Abraham L. Newman

As the United States and China turn the networks of globalization into tools of foreign policy, Europe is often caught in the middle. With shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and US-China technology dispute rippling through global markets, bottlenecks have appeared in unexpected places—from N95 masks to semiconductor chips. More generally, worldwide economic networks for information, money, and production have been exposed as more brittle and centralized than many observers expected. “This is far from simply an economic story, as the US and other powerful states have begun to manipulate these vulnerabilities, inflicting costs on their adversaries as a tool of foreign policy,” Newman writes. Traditional foreign-policy distinctions between economic and security equities have collapsed as questions about business organization and management are tied to the national interest. From secondary sanctions to export controls, governments have made soldiers of global banks in Frankfurt and social media companies in Silicon Valley. In Berlin, Newman will conduct fieldwork to study European responses to economic coercion and work with research teams at the Hertie School of Governance and the Freie Universität to understand how the German government has helped devise both German and European responses to economic coercion. He will also travel to Brussels and other European capitals and engage with European policymakers struggling to make sense of this new world of “weaponized interdependence.”