Chokepoints: An Evening with Edward Fishman

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.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program
Free & open to the public. Registration required.

Copies of Chokepoints will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

About Edward Fishman

Edward Fishman teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and is a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy. He is the New York Times–bestselling author of Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, which has been called “masterful” by the Financial Times and “a compelling and dramatic narrative about the new shape of geopolitics” by the Wall Street Journal. He previously served at the U.S. State Department on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as the Russia and Europe Sanctions Lead, at the Pentagon as an advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at the U.S. Treasury Department as special assistant to the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. His writing and analysis have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Politico, and on NPR.