From Pearl Harbor to Petrodollar: Surrender Calculus, Cold War Plumbing, and the Energy Enforcement Era

Part Two continues from Pearl Harbor to Japan’s surrender and beyond. It challenges the simplified “bombs ended the war” narrative by centering Japan’s surrender calculus under multi-pressure collapse and the decisive Soviet Manchuria shock, then tracks how that transition hardens into the Cold War, Vietnam, the post-1971 monetary pivot, and the energy-settlement enforcement patterns that run through the modern era into 2026.