Agis Veroutis, a columnist for the Greek financial news site Capital.gr, argued in a September 14, 2026 piece that globalization failed at the one job it was actually supposed to do: making the world so economically interdependent that war became too costly to wage. Instead, he wrote, that same interdependence has handed governments a new arsenal of economic weapons, from cutting countries off from the SWIFT payment network to freezing currency reserves and blocking exports of computer chips and rare earth minerals.
Veroutis illustrated the shift with a parable about a poor young woman who took a factory job because it guaranteed food on the table, only for her now-grown children to want more: to design the product, hold the patent, and sell it themselves. He used the image to describe how countries that once supplied cheap labor to the global economy, such as China, have moved up the value chain far faster than the West expected.
A world order built after World War Two
According to Veroutis, today's global economic and political order took shape after the Second World War and expanded rapidly following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He described it as the planet's operating system, now carrying so many patches, compatibility problems and workarounds that it resembles an old laptop no one wants to restart, adding that a new version will eventually be needed.
At the center of that system, he wrote, is still the US dollar. He cited figures showing that about 57% of global currency reserves remain held in dollars, and that the dollar and the euro together are used to invoice most of world trade. Veroutis compared predictions of the dollar's demise to repeated rumors of Elvis Presley's return, saying they have circulated for decades without coming true, even as more countries look for what he called the exit.
He pointed to Russia's experience after its currency reserves held abroad became inaccessible as a lesson that reserves belong to a country until the custodian remembers he has a spare key too. China, he wrote, is pushing trade settled in yuan, Middle East countries are striking bilateral deals in other currencies, and India and the United Arab Emirates have already tested direct settlements in rupees and dirhams.
The petrodollar and the Gulf
Veroutis dismissed the popular idea that a formal agreement forces oil producers to price crude in dollars. He described the real arrangement as simpler: the United States provided security in the Persian Gulf, oil producers sold their crude in dollars, and their surpluses flowed back into American bonds and assets, deepening the dollar's role without requiring persuasion.
He wrote that Saudi Arabia now holds talks with China, Beijing is pushing for more trade in yuan, Russia and Iran have obvious reasons to avoid the dollar, and the United Arab Emirates conducts business without first checking with Washington. The petrodollar, he concluded, still exists, but has stopped being treated as untouchable.
China's climb up the value chain
The column described China as the site of globalization's biggest strategic miscalculation: Western economies assumed they would keep technology, patents, brands and financial services while China simply made the goods. Instead, Veroutis wrote, China kept the factories and learned to write the patents too. He listed the electric carmaker BYD, a dominant share of the battery production chain, and a major position in the global solar panel supply chain as evidence, alongside drones, telecommunications, electric vehicles, batteries, solar power, artificial intelligence and industrial equipment.
Japan, Veroutis wrote, has changed roles as well. It served for decades as the global economy's cheap-money source, letting investors borrow yen for almost nothing to buy higher-yielding assets elsewhere, until the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank adopted zero interest rates and large-scale quantitative easing themselves. Japan has since ended its era of negative interest rates and lost its position as the world's largest net creditor, a title now held by Germany and China, according to the column.
Europe wakes up to the cost of defense
Europe, the column argued, had spent years consuming American security, Russian energy and Chinese goods while regulating minor matters such as bottle caps. It is now, belatedly in Veroutis's telling, planning hundreds of billions of euros in rearmament spending, discussing strategic autonomy, and revisiting industrial policy it once treated as a near taboo.
He also pointed to Europe's dependence on American-owned payment systems including Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, arguing that money moving domestically within Europe effectively routes through foreign networks. He described the digital euro as Europe's attempt to build its own payment layer so it no longer needs those networks, though he said whether that project succeeds remains to be seen.
The Gulf diversifies its alliances
Middle Eastern states, Veroutis wrote, are no longer simply oil exporters with a flag. He described Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their neighbors as global investors in technology, logistics, artificial intelligence, tourism, finance, data centers and defense, buying American weapons, Chinese technology and European companies while doing business with all sides when convenient. He called this the end of what he termed geopolitical monogamy, with most countries now preferring looser, non-exclusive relationships.
Veroutis stressed that global trade continues largely as before, since no country wants to pay inflated prices for phones or televisions purely to achieve national self-sufficiency. What has disappeared, he wrote, is the assumption that the cheapest supplier is automatically the best one, since chips, ports, payment networks, data centers, currencies and shipments of liquefied natural gas have all acquired a second use as tools of geopolitical leverage.
Globalization's promise, Veroutis concluded, was to make the world so interdependent that war would become unaffordable. Instead, he wrote, it made the world so interdependent that almost everything can now be weaponized, leaving countries redistributing the economic keys they once handed to one another, none of them willing this time to leave all the keys to their own house in someone else's pocket.
