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I really struggle with understanding how currency works as a foreign policy/coercion tool. If there's a good primer you can point me too (article, video, whatever), I would be grateful.
Greetings comrade, I don't have a specific resource I can think of that addresses your question head-on so I'm going to take a crack at it myself and then share what resources I can find and recall.
I think it is probably challenging to understand because there are a number of counterintuitive principles that build on each other.
I think it's fundamental to understand monetary policy, the foreign exchange markets and the bond markets, then hopefully it will be clear to explain how they constrain state action.
So first monetary policy. All national currencies that exist today are administered by a central bank that literally has the power to create and destroy any amount of money at any time. Currencies used to be "backed" by another asset, meaning in principle they could be exchanged for some amount of silver or gold if you took the paper notes back to the issuer. This hasn't been true for decades, which is why many people call these "fiat currencies" because they literally have value because the governments say they do. The natural next question is: why don't governments just print unlimited money to buy whatever they want and never have to levy taxes? According to "monetarist" theory if you have an increase in the money supply without a corresponding increase in available goods and services, that will lead to an increase in prices across the board which is also known as inflation. This was once a great debate in economics, but my understanding is that this is universally accepted now because the historical record is unambiguous.
Now we can talk about foreign exchange markets. It gets very confusing to try and think about buying and selling money with other money, but it's a very important part of how the world works. The main reason individuals and businesses buy the currency of another country is to do business with them in some way. (Travel, invest, import products etc.). The main reason governments (acting through their central banks) buy foreign currency is to hold as reserve so they can make big moves to stabilize their own currency in the event of a crisis. The reason governments care about the stability of their currency relative to others is because when their currency is "strong" (meaning increasing on average in value relative to other currencies) it makes their exports less competitive and when it is "weak" this causes inflation in the local economy.
Very important side note to squeeze in between here is that ever since the end of World War II (The World Anti-fascist War), the dollar has been "the reserve currency" which causes the US to have what has been called "the exorbitant privilege". It's not an exaggeration to say that the United States has been getting fat from consuming the surplus value of the entire world.
This all ties into the government bond market. Bonds are denominated in the national currency which is why this all connects together. Imagine a large European manufacturer, say Volkswagen. 12 months ago, you might have chosen to have bought one-year US bonds as part of your financial operations. These bonds have around a 3 and 1/2% interest rate, sounds great right? No, you're absolutely fucked because over the past 12 months the dollar has lost more than 10% of its value against the Euro. So not only has your bond investment actually lost value in real terms, but now your cars are 10% more expensive for US customers because of the exchange rate alone not even counting the tariffs and now having the highest energy prices in the world.
Now we're finally ready to talk about economic coercion with some examples:
I tried to make it as short as I could, hopefully I didn't leave out any important detail. Please ask any questions.
I promised a source, this is a recent video from a pretty decent finance creator that touches on a lot of these issues: https://youtu.be/5DQNu67zGsI
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: