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Top1. Introduction
The world is undergoing a sea change with a blistering speed. Change is obviously a new permanent thing now. Before World War-II, the United Kingdom was a superpower. Post World War-II, it became the United States of America (USA). In the new world dispensation in 21st century, it is now the turn of third world nations led by China and India to take the lead (Nambiar, 2006 and Ikenberry, 2008). Things are changing so fast that it becomes uncertain whether what is today will remain same tomorrow or not. China’s close to double digit growth up to early years of second decade of 21st century has been cooled down by 2014. Change of political landscape in 2014 in India has also brought a significant change in the prospects for India in the changing world order vehemently. It is also prevalent that the existing power centers of the world are resisting the change which can further change the world order. Nations believe that by bringing change in certain things which are important like crude oil prices, they can divert the change in the world order. The hegemony of a few nations is evident by their behavior. The unwritten rule of dominance is always economic prowess and the present time is also not an exception. In this aspect, different nations are trying to maintain the status quo. But the third world countries including India and China are ruling the roost. China’s example is a testimony to the fact that for a long-term sustainable growth and development one should not adopt the strategy of too much, too soon. It was faulty adopted by China but eventually the country landed up in exploiting its own resources so much that it boomeranged and instead of supporting in the long-run, this strategy started creating trouble and by the mid of second decade of 21st century, the retardation has been seen in Chinese economy. The world financial crisis of 2008 has added fuel to fire. Ideally an Economy should be on its own and sustainable enough so that it can come out of retardation from a crisis like 2008 financial crisis. Crisis is testing times for any economy to prove its resilience for long term sustainable growth but China succumbs to the crisis. But India has been a different story as the GDP growth rate has been rising more than the pre-2008 levels during the mid of the second decade of 21st century. India and China scenarios raise one pertinent question. It is what, that ensures the dominance of a country and supports the economic prosperity in the long-run. The present world order is being dominated by nations which can sustain the exponential growth of the economy. The sustenance of the growth of any economy hinges on the fact that how long a country can support its growth. The nourishment for growth is obviously dependent upon many things including the energy a country needs to fuel its growth trajectory. Fossil fuel is obviously a main source of energy. In other words, it can be stated that the control over fossil fuel is something which can provide a country an edge over the other countries. Many countries are dependent upon fossil fuel for their sustainable growth in the long-run. For instance, India also heavily depends upon crude oil imports and it has significant impact on the Indian economy. In India, on an average, more than 50% of the import bills are there to cater to meet the crude oil imports. Due to this reason, countries all over the world including India try to be self-sufficient directly for crude oil and indirectly for energy. As of now USA is the highest crude oil producing countries which gives an edge to USA to negotiate terms at International level better (OPEC, 2015). Crude oil being the international currency is traded in the currency which is also internationally acceptable like US $. Therefore, both US$ and crude oil should have long-term association. It is a fact that the Gold also has been there as an international currency for long despite the presence of earlier pound sterling and later US dollar. This is despite the fact that the last formal form of gold based exchange rate system, the Bretton woods system collapsed in early 1970s (Dooley, Folkkerts and Garber, 2004/2009). There have been mixed evidences in support of the fact that gold always holds sway in the international exchange rate system whether before or after Bretton woods system. This discussion brings all the three things crude oil, US $ exchange rate and gold together to be taken up for further study. The earlier studies have tried to find the long-term and short-term association among them using varied methods and have come out with the varied results which need to be tested under present world scenarios.