Economic Warfare: A Foundation for Twenty-First-Century Strategic Practice

US Army War College Press  |  Greg Kennedy, Antulio J. Echevarria II, Anna Brinkman-Schwartz

The February 2022 Russia-Ukraine War fundamentally transformed Sino-American economic competition from weaponized interdependence into an active instrument of conventional theater warfare. Great power rivalries between the United States and China increasingly center on geoeconomic leverage, forcing defense planners to integrate corporate, financial, and technological assets into national security strategies.

Historical applications of economic statecraft demonstrate that targeted financial sanctions, supply chain controls, and industrial mobilization function simultaneously as offensive weapons and defensive shields. Effective strategic posture requires joint military and civilian institutions to systematically coordinate cross-societal resources across academic, corporate, financial, and defense sectors. Modern military leadership must actively shape national geoeconomic policy rather than treating financial leverage purely as a civilian diplomatic tool. Expanding peer-to-peer competition indicates that future high-intensity operations will depend directly on a state's capacity to maintain economic resilience while disrupting adversary supply networks during prolonged conflicts.

Comment

Integrating economic leverage into military doctrine mirrors the organisational integration seen during the Second World War with Britain's Ministry of Economic Warfare. That institutional model demonstrated that financial embargoes and maritime blockades require synchronised targeting between intelligence services and naval command. Modern operational planning around the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control reveals a similar shift, where financial sanction mechanisms serve as kinetic-prevention tools. This structural convergence blurs the traditional divide between non-kinetic civil statecraft and joint force campaign design.

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