Forget nukes and battleships. Washington may increasingly flex its geopolitical muscle in 2015 using an unconventional weapon: finance. “Access to the US marketplace and US banks, and Washington’s ability and willingness to use them, are becoming more important as instruments of foreign and security policy,” Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer writes. “There is no better example of this trend than the weaponization of finance — the systematic use of carrots (access to capital markets) and sticks (varied types of sanctions) as tools of coercive diplomacy.” The most talked-about examples, of course, are the sanctions imposed against Russia, and more recently, North …read more
Source: Business Insider
