Economic warfare
Economic warfare or economic war is an economic strategy utilized by belligerent nations with the goal of weakening the economy of other states. This is primarily achieved by the use of economic blockades.[1] Ravaging the crops of the enemy is a classic method, used for thousands of years.
In military operations, economic warfare may reflect economic policy followed as a part of open or covert operations, cyber operations, information operations[2] during or preceding a war. Economic warfare aims to capture or otherwise to control the supply of critical economic resources so friendly military and intelligence agencies can use them and enemy forces cannot.
The concept of economic warfare is most applicable to total war, which involves not only the armed forces of enemy countries, but also mobilized war-economies. In such a situation, damage to an enemy's economy is damage to that enemy's ability to fight a war. Scorched-earth policies may deny resources to an invading enemy.
Policies and measures in economic warfare may include blockade, blacklisting, preclusive purchasing, rewards and the capturing or the control of enemy assets or supply lines.[3] Other policies, such tariff discrimination, sanctions, the suspension of aid, the freezing of capital assets, the prohibition of investment and other capital flows, and expropriation,[4]
even without armed military war, may be referred to as economic warfare.
History[edit]
Crusades[edit]
In his Book on the Recovery of the Holy Land, Fidentius of Padua provides prescriptions for economic warfare to be waged against the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt in furtherance of the Crusades. He envisions a fleet of 40–50 galleys to enforce a blockade on trade between Europe and Egypt. He sees this trade as helping Egypt in two ways: from Europe it obtains war materiel (iron, tin, timber, oil) and from Asia dues on goods brought in via the Red Sea for trade to Europe. If this spice trade were deflected from the Red Sea to Mongol Persia, Egypt would be deprived of customs duties and would also lose export markets because of the reduction in shipping. This may also make it unable to afford more slave soldiers imported from the Black Sea.[5]
Cold War[edit]
During the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960), the British military deployed herbicides and defoliants in the Malaysian countryside (including crop fields) in order to deprive Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) insurgents of cover, potential sources of food and to flush them out of the jungle. The herbicides and defoliants deployed by the British contained Trioxone, an ingredient which was also formed part of the chemical composition of the Agent Orange herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Deployment of herbicides and defoliants served the dual purpose of thinning jungle trails to prevent ambushes and destroying crop fields in regions where the MNLA was active to deprive them of potential sources of food. Herbicides and defoliants were also sprayed from Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft.[25]
On 17 November 1953, the Greek National Intelligence Service (KYP) proposed conducting tax audits on suspected communist book publishers and cinema owners, censoring Soviet movies and promoting Soviet films of particularly low quality. In 1959, KYP launched exhibitions of Soviet products in Volos, Thessaloniki and Piraeus. The bulk of the products were cheap and defective, purposefully selected to tarnish the Soviet Union's image.[26]
During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 U.S. gallons (76,000 m3) of various chemicals – the "rainbow herbicides" and defoliants – in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia as part of Operation Ranch Hand, reaching its peak from 1967 to 1969. For comparison purposes, an olympic size pool holds approximately 660,000 U.S. gal (2,500 m3).[27][28][29] As the British did in Malaya, the goal of the U.S. was to defoliate rural/forested land, depriving guerrillas of food and concealment and clearing sensitive areas such as around base perimeters.[30] Samuel P. Huntington argued that the program was also a part of a general policy of forced draft urbanization, which aimed to destroy the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, forcing them to flee to the U.S.-dominated cities, depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base.[31][28][32]
French Economic Warfare School[edit]
Christian Harbulot, the director of the Economic Warfare School in Paris, provides an historical reconstruction of the economic balance of power between states. In his study, he demonstrates that the strategies that states put in place to increase their economic power and their impact on the international balance of power can be interpreted only by the concept of economic warfare.[33]
The Covenant of the League of Nations provided for military and economic sanctions against aggressor states, and the idea of economic sanctions was regarded as a great innovation.[34] However, economic sanctions without military ones failed to dissuade Italy from conquering Abbysinia.
In 1973–1974, the Arab nations imposed an oil embargo against the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Japan, and other industrialized nations that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. Results included the 1973 oil crisis and a sharp rise in prices[35] but not an end to support for Israel.
Many United States sanctions have been imposed since the middle 20th century.
Fortress economics or a fortress economy is a phrase used in relation to the defense and sustenance of a countries' economy amidst international sanctions.[38] (The term has been used in reference to Russia in 2022,[39][40][41] Taiwan with relation to China-US relations,[42][43] and Europe.[44])
