This month marks the 50th anniversary of the end the Bretton Woods system, when US President Richard Nixon suspended the US dollar’s convertibility into gold and allowed it to float. We are also approaching the 20th anniversary of the Taliban’s removal from power in Afghanistan at the hands of US-led coalition forces. Now that the Taliban has again prevailed, we should consider whether its victory over the world’s most powerful military and largest economy will have any implications for the dollar and its role in the world.

Looking back over the 50 years since Nixon closed the gold window (39 of which I spent being professionally engaged in financial markets), the biggest takeaway is that the floating-exchange-rate system, and the dollar’s dominant role in it, has turned out to be more robust than initially expected. Even knowing what we know now about the evolution of the world economy, most experts would have doubted that the system could survive for as long as it has.