Audio Explainers
Spoken-word analysis — listen while you commute or multitask.
Reading ASEAN correctly
ASEAN's consensus rule is a feature, not a flaw. A short explanation of why the bloc moves slowly on contested issues and what it can deliver when the question is technical. We cover the South China Sea, the ASEAN Way, RCEP, and why treating the bloc like the EU produces frustration on both sides of the negotiation.
Reserve currency persistence
Why the dollar's reserve role survives even when its issuer's economic share falls. Liquidity, settlement habits, and the coordination problem of switching currencies. We also unpack the role of central-bank weaponization risk, the euro's fragmentation problem, and what slow diversification away from the dollar actually looks like in COFER data.
SWIFT explained: messaging versus settlement
A walk through what SWIFT actually does and why removal from it is a slow-acting sanction rather than an instant cutoff. Covers messaging, correspondent banking, and the limits of alternative networks like CIPS and mBridge. Includes a quick tour of how the 2022 Russian-bank removals propagated through global settlement and why the operational effect was real but partial.
AUKUS Pillar I — the submarine programme as alliance architecture
Beyond the platforms. Why nuclear-submarine cooperation locks in industrial-defense integration over decades, why this is harder to reverse than treaty alliances, and the internal Australian debate that doesn't get exported.
India's multi-alignment — the Russian oil case study
How India went from 0.2% Russian crude imports in 2022 to 38% in 2024, why this hasn't damaged the US-India relationship, and what S. Jaishankar's doctrine of 'multi-alignment' actually requires from New Delhi to sustain.
Iran-Saudi rapprochement at three years — Yemen, the nuclear file, the limits
The Beijing-brokered diplomatic restoration has held. What it has changed — Yemen ceasefire, Hajj coordination — and what it has not. Why mistaking diplomatic restoration for strategic alignment is the standard analytical error.
Carlos Lopes on AfCFTA — five years in, twenty to go
The former UN Economic Commission for Africa chief on what the African Continental Free Trade Area has actually moved since 2021. Tariff schedules, the Guided Trade Initiative, the binding infrastructure constraint, and why the project's measurable trade growth is structurally a second-decade phenomenon.
Vali Nasr on Iran-Saudi at three — diplomatic restoration, strategic distance
The SAIS scholar on the Beijing-brokered rapprochement after the Gaza durability test. Layer one — embassies, consular services, joint commissions — is mature. Layer two — Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon proxy management — is real. Layer three — strategic alignment — has not moved, and the analytical mistake is conflating the three.
Carla Norrlof on SWIFT — messaging is not money
The University of Toronto political scientist on why the 2022 SWIFT cut of Russian banks was less consequential than popular framing suggested. Messaging, settlement, and correspondent banking — three layers of the dollar-payment stack the policy debate keeps merging, and why the renminbi's real challenge runs through settlement infrastructure not communication standards.
Chris Miller on the chip stack — six monopolists, one map
Author of *Chip War* on why semiconductor policy stopped treating chips as commodities. The October 2022 export controls follow the stack's geography — EDA, EUV lithography, foundry, deposition — and read like the table of contents of his book. What the controls do, what they cannot do, and what Beijing has already routed around.
Adam Tooze on the Fed as world central bank
Author of *Crashed* on why the 2008 dollar-swap-line architecture made the Federal Reserve the lender of last resort for a system it does not regulate. Covered interest parity, the March 2020 dash for cash, and what the FIMA facility extends to emerging markets — and what it does not.
Daniel Drezner on sanctions — the 30% number and what it means
The Fletcher School professor on the Hufbauer-Schott-Elliott dataset, his refined success-rate estimates, and the three structural variables — cost concentration, demand specificity, coalition breadth — that distinguish the sanctions episodes that achieve their stated goals. Applied to the post-2022 Russia regime, the framework predicts partial industrial degradation over five-to-ten years, not a policy reversal.
The post-dollar question — what local-currency settlement actually changes
We unpack what PAPSS, mBridge, and the now-defunct INSTEX really do — and don't do — to the dollar's role in global finance. Settlement plumbing versus unit-of-account anchoring, and why those two functions don't unwind at the same pace.
Shannon O'Neil on the USMCA 2026 review
The CFR vice president of studies on the six-year sunset clause that distinguishes USMCA structurally from NAFTA. Automotive rules of origin and IRA tensions, the Mexican energy-sector files, and the migration-trade linkage a second Trump administration has signaled. The 2025 political signaling that determines whether the agreement renews or begins its ten-year sunset.
Reading the Houthi-Red Sea disruption two years on
Operation Prosperity Guardian, the Cape rerouting, the Suez revenue collapse. What insurance-market data tells us that diplomatic statements don't, and what Yemen's internal politics now require for the strait to reopen reliably.