Economic warfare

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 the trade as helping Egypt in two ways: it obtains war materiel (iron, tin, timber, oil) from Europe and dues on goods brought in via the Red Sea from Asia for trade to Europe. If the spice trade were deflected from the Red Sea to Mongol Persia, Egypt would be deprived of customs duties and lose export markets because of the reduction in shipping. That may also make it unable to afford more slave soldiers imported via the Black Sea slave trade.{{citation |author=Cornel Bontea |chapter=The Theory of the Passagium Particulare: A Commercial Blockade of the Mediterranean in the Early Fourteenth Century? |pages=203–204 |title=A Military History of the Mediterranean Sea: Aspects of War, Diplomacy, and Military Elites |editor1=Georgios Theotokis |editor2=Aysel Yıldız |year=2018 |publisher=Brill |doi=10.1163/9789004362048_011}}.

During the Seven Years' War of 1756 to 1763, the Kingdom of Prussia occupied Saxony and used its mint to debase both the Saxon and Polish-Lithuanian currencies.

{{cite book

|last1 = Henderson

|first1 = William O.

|year = 1963

|title = Studies in the Economic Policy of Frederick the Great

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=lZQV5oVqlpIC

|publication-place = London

|publisher = Frank Cass & Co

|page = 40

|isbn = 978-0-7146-1321-5

|access-date = 21 January 2025

|quote = When Frederick occupied Saxony he debased its currency to an even greater extent than the Prussian thaler. [...] Since Poland had no mint - her coins were minted in Saxony - the Prussian authorities were also able to debase the Polish currency. The Polish Tympfe - equal in value to a Prussian thaler - was minted at a ratio of 1 : 40 instead of [...] 1 : 14. Frederick purchased war supplies in Saxony and Poland with depreciated coins [...]

}}

Union forces in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 had the challenge of occupying and controlling the 11 states of the Confederacy, a vast area larger than Western Europe. The Confederate economy proved surprisingly vulnerable.Roger L. Ransom, (2001) "The economics of the Civil War." [http://web.mnstate.edu/stutes/Econ411/Readings/civil.htm Minnesota State University Moorhead].

Guerrilla warfare in the American Civil War was supported by a large fraction of the Confederate population that provided food, horses, and hiding places for official and unofficial Confederate units.Anthony James Joes, America and guerrilla warfare (2015) pp 51-102. The Union response was to ravage the local economy, as in the Burning Raid of 1864 and on a bigger scale, Sherman's March to the Sea. Before the war, most passenger and freight traffic had moved by water through the river system or coastal ports. Confederate railroads were already inadequate and suffered much damage during the fighting. Travel became far more difficult.

Having crippled Confederate foreign trade by imposing the Union blockade with its blue-water fleet, the Union Navy built a riverine Mississippi River Squadron of small powerful gunboats to take control of the main southern rivers. Land transportation was contested, as Confederate supporters tried to block shipments of munitions, reinforcements and supplies through West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee to Union forces in the south. Both sides burned bridges, tore up railroad tracks, and cut telegraph lines. They effectively ruined the infrastructure of the Confederacy.Daniel E. Sutherland, "Sideshow No Longer: A Historiographical Review of the Guerrilla War." Civil War History 46.1 (2000): 5-23.Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerillas in the American Civil War (U of North Carolina Press, 2009). [https://www.questia.com/library/120077254/a-savage-conflict-the-decisive-role-of-guerrillas online] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180624040035/https://www.questia.com/library/120077254/a-savage-conflict-the-decisive-role-of-guerrillas |date =2018-06-24 }}

File:F.O.C. Darley and Alexander Hay Ritchie - Sherman's March to the Sea.jpg soldiers destroying telegraph poles and railroads in Georgia, 1864]]

The Confederacy in 1861 had 297 towns and cities with a total population of 835,000 people, 162 of which were at one point occupied by Union forces, involving a total population of 681,000 people. In practically every case, infrastructure was damaged, and trade and economic activity was disrupted for a while. Eleven cities were severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond. The rate of damage in smaller towns was much lower, with severe damage to 45 out of a total of 830.Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy," Civil War History (2008) 54#1 pp 35–62 doi:10.1353/cwh.2008.0007

Farms went into disrepair, and the prewar stock of horses, mules, and cattle was much depleted; 40% of the South's livestock was killed.{{cite book | title =Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution | publisher =Oxford University Press | author =McPherson, James M | year =1992 | page =38 | isbn =978-0-19-507606-6}} The South's farms were not highly mechanized, but the value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 census was $81 million and had been reduced by 40% by 1870.William B. Hesseltine, A History of the South, 1607–1936 (1936), pp. 573–574. The transportation infrastructure lay in ruins, with little railroad or riverboat service available to move crops or animals to market.John Samuel Ezell, The South since 1865 (1963), pp. 27–28. Railroad mileage was located mostly in rural areas, and over two thirds of the South's rails, bridges, rail yards, repair shops, and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what they could. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy overuse, and the relocation of equipment by the Confederacy from remote areas to the war zone ensured that the system would be ruined at war's end.Jeffrey N. Lash, "Civil-War Irony-Confederate Commanders And The Destruction Of Southern Railways." Prologue-Quarterly Of The National Archives 25.1 (1993): 35-47.

