The Fellows Of Summer

Amid a pause in combat, any progress will depend on what path the region takes.

H.R. McMaster and Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin discuss Sweden's approach to civil defense, Nordic-Baltic security cooperation, and how Sweden is strengthening NATO to improve deterrence in the High North.

Money, power and security are intimately connected. For extended periods, the world’s financial center has been concentrated in one country, one city, one currency, providing in effect a code of conduct, whose most effective modern variants have been the nineteenth-century gold standard (1873–1914), the Bretton Woods system (1945–1971), and the international system around the so-called Washington Consensus (1980–2008). Each of these orders eventually frayed, and alternatives needed to be constructed. Concentration around a financial center yields powerful network advantages, but the historical record warns against treating any such arrangement as permanent. The emergence of rival centers has repeatedly been associated with heightened conflict, war, and destruction.