If Russia leads the world away from the dollar as a reserve currency, especially for petroleum transactions, it knocks an important, decades-long prop from beneath US economic policy. We haven't had to redeem the dollar for gold for foreign governments since Nixon closed the gold window. The US losing reserve currency status would be the next step, and we might eventually have to start issuing debt in a foreign currency or IMF special drawing rights. For those of us worried about various "world government" scenarios, this would surely take us further down that road, not to mention eliminate a key US economic advantage. It's hard to be the leader of the world when you have to borrow from it to fund your government.