons in the Baltic States and Poland
The response
The Russians and Chinese are now both starting to draw red lines of their own. The bankers and corporations, which is what America is dependent on for its first world status, are fighting back to retain American hegemony. Without the world using the dollar as payment, America ends up like Europe. Will the American elite risk a nuclear exchange to prevent that?