World
April is the Cruelest Month
Diversification and dedollarization in the world economy
Investing in the US has been a good bet for well over a decade. America’s tech industry, its indefatigable consumers, highly profitable firms, and pro-growth fiscal policy has made the country a highly attractive option and contributed to the narrative…
Molecules of Freedom
The hydra-headed global market for liquified natural gas
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, European, and especially German, industry was left in the lurch. Much of the 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas piped from Russia each year had to be quickly replaced with energy from…
Europe Enters Its Metal Era
What kind of Europe survives a fractured transatlantic military alliance?
This month, Trump entered into formal talks with Russia—without Kyiv’s consent—to settle the war in Ukraine, largely on Putin’s terms. And on Friday, speaking with Zelensky in the Oval Office, he and his Vice President JD Vance performed as imperial…
Polycrisis 2025
Diplomacy, finance, and extraction in the year ahead
The United States will be a source of chaos and volatility for the next several years. The first month of 2025 has set the scene. Events so far have included imperial gangsterism against both a poor Latin American country (Colombia)…
Marshall Plans
New green industrial diplomacy?
At September’s UN General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s President Lula described the international financial system as a “Marshall Plan in reverse” in which the poorest countries finance the richest. Driving the point home, Lula thundered, “African countries borrow at…
The Contest to Shape “Country Platforms”
IMF reforms and Bangladesh’s revolt
Last month, young people in Bangladesh revolted against their government over a jobs quota bill that would have reserved 30 percent of public-sector jobs for family members of veterans of the 1971 war with Pakistan. Protestors did manage to drive…
The View From Nairobi-Washington
Debt, austerity, and Kenya’s global positioning
On June 25, crowning a dramatic, nationwide tax revolt, demonstrators in Nairobi stormed Kenya’s parliament buildings. President William Ruto’s new finance bill, introduced in Parliament in May, sought to increase levies on everything from bread and money transfers to sanitary…
Great Green Wall
Cat and mouse games are afoot
Biden’s announcement this week to sharply raise tariffs on Chinese imports is an escalation in the yearslong tariff war on China. The new tariffs specifically target green goods, most notably electric vehicles, duties on which have now quadrupled to 100…
New World Order?
Lender(s) of last resort, dollar dominance, and the global financial safety net
We live in a dysfunctional system in which money flows out of the countries that need it most and into the coffers of the wealthiest. In 2023, the private sector collected $68 billion more in interest and principal repayments than…
Liberal Blindspots
An interview with Chris Shaw
Protests led by farmers have been roiling Europe for months. In Belgium, Germany, Romania, the Netherlands, Poland, and France, farmers—armed with grievances ranging from subsidized Ukrainian grain imports to the EU-Mercosur trade deal and falling prices—have been taking to the…
Brand New India
An interview with Ravinder Kaur on the BJP’s “India Shining” campaign, Hindu nationalist designs, and globalist visions
With India headed to elections this April, the ruling BJP is rolling out enormous publicity campaigns to promote its record on economic growth and Hindu nationalism. Central to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third bid for reelection is the narrative that…
A Year in Crises
Trade, war, labor, and South-North dynamics in 2023
When we launched The Polycrisis a year ago, we set out to examine the intersecting crises in the economy, energy system, commodities markets, geopolitics, and climate. Our aim was to break intellectual and political silos to give a fuller picture…
Governing the Climate
An interview with Navroz Dubash on COP28, the history of international climate diplomacy, and the developmentalist turn in climate politics
An interview with Navroz Dubash on COP28, the history of international climate diplomacy, and the developmentalist turn in climate politics
October War
An interview with Guy Laron on the Gaza War, failure of the Netanyahu doctrine, and risks of Middle east conflagration
It is now over a month since Hamas launched its attack on Israel, killing an estimated 1,400 Israelis and taking more than 200 people hostage. Israel’s response has, in Netanyahu’s words, sought to “crush and destroy” Hamas, but the main…
Oil and Politics in the Mid-Transition
A discussion on the geopolitics of a transitioning global energy system
A world with terminally declining oil demand has never been experienced before, but the growth era for fossil fuels is ending, as many producers, investors and forecasters are acknowledging. This does not put climate goals in close reach, as CO2…
Hot Labor
Labor movements, labor markets, and mining
The energy transition is underway and the global North is putting up the cash. In our series, we have investigated questions about the international hierarchy of money, the distribution of economic power, and trade wars. Today, we turn to labor,…
Trading Order
Protectionism and interdependence pact?
Export Bans. Sanctions. Investment screens. The liberal trading order has been weaponized; security, not efficiency, is the new watchword. And yet, 2023 has seen an all-time high of goods traded across borders. Even bilateral trade between the warring great powers,…
Defining Bidenomics
Industrial policy, labor, and the New Cold War
A new American industrial policy—“Bidenomics”—has arrived, consisting of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. The proclaimed goals of Bidenomics are to propel a green energy transition to confront climate…
Grievance and Reform
Will the BRICS bargaining chip bear fruit for smaller and lower-income countries?
