In France, the concept of “economic warfare” is difficult to grasp. Most business leaders still focus on innovation-related issues, the watchword of engineering culture. Economic confrontations between powers and their concrete consequences remain a field they leave to political authorities. However, this passing of the buck has reached its limits, because for the time being few political leaders have a strategic vision that integrates the issues of economic warfare.
To address the question of economic warfare, three types of concepts must be distinguished. First, the “war economy,” which refers to exceptional economic practices to meet the needs of military war. Second, “economic warfare in wartime,” illustrated by offensive operations to disrupt the enemy’s supply chains and weaken the opposing population’s capacity to survive. Third, “economic warfare in peacetime,” which is a confrontation between parties to capture and control wealth and increase their power. This generates a mode of domination that avoids resorting to military power to impose lasting supremacy.
Economic security aims to protect the rules of competition in the globalisation of trade. It is the official formulation of the notion of peacetime economic warfare, which took hold in North America following a series of setbacks of both a geopolitical and geoeconomic nature…
