[jcranmer]

The only two countries that even come credibly close to this proposition are Libya and Iraq, and even there the evidence is paltry (in particular for Libya, Qaddafi had spouted rhetoric about abandoning pricing in dollars off and on for decades prior to the Libyan Civil War, and no one has produced any evidence that Libya was even close to actually doing anything about it).

It also fails to take into account all the countries who have tried selling oil not priced in USD and received no blowback from the US for it, such as Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. (This is not an exhaustive list, I believe.)

That's not to say that oil doesn't play a role in US foreign policy--US-Middle Eastern policy for much of the 20th century can be pretty fairly summarized as "keep the oil flowing"--but the idea that pricing energy in USD is a central plank of US foreign policy is one without identifiable foundation.

[berdario]

> countries who [...] received no blowback from the US [...], such as Venezuela, Iran[...], and Russia

Lol...

There's been sanctions (and coups, for the first two) against those.

Sure, the parent was strictly talking about "bombing", but just because an US bomber didn't physically drop bombs on their land, it doesn't mean that there was no blowback

[jcranmer]

> There's been sanctions (and coups, for the first two) against those.

Not for moving away from USD, or merely talking about it.

Indeed, of those examples you cited, trying to move oil sales away from USD happened after the US imposed sanctions (and, it can be reasonably referred, in part because of the sanctions).

[berdario]

Sure, Mossadegh didn't try to move away from USD, he just tried to nationalize their oil industry.

In both cases, those are acts contrary to US interests, and trying to argue that we shouldn't consider the US reactions as part of the same pattern is sophistry