The precursor of 2022’s energy crisis was 2020–2021’s vaccine apartheid. These shortages were in no way natural but reflected financial and geopolitical hierarchies: those with more power and resources bid up prices and developing countries lost out in the process.…
Global Boiling
Stocks and flows, action and inaction in the planetary impasse
This July has been the hottest in our recorded history and, most likely, over the last 120,000 years. Four “Heat Domes” across the northern hemisphere—over West Asia, North America, North Africa and Southern Europe—contributed to soaring temperatures, not just breaking…
Washington-Paris-London Calling
Modi, Mottley, Zelenskyy’s attempts to change the existing world order
On June 22, three leaders of developing countries made expeditions to three different Western capitals to plead their case for greater support from the rich world. Viewed jointly, these demands—largely successful—provide a neat panorama of the escalating global crises of…
Carbon Budget versus Fiscal Budget
What’s at stake in the fiscal rules debate?
Negotiations at the Summit for a Global Finance Pact in Paris last week took place between fifty heads of state. They revolved around how poor countries might develop and decarbonize, within the confines of the existing financial system. A common…
Mottley in Paris, Modi in DC
Prospects for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact
Next week, a couple of dozen heads of state—from countries including China, Brazil, Indonesia, and almost a dozen African countries, among them Kenya, Zambia, and Senegal—will gather in Paris for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. Instigated by…
Friends With (Metal) Benefits
Australia’s bid for “friendshoring” in the shifting green world order
When Americans ran short on baby food last year, President Joe Biden made use of a Korean War-era authority—the Defense Production Act (DPA)—to airlift goat milk from Australia, despite protectionist howls from American formula companies. Operation Fly Formula funded the…
A New Foreign Policy
Understanding the “New Washington Consensus”
Leaders need followers. Last month, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered a speech outlining the Biden administration’s international economic policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington. The “New Washington Consensus” was not directed at citizens but at capitals abroad.…
The End of the Cold Peace
Can the Asian growth miracle survive?
Watch the Korean Peninsula. It is in South Korea that the New Cold War has most visibly upset the delicate balance between industry, security, and domestic politics. South Korea’s growth miracle has been based on deterrence and detente between China,…
The Gigantic Austerity Drive Underway
Two billion people are suffering austerity as governments follow IMF diktat
We are quietly witnessing the largest shift to austerity undertaken in this century. Debt-strained developing countries are making further cuts to already ragged budgets, in many cases as they battle to meet punishing new conditions demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which held…
Mercantilist Deals of the Great Powers
Decoupling from China is an uphill task in both the global North and the global South
This is the twelfth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. The maiden flight of a new cargo route between Shenzhen and São Paulo took off on…
Stranded Countries and Stranded Assets
Outsourcing the energy transition to the Gulf
This is the eleventh edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. The US routinely flouts its international climate financing commitments, rarely delivering on its promises. Last year, for example,…
Cash, Cars, Chemicals (and Corn)
Three big decarbonization plots
This is the tenth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. Decarbonization—reducing the output of invisible CO2 molecules into the atmosphere—requires nothing less than remaking the chemical basis of…
Debt and Power in Pakistan
The subcontinent’s embattled debtor isn’t merely the passive victim of the climate crisis— it is being plundered by its elites
The subcontinent’s embattled debtor isn’t merely the passive victim of the climate crisis—it is being plundered by its elites.
The EU and the IRA
Supply and demand in the great powers’ decarbonization race
This is the eighth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. At Davos last month, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced Brussels’ “Green Deal Industrial…
Don’t Say “Scramble for Africa”
Debt and diplomacy on the African continent
Debt, diplomacy, and the risks of a new Cold War.
Europe’s “Leap Into the Future”
Do exceptional crisis-fighting policies signal the arrival of an interventionist Europe?
This is the fifth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. In 2020, as demand for liquefied natural gas boomed in Asia, the shippable fuel was an afterthought in…
Development Bank Self-Sabotage
What’s stopping MDBs?
This is the fourth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. When the World Bank and IMF make radical noises, the US is typically the voice of restraint. So…
Collective Action and Climate Finance
Can the COP move markets?
This is the third edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. At UN climate summits, the items that appear on the agenda are usually those that advocates have fought…
A New Non-Alignment
How developing countries are flouting Western sanctions and playing the great powers off each other
This essay first appeared in GREEN, a journal from Groupe d’études géopolitiques. In March of this year, as Russia’s war in Ukraine intensified, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a trip to New Delhi to speak with his Indian counterpart…
Domestic Politics & Planetary Change
Will a Lula victory be better for the climate than anything that happens at COP27?
Will a Lula victory be better for the climate than anything that happens at COP27?
An Introduction
An introduction to The Polycrisis
This is the first edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. What crisis? A year ago, one might be forgiven for thinking there was a moment of relative calm…
The Geopolitics of Stuff
A discussion on supply chains, commodities, and climate
The material economy is back. Economists and commentators in recent decades had heralded (or lamented) the arrival of an automated, redundant, frictionless system of international commerce. But over the past two years, multiple global crises have exposed the fragile physical…
June 18, 2021
InterviewsInvestment and Decarbonization
A conversation on investment strategies for the green transition
In late March, the Biden administration announced the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, with approximately half of the sum dedicated to fighting the climate crisis. While the legislation would mark a sea change in federal action to avert climate catastrophe,…
May 13, 2021
AnalysisInvestment and Decarbonization: Rating Green Finance
A proposal for a public ratings agency for green finance
The Biden administration has committed the United States to cutting its carbon emissions in half by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.