The optimistic wager of the globalization era was that deep economic interdependence would pacify great-power politics, binding rivals together through mutual gain. That wager has been inverted. Interdependence has become a weapon, as the networks of finance, trade, and technology that bind the world together are turned into instruments of coercion by the states that sit at their chokepoints. The response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the reach of this power: sweeping financial sanctions, the freezing of central bank reserves, and expulsion from payment systems sought to isolate a major economy through control of the plumbing of global finance. The United States and China now wage a slower contest over the commanding heights of technology, with export controls on advanced semiconductors and manufacturing equipment aimed at arresting a rival's capabilities, and countermeasures targeting critical minerals on which the other depends. Supply chains once optimized purely for efficiency are being reconfigured for security through "friend-shoring," reshoring, and the deliberate reduction of exposure to adversaries, at considerable economic cost. What makes this mode of statecraft analytically distinctive is that it turns the very connections meant to foster cooperation into vectors of pressure, and that its use invites emulation and countermeasures, accelerating a broader fragmentation of the global economy into rival blocs. The central questions concern how effective coercion through interdependence actually is, given the adaptations and workarounds it provokes, whether the weaponization of networks by their dominant powers ultimately erodes their own centrality by driving others to build alternatives, what the security-driven restructuring of supply chains costs in growth and development, and whether an economically fragmenting world is more or less prone to open conflict than the interdependent one it replaces.
Weaponized Interdependence: Sanctions, Supply Chains, and the Geoeconomics of Rivalry
Type
Open Panel
Language
English
Chair
Co-chair
Discussants
Description
Track
Onsite Presentation Language
Same as proposal language
Panel ID
PL-4145






