Connor O’Brien

Wonderful to have a contribution among these incredible and thoughtful scholars trying to make sense of the Silicon Valley technology elite and corporate forms of power and sovereignty

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Heading up to Boston for our 2025 @hpe-project.bsky.social grantees research conference. This year’s theme is ‘Two, Three, Many Developmentalisms,’ and we have keynotes from Sarah Bellows-Blakely and Joel Suarez.

Very grateful for the opportunity to receive feedback from the @hpe-project.bsky.social community on my doctoral project, after receiving a HPE summer grant to conduct further archival and interview research in Geneva and Paris

Why Finance Guys Are Trying to Offshore the Planet COP30: A Conversation with Connor O'Brien

Had a great time chatting with Connor O’Brien about little known financial tool called debt for nature swaps, the colonial history of sovereign debt and finance systems, and why finance guys are trying to offshore the planet.

open.substack.com/pub/alinautr...

And especially for @quinnslobodian.com and Francine McKenzie’s extremely helpful discussant comments!

Very grateful for the opportunity to receive feedback from the @hpe-project.bsky.social community on my doctoral project, after receiving a HPE summer grant to conduct further archival and interview research in Geneva and Paris

If AUKUS Is Toast, What Should Australia Do Next? Amid Elbridge Colby’s review of the submarine deal, three books consider the future of the alliance itself.

The AUKUS review poses a fundamental challenge to the U.S.-Australia relationship, and Australian foreign policy generally. Three books consider the future of the alliance itself.

Great to publish this @foreignpolicy.com review essay on the future of Australian foreign policy

Australia should stop pretending to be a military hegemon With its defence spending akin to a rounding error in comparison to China and the US, Australia must find other ways to exert power.

Australia is far too small to shape the regional balance of power via military means, and its defence spending will remain a rounding error in comparison to the US and China

This is the inconvenient truth ignored by many pro-AUKUS commentators

www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpre...

Australia should stop pretending to be a military hegemon With its defence spending akin to a rounding error in comparison to China and the US, Australia must find other ways to exert power.

“Australia is particularly well placed to shape the medium- and long-term economic determinants of the regional distribution of power,” writes Connor O’Brien in The Interpreter.
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/australia-should-stop-pretending-be-military-hegemon

As the debate about Australian defence commitments and AUKUS heats up, it’s worth questioning what all this spending is meant to be for

To boost regional ties, Australia should instead be prioritising decisive multilateral action on trade, sovereign debt, and climate finance

Offshoring the Planet | Connor O'Brien A battle for jurisdictional control lies at the heart of the global green transition.

"After first emerging in the interwar years, offshore tax havens proliferated during the era of decolonization. Postcolonial self-determination prompted the flight of imperial capital to offshore jurisdictions, many of which were current or former British dependent territories."

Thanks @phenomenalworld.bsky.social for publishing my essay ‘Offshoring the Planet’

Offshoring the Planet | Connor O'Brien A battle for jurisdictional control lies at the heart of the global green transition.

"Debt-for-nature swaps and carbon credit trading represent the expansion of the offshore phenomenon as a logic of global South statecraft."

NEW, Connor O'Brien on jurisdictional control over biodiversity and climate finance

In my @phenomenalworld.bsky.social essay ‘Offshoring the Planet’, I explore how the offshore world is reshaping the global green transition (a 🧵1/7)
t.co/8j7i8iXAIk

Offshoring the Planet | Connor O'Brien A battle for jurisdictional control lies at the heart of the global green transition.

Now in Spanish! Thanks @phenomenalworld.bsky.social www.phenomenalworld.org/es/analisis/...

To conclude, I reframe the financing of the green transition as a multi-layered battle for jurisdictional control, with important implications for transnational private control over global environmental governance (7/7)

Through two case studies, I show how both mechanisms are expanding the offshore phenomenon as a logic of global South statecraft, enabling states to commercialize their sovereignty over the green transition (6/7)

The essay explores how proponents of carbon credit trading and debt-for-nature swaps use offshore financing vehicles to argue that the financial flows are both locally and internationally controlled, while advancing both climate justice and market-based prerogatives (5/7)

Different financing models have profound implications for governmental control over project implementation, local self-determination, broader development outcomes, and indeed the penetration of financial globalization (4/7)

Yet beyond the first-order issue of generating new financing, the question of how the money should be spent looms large (3/7)

As the global environmental financing ‘gap’ grows, there is increasing momentum behind non-traditional financing measures such as carbon credit trading and debt-for nature swaps (2/7)

In my @phenomenalworld.bsky.social essay ‘Offshoring the Planet’, I explore how the offshore world is reshaping the global green transition (a 🧵1/7)
t.co/8j7i8iXAIk

@hpe-project.bsky.social

Thanks @phenomenalworld.bsky.social for publishing my essay ‘Offshoring the Planet’

🚨CRIA is soliciting special issue proposals that contribute to scholarly debate and which examine pertinent and topical theoretical, empirical and methodological questions ⬇️

Deadline: 11 June

On 28 May, CRIA is running an ECR workshop on 'The Global Politics of the Green Transition'! Abstract submissions close on 7 April.

The Real Economy | Phenomenal World No discipline in the humanities or social sciences today has a convincing theory of the economy. Long preoccupied with honing methods, the core of the discipline of economics has abandoned investigati...

"Whatever the economy is, its reality does not exist independent of our ability to account for it."

NEW: An adapted excerpt from The Real Economy by
Jonathan Levy, out now from Princeton University Press.

CRIA is hosting a roundtable on 'Concept Formation and Historical IR' (SA30) to kickoff our presence at the 2025 Chicago International Studies Association conference @isanet.bsky.social. Come along to The Barbershop (Blackstone Hotel) from 8:15am for a great discussion!

Excited to be joining @alktaif.bsky.social as co-editor of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs @cambridgecria.bsky.social
CRIA welcomes submissions on international affairs topics from across the social sciences!