Glossary
Plain-language definitions for terms you'll encounter in geopolitics and international economics.
Reserve currency
A currency held in significant quantities by central banks and treasuries to back their own currency, settle international debts, and intervene in foreign exchange markets. The US dollar is the dominant reserve currency; the euro, yen, and pound are also widely held.
Rules-based order (qualified)
A phrase Western governments use a lot. It refers to the system of treaties and institutions built after 1945 — the UN Charter, the WTO, the laws of war, freedom of the seas, the rules against the spread of nuclear weapons. The label is contested for three separate reasons that often get conflated. First, the rules in question were largely written by the victors of the Second World War and reflect their interests; many states in the Global South argue the order has always been selective in whose rules get enforced. Second, the United States itself has acted outside the rules when it has judged the stakes high enough — Kosovo without Security Council authorisation, Iraq in 2003, the US position on the International Criminal Court — which undercuts the moral framing. Third, as Amitav Acharya argues in *The End of American World Order* (2014, second edition 2018) and *Multiplex World* writing, the institutions and norms have always been shaped and reshaped by non-Western actors too, so the label 'rules-based order' obscures a more pluralistic history than the standard Western telling. The phrase still has analytical value when used carefully — for the specific bundle of post-1945 institutions and norms — and very little when used as a synonym for 'Western interests'. The Quad, AUKUS, and BRICS analyses on this site treat it as a contested label, not a neutral description.