At the end of the Cold War Edward Luttwak, a US expert in strategy, claimed that ideological rivalries between Western liberal and communist collectivist models of societies would be replaced by a worldwide economic rivalry, in which trade, fi nance, and the mastering of important technologies often prevail over military power. Indeed, relations between states in the post-Cold War period have been shaped by an increased economic competition including “non-market” factors such as intelligence sharing between state agencies and private businesses, successful economic diplomacy and different techniques to infl uence and manipulate non-governmental organisations to weaken an economic adversary, among other things. The considerable infl uence of these non-market factors illustrates the limits of the liberal economic theories that emphasise the dominant role of market forces.