Chokepoints

Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare is a 2025 nonfiction book by Edward Fishman, an American international relations scholar and former diplomat.^[1] The book describes the emergence of economic warfare as a defining feature of geopolitics in the 21st century, examining how the United States and its allies have wielded control over what the author calls “chokepoints”—such as the U.S. dollar, advanced microchip technology, and key nodes in energy supply chains—to confront rivals such as Russia, China, and Iran.

The book was first published by Penguin Random House on February 25, 2025.^[2]

Chokepoints presents a chronological account of how economic warfare became a key dimension of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century.^[3] The book combines policy analysis with narrative storytelling, following diplomats, lawyers, and financial regulators in the process of turning sanctions, export controls, and investment restrictions into vital instruments of statecraft.^[2]

The book extends the idea of geographic chokepoints—such as the Bosporus and the Strait of Hormuz—to critical domains of the global economy dominated by the United States and its allies, including the dollar-based financial system, maritime insurance, and advanced technologies like semiconductors.^[4] Fishman argues that these chokepoints give Washington extraordinary leverage, while cautioning that their exploitation is driving U.S. adversaries to construct alternatives.^[5][6]

Structured in six parts, the book moves from the creation of the globalized economy in the second half of the 20th century to the rise of financial warfare after 9/11, the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, the sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea, and efforts to block China’s technological rise. It culminates with the large-scale measures taken in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and a reflection on the erosion of chokepoints, the fragmentation of the global economy, and the possible breakdown of globalization itself.^[7]

Throughout the book's narrative, Fishman proposes a geo-economic “impossible trinity,” arguing that states cannot simultaneously sustain deep economic interdependence, safeguard economic security, and engage in geopolitical competition.^[8]

Chokepoints appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list in its first week of eligibility.^[9] It was longlisted for the 2025 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award.^[10]

In The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Yergin wrote that it provided “a framework for understanding the battles to come as well as the growing challenges and risks facing companies that operate in the global economy,” and concluded that it was “a timely guide to the fragmenting of the global economy and the rising tensions that go with it.”^[7]

The Economist review highlighted Fishman’s chronological storytelling, which “helps him show how economic weapons evolved through trial, error and political pressure,” and highlighted his portraits of policymakers such as Stuart Levey, Daleep Singh, and David Cohen for bringing drama and immediacy to a complex subject.”^[3]

The Financial Times described Chokepoints as “well-timed and meticulously researched account of how and why the US has increasingly turned to sanctions and economic warfare as an instrument of statecraft.”^[11] In Foreign Policy, Keith Johnson discussed how the book “brings 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.”^[6]

The academic journal International Affairs described the book as providing a “contemporary history of one of the least understood but most critical components of US foreign policy over the past 20 years.”^[12]

The book received favorable reviews from Jacobin,^[13] National Review,^[14] and City Journal.^[15]

• Economic sanctions
• Economic warfare
• Trade war