Hal Brands
Joe Biden’s foreign policy will be remembered for many things: the humiliating exit from Afghanistan, the stalwart response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the struggle to contain the fallout from Oct. 7 in the Middle East. But Biden has cast his longest shadow by shaping a new era of economic warfare likely to intensify in the years ahead.
Economic warfare has figured in great competitions and conflicts since the ancient age. As every reader of Thucydides knows, the Megarian Decree — a trade embargo imposed by Athens — was a signpost on the road to the Peloponnesian War. In 1941, a US oil embargo against Japan helped to trigger the attack on Pearl Harbor and globalize World War II. During the Cold War, the free world contained the Soviet Union in economic as well as military terms.
After the Cold War, the US mostly used sanctions against rogue states and terrorist groups, while hoping that economic integration could lead to great-power peace. But amid escalating geopolitical rivalries, first Donald Trump and now, more systematically, Joe Biden, have increasingly wielded economic weapons.
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