economic warfare

economic warfare, the use of, or the threat to use, economic means against a country in order to weaken its economy and thereby reduce its political and military power. Economic warfare also includes the use of economic means to compel an adversary to change its policies or behaviour or to undermine its ability to conduct normal relations with other countries. Some common means of economic warfare are trade embargoes, boycotts, sanctions, tariff discrimination, the freezing of capital assets, the suspension of aid, the prohibition of investment and other capital flows, and expropriation.

Countries engaging in economic warfare seek to weaken an adversary’s economy by denying the adversary access to necessary physical, financial, and technological resources or by otherwise inhibiting its ability to benefit from trade, financial, and technological exchanges with other countries. Economic warfare consisting of blockades and the interception of contraband among belligerents has been practiced since before the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bc) in ancient Greece. In modern times, its uses have broadened to include putting pressure on neutral countries from which enemy countries could obtain supplies and denying potential enemies goods that might contribute to their war-making ability. One of the primary types of economic warfare employed in the 20th century was the embargo, sometimes total and sometimes restricted to strategic goods (i.e., those that are essential for military purposes). During the Cold War, for example, the United States and its allies attempted to deny the Soviet Union and its allies access to computers, telecommunications equipment, and other technologies of high economic and military value.

The effectiveness of economic warfare depends on a number of factors, including the capacity of the adversary to produce the restricted goods internally or to acquire them from other countries. For example, efforts by the United States to oust Fidel Castro from power in Cuba by maintaining a decades-long embargo were frustrated by increased trade between Cuba and Mexico, Canada, and western Europe. Although economic warfare is often considered a relatively inexpensive complement or alternative to military engagement, it imposes costs on the initiating country by denying it access to economic exchange with the targeted country. For example, consumers in the United States paid higher costs for goods that could have been imported more cheaply from Cuba or other targeted countries, such as Iran, and American businesses were denied access to their goods and markets.

The effectiveness of economic warfare is also limited by the ability of the adversary’s government to redistribute sufficient domestic wealth toward the military or other institutions to compensate for reductions in capability caused by the loss of the restricted goods. In the 1990s, for example, economic warfare against Iraq and North Korea did not substantially reduce the military threat posed by those countries because both were able to direct their limited economic resources toward their militaries. Critics of economic warfare have argued that it often imposes greater costs on the general population of the adversary—e.g., through starvation, the spread of disease, or the denial of basic consumer goods—than it does on its political or military leaders.