Mechanisms of International Financial Relations in the Conditions of Globalization Crisis
Authors: Kuznetsov A. 
Published: December 2024

In recent years, the development of the world economy and world finance has been characterized by such concepts as “deglobalization,” “regionalization,” and “politicization,” as climatic, structural, and geopolitical transformations have had a destructive impact on international financial relations that mediate the movement of international liquidity between countries. Regulatory impulses for the activation of certain mechanisms for stimulating international financial relations are set by the leading consultative forums of the emerging multipolar world, such as the G20 and the BRICS, as well as classical multilateral institutions – the IMF and the World Bank Group. Meanwhile, productive interaction between countries at G20 venues is extremely complicated by the lack of consensus on a wide range of pressing issues – from financing measures to mitigate the effects of climate change in developing countries to reforming the IMF and WTO. The BRICS countries are taking cautious steps towards implementing collective initiatives in the international financial sphere, which is connected with the still very serious dependence on the markets and financial infrastructure of the most developed Western countries and the fear of becoming dependent on a new reserve currency. In the Bretton Woods institutions, the G7 countries account for two-fifths of the votes, which effectively allows them to block any decisions taken in favor of developing countries. Currently, new mechanisms of international financial relations are being formed, based on the use of digital financial technologies to service foreign economic activity. At the same time, the United States, as the world leader in cryptocurrency mining, demonstrates a rather passive attitude towards the need to introduce its own digital currency, striving not so much to implement the latest digital financial technologies, but to maintain control over the establishment of global rules of the game in the financial markets. Thus, crisis of globalization could be attributed to the crisis in international financial relations due to the diversity of interests between the bloc of developed countries centered in the United States and the bloc of developing countries centered in China. With ever-increasing production volumes, the group of fastest-growing countries continues to be discriminated against when it comes to the creation and distribution of international liquidity, which is invariably denominated predominantly in US domestic currency. In the context of global geopolitical confrontation, Russia’s role in international financial relations is also changing. Today, Russia’s access to the global banking system, opportunities to replenish international liquidity through swap lines of central banks, and the use of credit mechanisms of leading international financial organizations are blocked. Nevertheless, Russia continues to fulfill its financial obligations within the G20, the IMF, the World Bank Group and BRICS financial institutions. This position is becoming increasingly vulnerable and costly given the seizure of Russian foreign assets and threats of their confiscation, as well as the almost complete suspension of the inflow of foreign capital into the Russian Federation in the context of growing secondary sanctions, including those with respect to new international financial mechanisms.