ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationship between geopolitics and economics as forces jointly driving world order. Have geopolitics and economics always driven world order in opposite directions, one splintering and the other coalescing? How accurate is the IMF and widespread assumption that geopolitical rivalries are fragmenting the world, but economics holds the global economy—and thus world order—together? This chapter argues that conventional wisdom is at odds with actual global experience of the last 5 decades. The last 50 years can be divided into two periods: (i) the centripetal era of 1980–2010, when both geopolitics and economics drove world order to ever-greater coalescence; and (ii) the centrifugal era, from 2011 on, when both geopolitics and economics drove world order to ever-greater fragmentation.
