A Critique on Current Methods

Economic warfare, in its modern incarnation, has come to be something of a misnomer. More than anything, those tools that currently compose the body of economic warfare are those of political maneuvering in the context of international relations. The tools of economic warfare today not only come primarily in the form of fiscal policies, which change the amount that a government spends and earns, but also include monetary policies, which alter the quantity and value of a nation’s currency. These economic policies are most frequently used for the purposes of appealing to pressure on domestic issues and are, for the most part, entirely ineffective or even self-destructive when applied for the purposes of protectionist foreign economic policy. To make the distinction between the topics of this book, which are intended to be applied to military operations in a direct and strategic manner, and those political concerns described above, the phrase “economic combat” will be used. Economic combat is the use of applied economics for combat purposes.