The world’s superpowers are scrambling for an edge. It makes all of us less safe
There’s a way for nations to avoid endless trade wars.
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Addressing economic issues could be the starting point to repairing the more recent geopolitical cracks, says the writer.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas
Barely a month after I became the economic counsellor to the International Monetary Fund in 2022, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. The Russian invasion would pose a challenge I hadn’t quite anticipated: managing the economic fallout of wars. Since then, the global economy has had to navigate a series of conflicts – economic ones, like US President Donald Trump’s volley of tariffs, and actual ones, like the war in the Middle East involving the United States, Israel and Iran.
Too often, these shocks are viewed as isolated disruptions. They are not. They are interconnected symptoms of a deeper fragmentation reshaping the global economy. This fragmentation, both geopolitical and geoeconomic, risks ushering in what could become a new age of war. One defined not necessarily by constant military confrontation but by a persistent undercurrent of strategic economic rivalry and coercion and rising economic insecurity. And, yes, also increased risks of actual wars.
