Chokepoints

American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare

De: Edward Fishman

Narrado por: Robert Petkoff

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Deftly written, Chokepoints is a compelling and dramatic narrative about the new shape of geopolitics."—Daniel Yergin, The Wall Street Journal

“Remarkable...One of the most important books on economic warfare ever written.”—Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

The epic story of how America turned the world economy into a weapon, upending decades of globalization to take on a new authoritarian axis—Russia, China, and Iran.

It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government.

In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war. As Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ayatollah Khamenei wreaked havoc on the world stage, mavericks within the U.S. government built a fearsome new arsenal of economic weapons, exploiting America’s dominance in global finance and technology. Successive U.S. presidents have relied on these unconventional weapons to address the most pressing national-security threats, for good and for ill.

Chokepoints provides a thrilling account of one of the most critical geopolitical developments of our time, demystifying the complex strategies the U.S. government uses to harness the power of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Big Oil against America’s enemies. At the center of the narrative is an eclectic group of policy innovators: the diplomats, lawyers, and financial whizzes who’ve masterminded America’s escalating economic wars against Russia, China, and Iran.

Economic warfare has become the primary way the United States confronts international crises and counters rivals. Sometimes it has achieved spectacular success; other times, bitter failure. The result we live with today is a new world order: an economic arms race among great powers and a fracturing global economy. Chokepoints is the definitive account of how America pioneered this new, hard-hitting style of economic war—and how it’s changing the world.

©2025 Edward Fishman (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Deftly written, Chokepoints is a compelling and dramatic narrative about the new shape of geopolitics…[Fishman] has written an engrossing account of contemporary history. He provides a framework for understanding the battles to come as well as the growing challenges and risks facing companies that operate in the global economy…[A] timely guide to the fragmenting of the global economy and the rising tensions that go with it.”—Daniel Yergin, The Wall Street Journal

“A delightful read on two decades of economic warfare by a former practitioner who knows exactly what he is talking about.…What Chokepoints does swimmingly is to bring everything together, explaining both how the United States acquired the outsized power to punish anyone, anywhere, and how it learned to use and abuse that power.…For a reader looking for an accessible guide to how we got here and what is coming next, Fishman’s book is invaluable.”—Foreign Policy

"Remarkable...One of the most important books on economic warfare ever written.”—Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

An economics textbook disguised as a thriller

An awesome book on the recent history of economic warfare. Fishman makes the argument that using so-called chokepoints in the economy can help prevent wars and let the US project its power without the need for military action. He reveals the inside story of the various economic sanction regimes starting in the 1990s with Iraq, and then charting the history through Iran, North Korea, Russia and China. This is absolutely fascinating and has more than enough technical depth for a finance nerd, but written in an engaging tone that makes the reader think they are in the middle of a global thriller instead of an economics textbook.

Engrossing and magical

The author does an amazing job guiding non-expert readers through the key players and history of US Economic Warfare. The book does an amazing job of not casting these weapons and their use as an inevitability, but showing how all of the key decisions makers behaved along the way. The narrator too does a great job taking what's on it's face a dull topic and turning it into a thrilling ride