Master the rules of the world being built right now!
A graduate-level seminar grounded in 50 years of research and global advisory experience—decoding the structural forces reshaping the international economic order and equipping you to think, decide, and lead within it.
"The servant leaders who navigate this heroic transition well will be the ones who refused to separate economics from geopolitics when everyone else still thought they could."
— Val (Valdas) Samonis
What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Analyse the structural forces—geopolitical rivalry (Thucydides Trap), deep technological disruption, demographic change, and fragmentation—that are reshaping the post-WWII international economic order.
- Evaluate the shifting balance of economic power among the United States, China, Europe, India, and key emerging markets, and draw evidence-based conclusions about where that balance is heading.
- Interpret the transformation of global trade, supply chains, and geoeconomics, including the strategic use of sanctions, export controls, and critical-mineral dependencies.
- Assess the future of the dollar-centered financial system, digital assets, and fintech in a multipolar monetary landscape.
- Apply a coherent analytical framework—bridging academic economics, management strategy, and geopolitical analysis—to real-world decisions facing governments, corporations, and investors.
- Develop and defend an independent, well-researched experiential-learning supported perspective on the institutions, rules, and economic models that are being built to govern the 21st-century global economy.
How it works
A school that adapts to you
This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.
We learn your level
A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.
Lessons adapt as you go
Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.
Your AI coach keeps you moving
Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.
The curriculum
What's inside your school
6 modules · 26 lessons
The Old Order and Why It Is Fracturing
Traces the architecture of the post-WWII international economic order, the forces that sustained it, and the structural pressures now pulling it apart.
- 1.1The Bretton Woods World: Rules, Institutions, and the Western-Led SystemIncluded
- 1.2Geopolitics Returns: Why Economics and Security Can No Longer Be SeparatedIncluded
- 1.3The Fragmentation Paradox: Redesigning Globalization, Not Ending ItIncluded
- 1.4Reading the Transition: An Analytical Framework for the SeminarIncluded
The New Balance of Economic Power
Examines the shifting weight of the United States, China, Europe, India, and emerging markets and what that redistribution of power means for the global system.
- 2.1American Economic Power: Enduring Primacy or Managed Decline?Included
- 2.2China's Economic Ambitions: From Integration to Strategic CompetitionIncluded
- 2.3Europe's Strategic Autonomy: Ambition, Dependency, and the Search for AgencyIncluded
- 2.4India and the Emerging-Market Moment: The New Growth FrontierIncluded
- 2.5Multipolarity in Practice: Alliances, Rivalries, and the Absence of a Single CenterIncluded
Trade, Supply Chains, and Geoeconomic Strategy
Decodes the transformation of global trade and supply chains as nations weaponize economic interdependence for strategic ends.
- 3.1The New Trade Landscape: Friendshoring, Industrial Policy, and Strategic DecouplingIncluded
- 3.2Supply Chain Rewiring: From Just-in-Time to Just-in-CaseIncluded
- 3.3Sanctions, Export Controls, and Economic Coercion as Foreign PolicyIncluded
- 3.4Critical Minerals and Energy: The New Strategic DependenciesIncluded
The Future of Money, Finance, and the Dollar System
Interrogates the durability of dollar hegemony and the emergent monetary landscape shaped by multipolarity, digital assets, and financial fragmentation.
- 4.1Dollar Hegemony: How It Works, Who It Serves, and Who Resents ItIncluded
- 4.2Challenges to the Dollar: Yuan Internationalization, BRICS, and Alternative SystemsIncluded
- 4.3Digital Assets, CBDCs, and the Fintech Revolution in a Multipolar WorldIncluded
- 4.4Capital Flows, Financial Sanctions, and the Fragmentation of Global FinanceIncluded
Technology, Knowledge, and the New Economic Frontier
Explores how artificial intelligence, data, and technological competition are redefining productivity, power, and the rules of economic competition.
