Mutations géopolitiques, fragmentations économiques et financières
This edition of Revue d’économie financière features thirteen contributions, divided into three thematic sections. The first deals with geopolitical tensions, the second looks at interruptions to and the reconstitution of trade against a backdrop of evolving capitalism and the third focuses on fragmentation in the financial sphere.
The review kicks off with an interview with Pascal Lamy. In it, the former European Commissioner and head of the WTO observes that “international trade is affected by geopolitical rivalry in different ways: the weaponisation of export controls, tariff warfare, security of supply […] and, with Donald Trump, monetisation of American strategic protection, visas or harbour dues, Mafia style” (our translation throughout). And yet, he does not believe that there is any “deglobalisation movement”. “Globalisation is slowing down, as we can see from changes in the ratio between volume of trade and gross domestic product. It is partially evolving as a result of trade measures acting in the same way as conventional changes in relative prices, but it is not going away altogether, as far as we can tell from the figures. Fragmentation remains limited and I do not believe it will ever prevail”, he stresses.
In this new geopolitical environment, Europe’s only possible response is strategic autonomy, the former Commissioner adds, making no secret that this “will involve considerable changes in the logistics of Europe’s economic and political integration, as was made very clear by the ‘Draghi’ and ‘Letta’ reports by the sheer scale of the security challenge, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”. “For a number of reasons, these changes are currently far too slow, to allow Europe to catch up in terms of technological effectiveness, innovation, its defence capability and its cohesion. It is therefore a question of the survival of European civilisation, as Jacques Delors himself once said”, he adds.
When asked about Africa, Pascal Lamy responded by stating that “colonisation carved the African continent up into a patchwork of 54 states of many different sizes and compositions. Political decolonisation, which was carried out in the name of various strains of African nationalism, in some ways consolidated the fragmentation in the age of globalisation. African economic integration, which started with several inter-continental processes of integration and the creation of the continental free-trade zone, is, in my view, the only way to ensure that the dynamic of economic growth eventually becomes more significant than the dynamic of demographic growth. The good news is that Africa has most of the resources the world of tomorrow will need. The bad news is that the risk premium to invest there is still far too high in most cases”.
“The WTO needs to learn to live without the United States, which has effectively, if not officially, left the organisation. A coalition of other countries must be created, and we can see the very beginnings of this, which will reaffirm the need for rules-based trade to protect the weakest in need of growth, and to effect the reforms needed to adapt these rules to the changing nature of barriers to trade, particularly the rules of precaution in the broadest sense, principally what is playing out in the development/trade/environment triangle”, he goes on to explain.
In an article on the new challenges of sovereignty and geopolitics, Gilles Babinet stresses that “there are two underlying tendencies that are currently reshaping global economic geography: firstly, the shortening of supply chains, motivated by concerns of geopolitical risks and the need for industrial security; secondly, the growing stranglehold of digital services, which are almost exclusively dominated by the United States”. “According to a digital think tank, these companies are already selling more than 270 billion dollars’ worth of digital services to the European Union, a total that is expected to grow steeply as AI becomes more widespread. This model worked when the United States could be considered reliable allies; they opened up their markets, were involved in the defence of the continent and, to an extent, shared a pillar of common values. But those days are drawing to a close. American technologies are now becoming potential instruments of computational, cognitive and military economic dependency, putting Europe in a position of structural vulnerability”, the author stresses.
He goes on to point out that “recent examples speak volumes. Broadcom’s buyout of VMware and the brutal increase in prices charged to European customers showed just how much our digital infrastructure is based on foreign players capable of unilaterally moving the goalposts overnight. Similarly, the matter of Microsoft suspending the email accounts of a judge of the International Criminal Court at Washington’s behest shows the extent to which economic and jurisdictional dependency is now accompanied by a presumed political asymmetry. Finally, the weapons systems purchased by Europe from the United States, predominantly F-35 fighter jets, are causes for concern given that this equipment contains millions of lines of code, most of which are administrated by or accessible to whoever wrote them. Europe is in a situation of voluntary servitude, even though public opinion is gradually growing more aware of these issues. The matters at hand are of concern in themselves, but given the paradigm shift represented by AI, moving more quickly to secure a position of dominance of one side over the other should garner awareness and investment”.
The European continent suffers from a lack of competitive AI platforms, “which has had the effect of losing considerable value to the United States and China”, Babinet points out. Echoing Mario Draghi, he argues that “the modernisation of Europe will involve not only infrastructure and high-tech, but also the capacity to produce locally and create competitive platforms embodying strategic autonomy”. “In other words, Europe must not be satisfied with consuming foreign technologies, but must get itself into the position of being able to define standards and usage whilst protecting its economic and social values. This is a challenge on an enormous scale: it will involve education, industry, innovation and regulation, and is absolutely necessary to prevent the continent from being stuck on the sidelines of the global AI revolution”, he writes, going on to stress that “although Mario Draghi’s roadmap is ambitious, it will succeed only if there is a collective political awakening”. “However, the huge range of different opinions at play among the member states makes coming to any kind of swift decision impossible. We will therefore have to agree to move forward at different paces: authorise voluntary coalitions [a very fashionable expression at the moment, but the treaty does already make provision for several variable geometry options, including reinforced cooperation: Ed] between the member states that are prepared to invest together in defence (with the inclusion of the United Kingdom, particularly on AI matters), in sovereign digital services, research and the semi-conductor industry”.
