| Abstract: | Beginning from Russia’s inquiry in Ukraine in 2022 to present, the United States has heavily relied on economic instruments, like sanctions and tariffs, as well as military linked economic pressure as a tool of geopolitical coercion. The measures have been directed at adversarial regimes up until 2025, subsequently being extended towards strategic partners, including India and European Union. Taking insights from the theories of asymmetric interdependence, economic statecraft, and weaponised interdependence, this paper argues that the U.S. structural power over global trade, finance, and technology has been transformed into a coercive instrument of statecraft, allowing Washington to impose substantial costs on both foes and friends. Through comparative case studies, the paper analyses how the U.S. has sought to enforce political and strategic compliance by imposing sanctions on Russia and Iran, conditional sanction relief for Venezuela and subsequent capture of President Maduro, tariff escalations against India, and unprecedented tariff threats towards EU over Greenland. These measures have created short term tactical leverages, but simultaneously provoked adaptive responses and widened global divisions. Although the U.S. coercive capacity is enabled by unparalleled network centrality and dollar dominance, its aggressive deployment is accelerating trust erosion and creating new financial and trade systems. These dynamics signal a gradual shift away from unipolar economic governance toward a more fragmented and multipolar world order. The paper concludes that continued reliance on economic coercion by the U.S. raises profound implications for the future of dollar hegemony and global order in the twenty-first century. |
