We are living in the age of economic statecraft. In just two decades, the world’s leading powers—above all, the United States—have shifted from using economic pressure sparingly to making it a default feature of foreign policy. As a result, the practice of economic coercion—sanctions, export controls, tariffs,
and investment restrictions—has proliferated at breathtaking speed. Since 2000, the number of sanctioned individuals and entities worldwide has increased tenfold. Tariffs and trade barriers have quintupled globally in just five years. More than 90 percent of advanced economies now screen foreign investment in sensitive sectors, up from less than one-third a decade ago.
And when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and its allies froze more than $300 billion of the foreign reserves held by Russia’s central bank in G-7 jurisdictions—crossing financial boundaries once considered sacrosanct.
Indeed, more than three years later, it is clear that Pandora’s box has been opened. In its first hundred days, the current Trump administration attempted to enact tariffs with a speed and breadth unmatched in modern history. Beijing responded by imposing controls on key minerals exports and telegraphing its capacity to throttle supply chains across strategic sectors, underscoring the reality that economic warfare is no longer the exception. It is now the main arena of great-power competition.
Yet economic statecraft holds both power and peril. Unbridled economic coercion can fracture global markets, entrench rivalry between blocs, and breed instability that risks triggering the very kinetic conflicts it aims to avoid. Despite these risks, no U.S. government doctrine has yet emerged to guide economic statecraft, nor are there institutional safeguards to protect against its abuses. The use of military force, by contrast,
No comments:
Post a Comment