My Take | America has turned global economy into new theatre of war

The United States has a genius for war. That may explain why since its inception, there have been few years when it was truly at peace, with itself and the world. That genius manifests itself in every domain and terrain known to man. The most obvious is outer space, which is the youngest branch of the US armed services. The Pentagon has long considered cyberspace as a separate theatre of conflict and military operations.

But what we have seen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that the entire global economy has been weaponised and turned into a battleground, albeit a lopsided one, against Russia. While the hot war is ostensibly between Ukraine and Russia, with Nato playing a secondary role, the underlying economic warfare is being waged directly out of Washington.

Never before has a full range of sanctions, “entity” designations, tech transfer restrictions and asset freezes been assembled as quickly and at such a scale, against a single adversary.

This has, no doubt, given it a short-term boost to the US’ unparalleled hard powers, but in the long run, it will be detrimental to world trade and globalisation. Quite simply, it has turned what has been considered global public goods into instruments of financial or economic warfare.

That has turned on its head the old argument, still being advocated by the “Davos crowd” or the World Economic Forum, that global trade promotes peace and good neighbourliness among nations.

This is the very opposite of “the rules-based international system”. Increasingly, what people loosely call the global economy is being turned by the US into a battleground in which it alone has the overwhelming decisive advantage.