Militarised neoliberalism and the reconstruction of the global political economy

The consensus on industry policy, state intervention and free trade that have been so central to the neoliberal international order of the past three decades has been fundamentally transformed over the past few years. The Biden administration has coined the term ‘New Washington Consensus’ to describe these transformations in the global political and economic order. The nub of our argument is that rather than being the start of ‘deglobalisation’, or a turn away from neoliberalism, it represents the emergence of a form of militarised neoliberalism that repurposes and reorganises security institutions and alliances to enable or facilitate global economic accumulation by states such as the United States and China, such that it leads to new forms of regulatory geographies. We contest the idea that this means a shift back towards more statist forms of development. State activism is an important dimension of the new conjuncture, but we see this as the emergence of a different and more militarised neoliberalism. It is not about disconnecting but reconnecting the global economy in a way that favours certain forms of social forces and interests.