The past decade has been one of rapid and sweeping changes in international politics and economics. Unlike international trade and investment, the impact of these changes on the international financial system and its regulation have attracted relatively little systematic scholarly attention. This lecture begins to fill this gap by tracing recent transformations of the international political environment through three—roughly though not strictly chronological—stages that correspond to salient challenges to the assumptions and political circumstances that underpinned the post-Cold War era of financial globalization: the global financial crisis and its political fallout; the reemergence of geopolitical competition and conflict; and the rise of populism and “neo-mercantilism.” It then examines the implications of this shifting political and economic background for international financial regulation and its future.