Talal Rafi publishes in Johns Hopkins University’s SAIS Review

• Sri Lanka’s debt crisis reframed as a global geopolitical lesson

Sri Lankan economist Talal Rafi had his latest research article ‘How Sovereign Debt Crises Are Becoming Geopolitical: Lessons from Sri Lanka’ published in the prestigious SAIS Review of International Affairs, the policy journal of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, United States.

The SAIS Review of International Affairs is globally recognised as a leading publication on foreign affairs. Notable contributors to the SAIS Review include former American Presidents Joe Biden and George Bush (Senior). 

The article presents an argument that sovereign debt crises are no longer just macroeconomic failures; they are geopolitical flashpoints, shaped by strategic competition. Rafi asserts that Sri Lanka’s 2022 debt default was one of the clearest early examples of this global transformation.

Rather than only analysing Sri Lanka’s crisis through a conventional lens of fiscal deficits and currency pressures alone, Rafi reframes it as a geostrategic inflection point in the Indian Ocean, where creditor behaviour and restructuring outcomes were influenced by geopolitical priorities as much as financial ones.

The article explains that Sri Lanka’s negotiations unfolded amid a new multipolar creditor landscape, featuring China, India, Japan, multilateral institutions such as the IMF and private bondholders with competing incentives. Unlike past debt crises dominated by Western institutions and Paris Club lenders, Sri Lanka’s restructuring also became a contest of strategic influence.

Rafi stresses that Sri Lanka’s crisis holds lessons for emerging economies worldwide, particularly those navigating debt distress in regions where geopolitical competition is high. He warns that the intersection of public debt and geopolitics will only intensify.

The article can be accessed from the following link: https://saisreview.sais.jhu.edu/how-sovereign-debt-crises-are-becoming-geopolitical-lessons-from-sri-lanka/