Recent reporting in the Financial Times   highlights Chinese President Xi Jinping’s explicit call for the renminbi to attain global reserve currency status, framing this ambition within China’s broader push to reshape the international monetary order.   Under what conditions can a fiat currency become a reserve currency in the first place? The answer to this question lies in the structural requirements identified by international monetary theory and historical experience. Res

Strategic uncertainty has become the baseline condition under which global politics and economics operate. Power is more dispersed, trust more fragile and stability more conditional than at any time since the end of the Cold War. This landscape begins with the structure of power. The international system has not settled into a stable multipolar balance, but into a form of strategic multipolarity defined by fluid alignments. The US–China rivalry remains central, yet it no long