The author concludes that “at the same time, businesses and governments must engage in a strategic analysis of their dependency and agree to embark on a number of strict measures: requiring greater transparency on digital value chains, creating technological sovereignty labels, encouraging the development of European open source software hubs and, if necessary, prohibit certain services that are deemed incompatible with our strategic interests. These decisions will be expensive and will take a generation to start producing their effects, but they are the price of digital freedom for Europe. They will inevitably bring about a direct political confrontation with the United States and will succeed only if the European general public understands that it is not so much a question of economics as of civilisation: preserving Europe’s ability to defend its own values in a world in which technology is redefining sovereignty”. (OJ)
Revue d’économie financière. No. 160, Q3 2025. ISBN: 978-2-3764-7118-9. 264 pages. €35,00
Les futurs nucléaires, l’utopie et la stricte suffisance
In this article published in Futuribles, Benoît Pelopidas, lecturer at Sciences Po (CERI) and founder of the programme of study of nuclear matters, corrects three common misconceptions: (1) nuclear weapons serve as protection; (2) each size of nuclear arsenals is necessary for deterrence; (3) having nuclear weapons is beneficial under all circumstances.
1) Projection? Not true, the author responds, explaining that “ever since thermonuclear explosives were put together with missiles moving 20 times faster than a jet airliner, interception has become virtually impossible” and that “technological progress in terms of the speed of vectors, what are known as hypersonic vectors, at best only increases this vulnerability”. As the feasibility of a credible, for which read impermeable, anti-missile shield has never been proven, the only possible protection would be the existence of operational anti-atomic shelters in sufficient numbers to allow the survival of at least a large proportion of the population. This does not, however, solve the problem of the devastation of the surrounding area and subsequent survival.
2) Deterrence? The author begs to disagree. Currently, there are 12,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, split between nine nuclear states and six host states, most of which are far more destructive than those fired on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945 respectively. “In 1969, Russia began to increase its arsenal so that it would not only deter its enemies, but also limit the damage if nuclear deterrence should fail. For this purpose, it intends to target and be capable of destroying as many enemy nuclear weapons as possible if deterrence should fail. It has arsenals that allow it to do so. In other words, nuclear weapons located on French soil, such as the nuclear ballistic missile submarines on Île Longue and the nuclear weapons of strategic air forces, make the country into a priority target in the event that deterrence fails. The same goes for the United States – which does not currently consider France an enemy state. Nuclear status therefore remains first and foremost a status of vulnerability”, the author writes.
Existing arsenals, moreover, are out of all proportion to the requirements of nuclear deterrence. “Between them, the United States and Russia alone own 87% of the world’s nuclear weapons. It is true that after decades of stability, the Chinese nuclear arsenal is increasing in size, to that 600 weapons in 2025 and possibly 1000 in 2013. It is still a long way below Washington and Moscow’s armament levels, with 3700 and 4309 nuclear weapons respectively, not including weapons withdrawn from their arsenals, or 1477 and 1150 respectively (…). Since the 1960s at least, all nuclear states (except South Africa) have at any given time held an arsenal that is capable of wiping out entire states, or even civilisation, some of them several times over”, Pelopidas stresses. He goes on to point out that the US doctrine calls for even greater deterrence objectives: “American policy has always been to strike first pre-emptively or in response to a conventional attack on Allied territory or to a large-scale biological or cyberattack (…). All these options envision firing nuclear weapons at military targets for military ends; they envision the bomb as a weapon of war, writ large” (extract from Fred Kaplan’s book The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, New York, 2020).
3) Beneficial? Deterrence is essentially based on a technophile utopia, the author responds, stressing that it “consists of believing that we can continue to live in a world with nuclear arsenals capable of destroying civilisation forever without their ever exploding”. “This technological utopia is a game of chance of a particular kind: to be at least as lucky as we have been so far whilst not adequately taking account of plausible interactions between nuclear arsenals and climate change”, he adds, calling for a redefinition of the notion of strict sufficiency, a reflection on non-nuclear deterrence and stopping the race to armaments. He concludes by stating that “if the United States disengages from Europe militarily, this would be a timely opportunity to think again about what France and Europe want rather than replacing the capabilities that the United States takes with it. It is time to start believing our own hype about independence and strategic autonomy and acting accordingly”. (OJ)
Benoît Pelopidas. Les futurs nucléaires, l’utopie et la stricte suffisance (available in French only) - Revue Futuribles. Edition 470, January-February 2026. ISBN: 978-2-8438-7491-8. 136 pages. €22,00