How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle Can
the international economic and legal system survive today's fractured geopolitics? Democracies
are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public
policy with global security issues. In Global Discord Paul Tucker lays out principles for a
sustainable system of international cooperation showing how democracies can deal with China
and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three
decades as a central banker and regulator Tucker applies these principles to the international
monetary order including the role of the U.S. dollar trade and investment regimes and the
financial system. Combining history economics and political and legal philosophy Tucker
offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back
to Hobbes Kant and Grotius and deploying instead ideas from David Hume Bernard Williams
and modern mechanism-design economists Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that
emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with
values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international
cooperation he writes should be legitimacy creating a world of concentric circles in which
we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.
