How to Win the Geoeconomics Revolution
A fracturing strategic landscape is reshaping global trade and investment with bewildering speed. Neoliberals need to get on board or risk irrelevance.
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Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images North AmericaThe world is in the early stages of the biggest revolution in geoeconomics in decades. From the late 1970s onward, a collection of institutions and policies were gradually but relentlessly marginalized: state-owned enterprises (SOEs), national champions, import- and export-controls and industrial policy. Now they are coming back along with a few newfangled phrases for the same thing such as “techno-nationalism” and “critical technologies.”
This confronts neoliberals with a dilemma: Do they imitate William F. Buckley and “stand athwart history, yelling Stop,” or do they make strategic compromises with the new fashions in order to reduce the chances of disaster?