
Chokepoints
American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Edward Fishman
About this listen
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
"A timely, riveting world tour...[An] absorbing book."—The Economist
“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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"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 timely, riveting world tour....Edward Fishman, a former official at both the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury, describes how the American government's unglamorous economic arms have jumped into the middle of the country's geopolitical fights over the past two decades....[Chokepoints] contains a satisfying amount of dash and drama....It also makes for a cracking yarn....[An] absorbing book."—The Economist
“A masterful narrative of U.S. economic warfare in the 21st century….Fishman’s clear and thoughtful writing weaves the story together.”—Financial Times
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- By: Thomas R. Cech
- Narrated by: Joshua Saxon
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping journey of discovery, The Catalyst moves from the early experiments that first hinted at RNA's spectacular powers, to Cech's own paradigm-shifting finding that it can catalyze cellular reactions, to the cutting-edge biotechnologies poised to reshape our health.
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Captivating
- By Auinash Kalsotra on 09-16-24
By: Thomas R. Cech
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Trade Wars Are Class Wars
- How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace
- By: Matthew C. Klein, Michael Pettis
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years.
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Narrator is robotic
- By dugmartssch on 05-22-20
By: Matthew C. Klein, and others
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Punishing Putin
- Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia
- By: Stephanie Baker
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jill Araya
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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From seizing superyachts to manipulating the global price of oil to trying to block the sale of military technology to Russia, we learn how the White House coordinated with top officials in London and Brussels to freeze a staggering $300 billion in foreign currency reserves accumulated in the West by Russia’s central bank. Mobilizing an army of white collar-crime investigators and experts on international law, Baker explores how the West has cracked down on illicit Russian money by targeting oligarchs, one superyacht at a time, and their enablers around the world.
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Interesting in-depth storytelling
- By EBM on 10-01-24
By: Stephanie Baker
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Kaput
- The End of the German Miracle
- By: Wolfgang Münchau
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Kaput, Wolfgang Münchau argues that the weaknesses of Germany's economy have, in fact, been brewing for decades. The neo-mercantilist policies of the German state, driven by close connections between the country's industrial and political elite, have left Germany technologically behind over-reliant on authoritarian Russia and China—and with little sign of being able to adapt to the digital realities of the 21st century. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of Europe's biggest economy.
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Good Book - Cover art ios a litle dumb
- By Gilbert Payson on 02-19-25
By: Wolfgang Münchau
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The Folly of Realism
- How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine
- By: Alexander Vindman
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy, Alexander Vindman
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six US presidential administrations of both parties pursued policies for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia that emboldened Russia, playing into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable. In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling author Alexander Vindman argues that America’s mistakes in Eastern Europe result from policymakers’ fixation on immediate, short-term problem-solving and misplaced hopes and fears.
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Thought-provoking
- By Michelle R. on 04-18-25
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The Economic Weapon
- The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War
- By: Nicholas Mulder
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare.
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History of sanctions during the early 20th century
- By Mehdi Mollahasani on 03-05-22
By: Nicholas Mulder
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Waste Land
- A World in Permanent Crisis
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.
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Climate / Population Alarmism in a Mask
- By ElovesK on 02-07-25
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Return of Great Powers
- Russia, China, and the Next World War
- By: Jim Sciutto
- Narrated by: Jim Sciutto
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 dawned what Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History.” Three decades later, Jim Sciutto said on CNN’s air as the Ukraine war began, that we are living in a “1939 moment.” History never ended—it barely paused—and the global order as we have known it is now gone. Great powers are reinvigorated and determined to assert dominance on the world stage. And as it escalates, this new order will affect everyone across the globe.
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Disappointing
- By Douglas Peifer on 03-14-24
By: Jim Sciutto
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Dead of Night
- A Zombie Novel
- By: Jonathan Maberry
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A prison doctor injects a condemned serial killer with a formula designed to keep his consciousness awake while his body rots in the grave. But all drugs have unforeseen side-effects. Before he can be buried, the killer wakes up. Hungry. Infected. Contagious. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang… but a bite.
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Who Will Be Eaten Next?
- By Squeak on 11-04-11
By: Jonathan Maberry
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Inflation
- A Guide for Users and Losers
- By: Mark Blyth, Nicolò Fraccaroli
- Narrated by: Rebecca H. Lee
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Inflation is back, and its impact can be felt everywhere, from the grocery store to the mortgage market to the results of elections around the world. Yet the conventional wisdom about inflation is stuck in the past. Since the 1970s, there has only really been one playbook for fighting inflation: raise interest rates, thereby creating unemployment and a recession, which will lower prices. But this simple story hides a multitude of beliefs about why prices go up and how policymakers can wrestle them back down, beliefs that are often wrong, damaging, and have little empirical basis.
By: Mark Blyth, and others
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Treasury's War
- The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare
- By: Juan Zarate
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than a decade, America has been waging a new kind of war against the financial networks of rogue regimes, proliferators, terrorist groups, and criminal syndicates. Juan Zarate, a chief architect of modern financial warfare and a former senior Treasury and White House official, pulls back the curtain on this shadowy world. In this gripping story, he explains in unprecedented detail how a small, dedicated group of officials redefined the Treasury's role and used its unique powers, relationships, and reputation to apply financial pressure against America's enemies.
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Good story, yet outdated info.
- By Alejandro Vega on 01-24-23
By: Juan Zarate
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Crashed
- How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
- By: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Adam Tooze
- Length: 25 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all — the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
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A vaccine against substance free deceivers
- By Gary on 08-19-18
By: Adam Tooze
What listeners say about Chokepoints
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jesse Spevack
- 03-26-25
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.
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- Anonymous User
- 03-23-25
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
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