Ukraine's globalisation lesson

Actually, interconnectedness and co-dependence preserve strategic autonomy

Twenty years ago, the countries of the world seemed to be permanently being bound together by ever tighter chains of globalisation; today, those chains may have been broken beyond repair. Frayed after the financial crisis, they were further damaged by an upsurge in populist protectionism and then the pandemic; and now sanctions after Russia’s Ukraine war may have broken them permanently.

The most potent intervention in the Ukraine war that the United States and the European Union felt was possible, given Moscow’s nuclear arsenal, was expelling some Russian banks from the SWIFT inter-bank messaging system alongside personal sanctions on some well-connected