07/12/2026
Economic interdependence: enemies that can't divorce
The Cold War was bipolar too — democracy versus autocracy. But the two blocs lived in separate economies. They didn't trade, and they didn't need each other.
Today's world is bipolar again, yet fundamentally different. Market democracies and market autocracies are locked into deep economic interdependence — through trade, supply chains, and global finance. So both sides reach for economic weapons: tariffs, export controls, closing, etc.
But here's the paradox of "interdependent bipolarity": neither side can win. Every economic blow wounds the country that strikes it. The future isn't conquest — it's an uneasy coexistence built on concessions from both sides.
And crucially, the West can no longer simply impose its values, from democracy to human rights, the way it once could.
This is a new way of looking at the global order — drawing on Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman's concept of "weaponized interdependence."