Economic Warfare

[Norfolk]

It depends upon intentions, means, and consequences as to whether speculators are engaged in war or not. After all, the U.S. Air Force has an unfortunate predilection for friendly-fire, as not only the U.S. Army but also Allied Armies can attest to over the last 60 years or so. The means and consequences were the same for Allied troops as for Axis troops - both died in U.S. Air Force air strikes, but the intentions were much different needless to say. Furthermore, had Allied troops been so disposed, they may have mistakenly considered such repeated incidents for casus belli. But they were not so disposed, and correctly granted the U.S. Air Force the benefit of the doubt, and did not impute an intention to them that they did not have.

Similarly, no such attempt at economic warfare was ever intended by the British financial institution at the heart of the Asian Currency Crisis, though the means and the consequences were much the same as a real economic strike would have been. Utter economic ruin for many, and general economic disruption and lasting damage to lives, not to mention economies. But the intention to do such was completely lacking. That there are those that may have perceived in it either an attempt or an act of war in it reflects on their disposition towards those involved in the means and consequences, not that a war was in fact waged upon the victims by the guilty party(ies).

Fabius Maximus, the work you cite by the two PLA officers was the subject of a discussion on another board. Some of the contributors were experts or at least learned and sensible, although many were not exactly so. But the work in question reveals at least as much about the intentions of some in Asia as it does upon actual means and consequences. Where there is intention together with means and consequences, there is war, in whatever form it is waged.

Similarly, there is a difference in gravity of intentions, means, and consequences between an armed robber on the one hand, who takes down a bank and kills a few people in the attempt, or a brigand who raids towns and kills dozens, even hundreds of people, and an army that conducts wholesale pillage of a country. An armed robbery affects a relatively few people directly, and entails no substantial loss to the society as a whole, and so does not constitute war. Brigandage and piracy are more serious, being as it were organized criminal gangs, but normally amount to little more than glorified irritants to general society and as such do not rise to the level of war; where they do constitute serious threats is to small or weak societies or in striking vital targets, and they can amount to low-level warfare. An army is something with real capacity to do grave harm to a society, and when it is engaged in such, it is war.

And so to return to Hedge Funds, Private Equity Companies, and their ilk: do they wage war? They can, provided they have intention, means, and consequences that are grave, and all simultaneously. But that does not mean that they automatically are engaged in war whenever they cause serious, even grave damage, but rather crime; it does mean that they are criminals when they do so without full intention of causing such damage, rather than "warriors" deliberately engaged in inflicting such damage upon their enemies (I use the term "warriors" in an extended sense of the term that frankly sickens me to hear it used). So no, Hedge Funds do not wage war when they seriously damage economies, when they have no intention of doing so in order to deliberately harm their victims - they are engaged in crime; they are often nonethless criminals in doing so when what they do they know will cause harm, but not out of deliberate malice towards their victims.

War can be waged by anyone who simultaneously has the intention, using means, that result in serious or even grave consequences to a society or civilization, be they an individual, a group, or a state, or either of those in the service of another.