Economy

The economies of the Persian Gulf are highly dependent on their petrol exports, particularly to Asia.

The multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been of the utmost importance for Japan’s trade policy.

China is rapidly emerging as a formidable power in the development of technical standards, transforming the international standard-setting landscape and reintroducing an element of geopolitics into what are too often considered as benign, technical processes. 

Sanctions have become the dominant tool of statecraft of the United States and other Western states, especially the European Union, since the end of the Cold War.

Through development assistance and economic engagement, South Korea has sought to project itself as a different kind of partner for Africa. In reality, it is not so unique.

“Smart city” development has become a fashionable policy and research topic. A growing number of central and local governments in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, in partnership with companies from diverse sectors (construction, transport, energy, water, etc), consulting firms, NGOs and...

Digital power refers to any actor’s ability to exploit digital data to help influence the behavior of other actors on the international stage and to achieve its own ends. It is about understanding how it influences events in the real world, despite its “intangible” nature.

Restrictive measures are a major instrument of the European Union (EU)’s external action, which has emerged as one of the world’s leading sanctions emitters. The EU has thus leveraged the size of its market and its economic and financial clout (trade relations, aid policy and bilateral...

Only devised a few years ago, the concept of the Indo-Pacific seeks to express a new configuration of the world’s globalization. In terms of economic exchange and power distribution, the Indo-Pacific is a unitary region spanning from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific, where all the major powers...

RAMSES 2020. A World without a Compass?, written by Ifri's research team and external experts, offers an in-depth and up-to-date analysis of geopolitics in today’s world.