One paradox of power is that using it can change the incentives of the people who depend on it.

If a country benefits enormously from access to a particular market, supplier, currency, technology or security partner, building alternatives may initially seem unnecessarily expensive.

But each time that dependence is used as leverage, the calculation changes.

The alternative doesn't have to be better. It only has to become less expensive than the risk of having no alternative.

That raises a less obvious question:

Is there a point at which exercising economic or geopolitical leverage begins to accelerate the creation of the very alternatives that eventually weaken that leverage?

And if so, how would a powerful country know when it has crossed that point?