- 5.1AI and the Knowledge Economy: Who Leads, Who Follows, and Who Gets Left BehindIncluded
- 5.2The Semiconductor Wars: Technology Control as Geopolitical StrategyIncluded
- 5.3Data Sovereignty, Digital Trade, and the Fragmented InternetIncluded
- 5.4Innovation, Industrial Policy, and the Return of the Developmental StateIncluded
Demography, Emerging Markets, and Building the New Order
Connects long-run demographic shifts and emerging-market dynamism to the institutions, rules, and leadership models that will govern the next international economic order.
- 6.1Demographic Divergence: Aging Powers, Young Economies, and Global Labor FlowsIncluded
- 6.2The Emerging-Market Opportunity: Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Next Billion ConsumersIncluded
- 6.3New Institutions and Rules: Who Is Writing the Order That Comes Next?Included
- 6.4Strategic Decisions Under Uncertainty: Frameworks for Governments, Corporations, and InvestorsIncluded
- 6.5The New International Economic Order: Synthesis, Scenarios, and Your Independent ViewIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
Graduate researchers
Doctoral and master's students in economics, IR, or political economy who need a rigorous, integrative framework to situate their research in the live structural transition reshaping the global order.
Senior policy analysts
Government and think-tank analysts advising on trade, finance, or national security who need a coherent intellectual architecture—not just more data—for the multipolar world they are already navigating.
C-suite executives
Senior leaders in multinationals facing supply-chain rewiring, export-control exposure, and geopolitical risk who must translate structural economic shifts into concrete strategic decisions.
Global macro investors
Portfolio managers and sovereign-wealth advisors whose capital allocation depends on reading dollar hegemony, capital-flow fragmentation, and emerging-market inflection points with precision and depth.
Diplomats & foreign-service officers
Practitioners at the nexus of economic and security policy who need to understand geoeconomic coercion—sanctions, export controls, critical-mineral leverage—as instruments of statecraft, not just economics.
Strategic advisors & consultants
Independent advisors and management consultants whose clients—governments, corporations, or funds—demand a level of geopolitical-economic synthesis that goes well beyond standard scenario-planning frameworks.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
Val (Valdas) Samonis
If you have reached the point where the standard framing no longer satisfies you—where headlines about deglobalization, dollar decline, or US-China rivalry feel simultaneously urgent and analytically thin—then you understand exactly why I designed this seminar.
I have spent five decades at the intersection of international economics, strategic studies, geopolitical analysis, and high-stakes advisory work. Over that time, I have watched the Bretton Woods order age, strain, and now fracture in ways that most of the frameworks taught in graduate programs were not built to explain. The problem is not a shortage of data or commentary. The problem is the absence of an integrated analytical vocabulary—one that can hold macroeconomic theory, management strategy, and geopolitical reality in the same frame without flattening any of them.
This seminar is my answer to that problem. It is not a survey of current events dressed in academic language. It is a structured inquiry into the structural forces—geopolitical rivalry, technological disruption, demographic divergence, financial fragmentation—that are actively dismantling the international economic order and assembling something new in its place. We examine American power with the same unflinching rigor we bring to China's strategic ambitions or Europe's search for autonomy. We interrogate the dollar system not as a permanent fixture but as an institution with genuine challengers and genuine vulnerabilities. We treat the semiconductor wars and the return of industrial policy not as anomalies but as symptoms of a deeper realignment between economics and security.
What I ask of participants is intellectual honesty and a willingness to have their priors challenged. The seminar is demanding because the questions demand it. But by the end, you will not simply have absorbed a body of knowledge—you will have developed and defended an independent, evidence-based view of where the 21st-century global economy is heading and what it means for the decisions you are responsible for making.
I built this for the servant leaders who cannot afford to be wrong about the world. I hope you will join me.
— Val (Valdas) Samonis
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- 6 modules, 26 lessons
- AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
- Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
- Your own AI learning coach
- Learn on any device, at your pace
- Full access for as long as you're subscribed