The enormous cost of the Confederate war effort took a high toll on the South's economic infrastructure. The direct costs to the Confederacy in human capital, government expenditures, and physical destruction totaled perhaps $3.3 billion. By 1865, the Confederate dollar was worthless because of high inflation, and people in the South had to resort to bartering for goods or services to use scarce Union dollars. With the emancipation of the slaves, the entire economy of the South had to be rebuilt. Having lost their enormous investment in slaves, white planters had minimal capital to pay freedmen workers to bring in crops. As a result, a system of sharecropping developed in which landowners broke up large plantations and rented small lots to the freedmen and their families. The main feature of the Southern economy changed from an elite minority of landed gentry slaveholders to a tenant farming agriculture system. The disruption of finance, trade, services, and transportation nodes severely disrupted the pre-war agricultural system and impoverished the entire region for generations.Claudia D. Goldin, and Frank D. Lewis, "The economic cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and implications." Journal of Economic History 35.2 (1975): 299-326. [https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2662305/Goldin_EconomicCost.pdf online]

{{Further|History of the Southern United States#Material ruin and human losses}}

{{Main|Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)}}

{{Further|Turnip Winter}}

The British used their greatly-superior Royal Navy to cause a tight blockade of Germany and a close monitoring of shipments to neutral countries to prevent them from being transshipped to there. Germany could not find enough food since its younger farmers were all in the army, and the desperate Germans were eating turnips by the winter of 1916–17.Hans-Jürgen Teuteberg, "Food Provisioning on the German Home Front, 1914–1918." in Rachel Duffett and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds. Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe (2016). 77-89.The alternative theories of Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (2012) are refuted by John W. Coogan, "The Short-War Illusion Resurrected: The Myth of Economic Warfare as the British Schlieffen Plan," Journal of Strategic Studies (2015) 38:7, 1045-1064, DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2015.1005451 US shipping was sometimes seized, and Washington protested. The British paid monetary compensation so that the American protests would not escalate into serious trouble.Charles Seymour, "American Neutrality: The Experience of 1914-1917," Foreign Affairs 14#1 (1935), pp. 26-36 [https://docslide.net/documents/american-neutrality-the-experience-of-1914-1917.html online]

{{See also|Sanctions against Japan}}

Clear examples of economic warfare occurred during World War II when the Allied powers followed such policies to deprive the Axis economies of critical resources. The British Royal Navy again blockaded Germany although with much more difficulty than in 1914.W.N. Medlicott, The economic blockade (1978). The US Navy, especially its submarines, cut off shipments of oil and food to Japan.

In turn, Germany attempted to damage the Allied war effort via submarine warfare: the sinking of transport ships carrying supplies, raw materials, and essential war-related items such as food and oil.David Livingston Gordon, and Royden James Dangerfield, The Hidden Weapon: The Story of Economic Warfare (Harper, 1947). As the Allied air forces grew, they mounted the oil campaign of World War II to deprive Germany of fuel.

Neutral countries continue to trade with both sides. The Royal Navy could not stop land trade, so the allies made other efforts to cut off sales to Germany of critical minerals such as tungsten, chromium, mercury and iron ore from Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Sweden and elsewhere.Leonard Caruana, and Hugh Rockoff, "A Wolfram in Sheep's Clothing: Economic Warfare in Spain, 1940–1944." Journal of Economic History 63.1 (2003): 100-126. Germany wanted Spain to enter the war but they could not agree to terms. To keep Germany and Spain apart, Britain used a carrot-and-stick approach. Britain provided oil and closely monitored Spain's export trade. It outbid Germany for the wolfram, whose price soared, and by 1943, wolfram was Spain's biggest export-earner. Britain's cautious treatment of Spain brought conflict with the more aggressive American policy. In the Wolfram Crisis of 1944 Washington cut off oil supplies but then agreed with London's requests to resume oil shipments.Christian Leitz, "'More carrot than stick', British Economic Warfare and Spain, 1941–1944." Twentieth Century British History 9.2 (1998): 246-273.James W. Cortada, "Spain and the second world war." Journal of Contemporary History 5.4 (1970): 65-75. Portugal feared a German-Spanish invasion, but when that became unlikely in 1944, it virtually joined the Allies.Donald G. Stevens, "World War II Economic Warfare: The United States, Britain, and Portuguese Wolfram." Historian 61.3 (1999): 539-556.

