Greg Kennedy, Antulio J. Echevarria II, and Anna Brinkman-Schwartz, Editors
For over a decade and a half, concerns and tensions between states have been arising over the use of the economic domain in the peer-to-peer competition between large powers. Through this competition, powers aim to gain an economic advantage in their relative positions in the international order. The peer-to-peer competition between large powers has been seen as a growing facet of the strategic competition between the United States and China. The beginning of the Russia-Ukraine War in February 2022 elevated the Sino-American peacetime economic competition from one that could be classified as a hybrid form of warfare, a condition of weaponized interdependence, or a coercive aspect of economic statecraft, to a weapon applied to a conventional European war condition. This collaborative study highlights the duration of the concept of economic warfare, which is at the heart of the current debates and analysis regarding what the intent of economic warfare is; what methods should be used in economic warfare; who within a nation’s national security apparatus should direct economic-warfare efforts; how the phenomenon is both a defensive and an offensive activity; and how economic influence pervades all aspects of a state’s thinking about national security. To understand and comprehend the issue, practitioners must understand the importance of economic warfare to modern national security practitioners and the importance of collaboration between military, industrial, corporate, financial, technological, and academic groups. Practitioners must also understand economic warfare requires a cross-societal and cross-disciplinary approach. The military must also have a hand in managing the economic weapon and the economic shield, as the issue pertains to warfare, which is the topic on which militaries advise governments. Modern militaries, therefore, must understand and provide input on the thinking about economic warfare and its links to national security. This collaborative study will help practitioners understand the ends, ways, and means of economic warfare, enabling them to provide input into the process and use the economic leverage of the state more effectively in their national security planning.
©2026 Greg Kennedy
Keywords:
economic warfare, deterrence, coercion, geoeconomics, economic statecraft, weaponized interdependence, supply chains