Strategic Theory of Economic Warfare: Fuller on the Relationship Between Cold War Strategy and Trade

Because the power of the nuclear bombs used by the United States against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was so immense, researchers at the time began to consider that relying on the use of force as a means for states to pursue security was, in fact, dangerous.

Until then, the study of strategy had focused on clarifying how to use force, but after 1945, a new challenge was added: clarifying how to avoid using force. Deterrence theory emerged precisely because of this shift in focus.

However, this shift in focus required a strategy for states to pursue security through means other than force. John Frederick Charles Fuller was a British military commentator who predicted that in future strategy, the importance of economic warfare would increase in place of armed warfare, and he argued that in the Cold War structure between the United States and the Soviet Union, trade in particular should be noted as a means of economic warfare.

According to Fuller's work, "The Conduct of War" (1961), nuclear weapons developed at the end of World War II made it difficult for states to conduct armed warfare. What began to attract attention instead was economic warfare, which is a struggle aimed at driving an opposing state into a state of financial collapse. Fuller's own explanation is as follows.

"Under the terror inspired by the threat of total nuclear war, armies have given way to factories, weapons to commodities, and markets have become the battlefields of the future. In a different form, it was a return to the bloodless wars of the absolute monarchs. The aim of the absolute monarchs was not so much to destroy each other's armies as to bankrupt each other's treasuries."

In international politics during the nuclear age, if a superpower attempts to challenge another superpower and destroy its forces, it must assume that the situation will escalate into nuclear war. However, since the losses incurred in such a case would exceed the benefits expected from a victory in combat, there is no strategic rationality in maximizing results in combat.

In economic warfare, which corners the opponent financially, one can exert pressure on the opponent while avoiding the danger of escalation into nuclear war. Fuller argues that trade is important as a concrete means.

"To deal with the Soviet challenge, the democracies must realize that the problem they are called upon to meet is entirely different from the international competition of the past, the aims of which were purely economic. Today, the democracies are faced with an economic war which has a military meaning. This war aims at revolution, and in it, trade plays the same role as armies."

Looking at the foreign policy the Soviet Union pursued in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, Fuller observed that it aimed to "organize the economies of the satellite states so that they did not overlap with the Soviet economy, and to gradually convert them into departments of one giant factory," with the intention of strengthening Soviet leadership by increasing the number of countries prone to dependence on the Soviet Union through trade.

This does not mean that armaments become meaningless in such economic warfare. For example, if one's own country expands its armaments, the opposing country is forced to spend additional military funds to maintain deterrence. Since this leads to imposing a burden on the opponent's finances, armaments can also be utilized as a means of economic warfare.

From Fuller's perspective, the history of the Cold War can be understood as a history of economic warfare. It becomes necessary to consider that nuclear strategy and arms control were auxiliary means for conducting economic warfare, and that trade policy and fiscal management were being operated strategically.

Fuller passed away in 1966, but if he had known that the Soviet economy would hit a dead end in technological innovation in machinery and grain in the 1970s and become increasingly dependent on imports from Western countries, he might have foreseen the end of the Cold War at that stage.

References

J. F. C. Fuller, The Conduct of War, translated by Yoshitoshi Nakamura, Hara Shobo, 2009

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