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.{{cite book |title=The Global Politics of Pesticides: Forging Consensus from Conflicting Interests |page=61 |author=Bruce Cumings |year=1998 |publisher=Earthscan}}

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.{{cite book|first=Pavlos|last=Apostolidis|script-title=el:Μυστική Δράση: Υπηρεσίες Πληροφοριών στην Ελλάδα|trans-title=Covert Operations: Intelligence Services in Greece|edition=I|language=el|publisher=Ekdoseis Papazisi|location=Athens|year=2014|pages=146–152|isbn=978-960-02-3075-8}}

During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly {{convert|20000000|U.S.gal|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 {{cvt|660000|U.S.gal|m3}}.{{Cite book|last=Pellow |first=David N. |title=Resisting global toxics: transnational movements for environmental justice |date=2007 |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|page=159 |publisher=The MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-16244-9}}{{Cite journal|last1=Stellman|first1=Jeanne Mager |last2=Stellman |first2=Steven D. |last3=Christian |first3=Richard |last4=Weber |first4=Tracy |last5=Tomasallo |first5=Carrie |title=The Extent and patterns of usage of Agent Orange and other Herbicides in Vietnam|journal=Nature|volume= 422|issue=6933|date=April 17, 2003|pages=681–687|url=http://www.vn-agentorange.org/edmaterials/nature01537.pdf|doi=10.1038/nature01537|pmid=12700752|bibcode=2003Natur.422..681S|s2cid=4419223}}{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/us/agent-oranges-long-legacy-for-vietnam-and-veterans.html |title=Agent Orange's Long Legacy, for Vietnam and Veterans |last=Haberman |first=Clyde |date=2014-05-11 |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=2017-02-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170724205114/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/us/agent-oranges-long-legacy-for-vietnam-and-veterans.html |archive-date=2017-07-24 |url-status=live }} As the British did in Malaysia, 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.{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last=Tucker |editor-first=Spencer C. |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History |publisher=ABC-CLIO |date=1997 |title=Agent Orange}} 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.{{cite journal|last=Huntington|first=Samuel P.|date=July 1968|title=The Bases of Accommodation|journal=Foreign Affairs|volume=46|issue=4|pages=642–656 |doi=10.2307/20039333|jstor=20039333}}{{Cite book|last=Kolko |first=Gabriel |title=Anatomy of a war: Vietnam, the United States, and the modern historical experience |location=New York |publisher=The New Press |date=1994|pages=144–145 |isbn=978-1-56584-218-2}}

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.{{Cite web|last=Giuseppe|first=Gagliano|date=2018-01-31|title=Historical aspects of the economic warfare in the interpretation of Christian Harbulot|url=https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/01/31/historical-aspects-economic-warfare-interpretation-christian-harbulot/|access-date=2021-12-05|website=Modern Diplomacy|language=en-US}}

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.{{Citation|last=Doxey|first=Margaret P.|title=Economic Sanctions under the League of Nations|date=1980|work=Economic Sanctions and International Enforcement|pages=42–55|editor-last=Doxey|editor-first=Margaret P.|place=London|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|language=en|doi=10.1007/978-1-349-04335-4_4|isbn=978-1-349-04335-4}} However, economic sanctions without military ones failed to dissuade Italy from conquering Abbysinia.

In 1973–1974, the oil-producing Arab states imposed an oil embargo against the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Japan, and other industrialized countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. Results included the 1973 oil crisis and a sharp rise in prices{{cite news |title=The Arab Oil Threat |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/23/archives/the-arab-oil-threat.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=November 23, 1973}} but not an end to support for Israel.

Many United States government sanctions have been imposed since the mid-20th century.

