Economic Warfare: Better Safe than Sorry

Peter Ham
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Peter Ham: University of Leiden

Chapter 10 in Western Doctrines on East-West Trade, 1992, pp 138-155 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Trade, it has been argued, is an ‘economic equivalent to war’. The French eighteenth-century philosopher Benjamin Constant once remarked that ‘war and commerce are but two different means of arriving at the same aim which is to possess what is desired. Trade is nothing but a homage paid to the strength of the possessor by him who aspires to the possession; it is an attempt to obtain by mutual agreement that which one does not hope any longer to obtain by violence. The idea of commerce would never occur to a man who would always be the strongest.’1 East-West economic relations have indeed at times come close to an ‘equivalent of war’.

Keywords: Foreign Trade; National Security; Military Conflict; Soviet Bloc; Soviet Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-12610-1_11

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-12610-1_11

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