How the financial system would respond to a superpower war

The idea that economic integration can safeguard peace is old, intuitive and spectacularly wrong. In a popular book of 1910, the economist Norman Angell argued that great-power conflict was irrational, since “the complexity of modern finance makes New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin, to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history.” A century later, similar wishful thinking in western Europe fostered the building of Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. In a globalised world, war has no winners. But that did not stop Europe from digging trenches in 1914, nor Russian troops from storming Ukraine in 2022.