For Washington, Iran’s “Hormuz Safe” scheme is a dangerous proposition, demonstrating that a sanctioned state can build its own maritime financial infrastructure, bypassing Lloyd's, the dollar, and US sanctions simultaneously.

Obscured by a sea of war-related headlines, China is perfecting its domestic sanction-busting apparatus – not for the Iran war of today, but the Taiwan conflict of tomorrow.

This week we examine the expanding quantity and range of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian shadow fleet tankers, a US ‘declaration of vengeance’ against ISIS in Syria, and how the Thai-Cambodia conflict reflects a global system in flux.

This week we cover new US sanctions against Russian oil majors, the deployment of a US Carrier Strike Group to the Caribbean, a US-Australia rare earths deal, and the outcome of highly consequential midterm elections in Argentina.

Russia’s shadow fleet has blunted the impact of Western energy sanctions, and other sanctioned states will seek to duplicate the trick in the future.

Bolstered by illicit and licit trade flows, the Russian economy appears to be weathering the sanction storm amid the Ukraine war.

Examining the hypothetical potential of Bitcoin as a tool of geoeconomic conflict, and the nascent examples that are already emerging.

Examining the long-term geoeconomic consequences of the Ukraine war, notably the ongoing viability of the US dollar as global currency and the possibility of a future return to the gold standard.

Non-dollar alternatives for settling global trade continue to expand in the wake of the Ukraine war.

Macroeconomic indicators can be deceptive when assessing the ongoing impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy.

The US ‘Caesar sanctions,’ aimed at forcing the Assad regime to negotiate, could potentially further immiserate the country’s long-suffering people.