• United States embargo against Cuba"[https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12086.doc.htm General Assembly Adopts Annual Resolution Calling for End to Embargo on Cuba, Soundly Rejects Amendments by United States]". United Nations. 1 November 2018.
• Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act{{cite news |title=Iran oil: US to end sanctions exemptions for major importers |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48011496 |work=BBC News |date=April 22, 2019}}
• Sanctions against North Korea

Fortress economics or a fortress economy is a phrase used in relation to the defense and sustenance of a country's economy amidst international sanctions.{{Cite web |date=2022-02-02 |title=Huge impact of 'fortress economics' in Russia and China |url=https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/02/huge-impact-fortress-economics-russia-and-china |access-date=2022-02-25 |website=Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank |language=en}} The term has been used in reference to Russia in 2022,{{Cite news |last1=Rao |first1=Sujata |last2=Jones |first2=Marc |date=2022-02-25 |title=Analysis: Russia's economic defences likely to crumble over time under sanctions onslaught |language=en |work=Reuters |url=https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-economic-defences-likely-crumble-over-time-under-sanctions-onslaught-2022-02-25/ |access-date=2022-02-25 |quote=have earned Russia the "fortress" economy moniker}}{{Cite news |date=2022-02-24 |title=Fortress Russia – Sanctions have to pierce it better than they did last time |url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/fortress-russia-sanctions-have-to-pierce-it-better-than-they-did-last-time/ |access-date=2022-02-25 |newspaper=The Times of India}}{{Cite news |last1=Filippino |first1=Marc |last2=Seddon |first2=Max |last3=Moise |first3=Imani |date=2022-01-20 |title=Moscow's 'Fortress Russia' strategy |work=Financial Times |url=https://www.ft.com/content/e54853e0-d34a-470b-a5af-f447558662e9 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220225155936/https://www.ft.com/content/e54853e0-d34a-470b-a5af-f447558662e9 |archive-date=2022-02-25 |url-access=subscription |url-status=bot: unknown |access-date=2022-02-25 }} Taiwan with relation to China-US relations,{{Cite web |last=Snelder |first=Julian |date=8 May 2015 |title=Taiwan: A fierce economic fortress |url=https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/taiwan-fierce-economic-fortress |access-date=2022-02-25 |website=The Interpreter |publisher=Lowy Institute}}{{Cite web |last=Tien-lin |first=Huang |date=2021-02-01 |title=Taiwan as an 'economic fortress' |url=https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/02/01/2003751547 |access-date=2022-02-25 |website=Taipei Times}} and Europe.{{Cite web |last=Hanson |first=Brian T. |date=Winter 1998 |title=What Happened to Fortress Europe?: External Trade Policy Liberalization in the European Union |url=https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/5333820.pdf |publisher=The IO Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology}}

{{Portal|Politics|Economics}}

{{columns-list|colwidth=30em|

• Attrition warfare
• Commerce raiding
• Currency war
• Economic diplomacy
• Economic terrorism
• Economic history of World War I
• Home front during World War I
• Diplomatic history of World War I
• Home front during World War II
• Industrial warfare
• Merchant raider
• Resource war
• Strategic bombing
• Trade war
• Tonnage war
• Total war
• War economy

}}

{{Reflist}}

• Baldwin, David A. Economic Statecraft (Princeton UP, 1985).
• Clark, J. Maurice et al. Readings in the Economics Of War (1918) 703pp; short excerpts from primary sources on a very wide range of economic warfare topics [https://archive.org/details/readingsintheeco032565mbp online free]
• Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Economic Statecraft for Survival 1933–1991 (2003). [https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=81yBAgAAQBAJ excerpt]
• Duffett, Rachel, and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds. Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe (2016)
• Einzig, Paul. Economic Warfare 1939-1940 (1942) [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.90096 online free]
• Esno, Tyler. "Reagan's Economic War on the Soviet Union," Diplomatic History (2018) 42#2 pp 281–304.
• Christian Harbulot,La machine de guerre économique, Economica,Paris, 1992.
• Christian Harbulot,La guerre économique, PUF,Paris, 2011
• Christian Harbulot,Le manuel de l'intelligence économique, PUF,Paris, 2012
• Christian Harbulo,Techniques offensives et guerre économique, éditions La Bourdonnaye,Paris, 2014.
• Christian Harbulot,Le manuel de l'intelligence économique, comprendre la guerre économique, PUF,Paris, 2015
• Christian Harbulot,L'art de la guerre economique,Editions Va Press,Versailles,2018
• Jack, D. T. Studies in economic warfare (1940), covers Napoleonic wars, laws, WWI and 1939-40 [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.183455 online free]
• Jackson, Ian. The Economic Cold War: America, Britain and East-West Trade, 1948–63 (2001)
• Joes, Anthony James. America and guerrilla warfare (2015); Covers nine major wars from the 1770s to the 21st century.
• McDermott, John. "Total War and the Merchant State: Aspects of British Economic Warfare against Germany, 1914-16." Canadian Journal of History 21.1 (1986): 61–76.
• Siney, Marion C. The Allied blockade of Germany, 1914-1916 (1957) [https://archive.org/details/alliedblockadeof00sine online free]

• {{Commons category-inline}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Military economics