Reserves

reserves measures the structural power a state derives from issuing a currency that others are obliged to hold, invoice, and settle in — not the size of its own reserve holdings. The structural question is: to what degree must the rest of the world denominate its trade, pricing, and debt in this state's money? A currency others choose to hold is convenience; a currency others cannot avoid is structural power.

Strange defines the Finance structure as "the sum of all the arrangements governing the availability of credit plus all the factors determining the terms on which currencies are exchanged for one another" (Strange 1994, p.90), and locates the dollar's structural power not in any stock the US holds but in the asymmetry that others must use its unit:

• "instead of what General de Gaulle had called the 'exorbitant privilege' of being able to print IOUs to finance its deficits, the United States could now print dollar IOUs that could not be changed for gold" (Strange 1994, p.107) — issuing the unit, not holding it, is the lever.
• "as the currency in which three-quarters of all Eurocurrency deals were done, in which oil was priced and most international trade was invoiced, the volatility of other currencies was less important to Americans than the volatility of the dollar was to the Germans, the Japanese and the OPEC" (Strange 1994, p.107) — the asymmetry is denomination, not the size of any reserve stock.
• "Structural power, in short, confers the power to decide how things shall be done, the power to shape frameworks within which states relate to each other" (Strange 1994, p.25) — the terms-setting definition the metric operationalises.

The dollar's reserve share and the RMB's reserve share differ not in degree but in kind: the issuer sets the rails, holders accept them. A raw share treats them as the same variable scaled up or down — the precise conflation Strange built the book to dissolve.