About Conflict & Credit
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Welcome to ‘Conflict & Credit,’ a new Substack dedicated to the international economic order and the conflicts shaping it! This blog was inspired by my recent book ‘Economic War: Ukraine & The Global Conflict Between Russia and the West’ but aims to expand its scope to cover all the geopolitical trends driving and driven by the structures, institutions, and practices of the international political economy. That may sound hifalutin, but the focus of the blog is in reality very simple –that currency and credit markets are at the core of geopolitical power struggles, and vice versa. We will examine how the order exists today, the role of the US dollar and the fact that it gives Washington some hegemonic elements never before seen in international politics, and the future of the order including efforts to challenge it from the so-called ‘BRICS’ organization as well as examples of how the interplay of credit and conflict affects markets from oil trade financing,
To adapt from the famous political geographer Halford Mackinder, this blog believes that “who determines the risk-free rate, commands the world”.
What this blog will cover: I approach these topics as a Eurasianist, and my ‘expertise’ originally is in studying Russian economic policy and Western sanctions. With the ongoing economic war between Russia and the West, this will undoubtedly feature heavily – though often I will be writing about these topics elsewhere and link to them here. For some samples of recent writing on the issue, please see an excerpt of ‘Economic War’ published by the good people at Open Democracy or my semi-regular column for Al Jazeera. But you can expect to find more in-depth looks at the state of Russian government finances, the status of corporate loans by Russian and third-country companies affected by the war and sanctions, and Russia’s interests and efforts in challenging the international economic order, as well as the West’s attempts to defend it, and more
This blog will additionally look at the international political economy of geopolitics in Russia’s ‘near abroad’ – and far beyond. Some sample topics in Eurasia will include the status of Ukraine’s loans, international financing for Tajikistan, and the fate of arbitration disputes involving the Georgian port development project of Anaklia, which has the potential to be a key node on the ‘Middle Corridor’ and China’s Belt and Road program and geopolitical rivalries over the competing agenda across Eurasia. Further afield, we will look at China’s capital controls and efforts to develop its own financial institutions and instruments of an emergent geopolitical order, from bilateral investment treaties to China-based arbitration courts – on to the truly esoteric, such as the state of sovereign borrowing in Papua New Guinea or the need for international financial support in ‘green transition’ efforts in the developing world from Ecuador to Mongolia to Gabon.
Finally, the blog will also cover the policies and prospects of the existing institutions of the international economic order, from the International Monetary Fund to the status of minor development banks such as the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank or the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit.
