This chronology offers a retrospective overview, based on a selection of quotations from Christian Harbulot’s works, to establish that the diagnosis of the structural processes of economic warfare is longstanding, documented, and methodically formulated since the early 1990s.
The contemporary perception of these dynamics does not therefore stem from an unprecedented rupture, but from a shift in the threshold of acceptability: they are now more openly acknowledged, more explicitly named, more directly claimed, and more brutally implemented.
In other words, what changes primarily relates less to the nature of power relations than to their visibility, their publicity, their normalization, and their operational intensification.
In this context, the retrospective reading proposed here aims to detach the analysis from immediate current events, to step back, to restore continuities, to recall constants, and to stabilize conceptual reference points.
It consequently becomes increasingly difficult to act as if these logics did not exist, since they simultaneously impose themselves in discourse, in practices, in norms, and in effects.
1991
“Every day in France, companies disappear that have failed to equip themselves with the means to fight against the new forms of competition that have emerged on the global market. All-out competition pits the main economic powers against each other and destabilizes the weakest nations. In this constantly changing context, no one can afford the luxury of being one war behind.”
Christian Harbulot, Offensive Techniques and Economic Warfare, Aditech, 1991.
1999
“In the history of power relations between nations, there exists an unspoken rule: an empire never fights on two fronts, on pain of eventual defeat. The dominant empire of the late twentieth century cannot afford to confront the dual geoeconomic competition of Europe and Asia. Applying this rule, the United States has no alternative but to weaken the more vulnerable adversary in order to better confront the other. Since the Americans have long regarded Asia as the primary front, they have grown accustomed to viewing Europe, and therefore France, as a rather docile partner.”
Christian Harbulot and General Jean Pichot-Duclos, Plon, 1999.
2002
“By claiming the power to dominate the world in the name of preserving American interests, the American nation reveals its true face: that of a conquering people seeking to dominate others. This shift in posture modifies the laws of the ally/adversary relationship in the West and weakens relations with traditional allies of America.”
Christian Harbulot, Cognitive Warfare, the Weapon of Knowledge, Lavauzelle, 2002.
2005
“Studying power dynamics does not mean encouraging them toward excess and totalitarianism. Observing a dormant volcano does not trigger its eruption. China’s rise to power, India’s gradual emergence, the West’s anxiety, the domino effects induced by the movement of these geoeconomic plates—all uncertain factors capable of generating tensions of variable amplitude.”
Christian Harbulot, The Invisible Hand of Powers. Europeans Facing Economic Warfare. Ellipses, 2007.
2014
“Contemporary economic warfare is governed by a new type of power relationship that can be summarized by the following formula: an ally is also an adversary. In other words, the United States can support France’s military action in Mali while simultaneously attempting to weaken French companies in a given sector in order to achieve supremacy in terms of technology and markets.”
Christian Harbulot, Scuttling. How France Destroys Its Power, François Bourin Editions, 2014.
2021
Survey conducted among graduates of the School of Economic Warfare. The United States ranks first among the powers attacking France’s economic interests.
Collective work by the Applied Research Center, CR451 of the School of Economic Warfare, Economic Warfare: Who Is the Enemy? Nouveau Monde Editions, 2021.
2022
“The notion of economic combat has long been virtually nonexistent in the training process of our elites, with the exception of individuals who have received qualifications in economic intelligence. In recent years, specialized security, police, and military services have made considerable efforts to better understand how economic threats are evolving and to identify who is behind the blows that weaken France.
However, when it comes to adopting an offensive posture by moving particularly into the arena of increasing power through the economy, state authority always finds excellent pretexts for doing nothing.”
Collective work by the Applied Research Center, CR451 of the School of Economic Warfare, Economic Warfare: How to Win? Nouveau Monde Editions, 2022.
“Europe is trapped by its history. Two world wars destroyed both its power and the desire of most peoples of the old continent to fight to remain masters of their destiny. Europe is now trapped by its external military dependencies (United States) and commercial dependencies (China). It is constrained by internal geopolitical fragmentation: Germany’s solo game, France’s weakening, the subordination of Eastern European and Nordic countries to NATO’s military umbrella against the Russian threat, the hesitation of Latin countries to assert a specific historical identity. For now, Europe’s strength is concentrated in its economic dynamism materialized by its trade surplus vis-à-vis the United States and the importance of its consumer society. But for how long?”
Christian Harbulot, Economic Warfare in the 21st Century, VA Editions, 2022.
