Economic Warfare

[Norfolk]

While the West has tended to view war as something normally separate from the rest of life, many of the Rest have tended to view war as the normal state of life, and therefore, war is waged against one's enemies in every aspect of life. That Iran sees fit to wage economic war upon the U.S. simply fits in that regard.

After all, Iran doesn't have anything that can take on Mickey Mouse at the cultural level - in a rather extended sense something that seems to be one of Iran's chief beefs with the U.S. - so Iran has to make an end-run around Mickey and Minnie and Donald Duck et al and hit the U.S. where it can still try to hurt them most, especially at the strategic level. At said level, the U.S. is vulnerable economically, and the weaknesses most exposed to Iranian attack are the price of petroleum and the value of the dollar.

That said, the U.S. waged a very effective economic campaign against the U.S.S.R. in the 1980's, and, combined with a comprehensive set of proxy wars, information warfare, cultural warfare, diplomatic pressures, alliances, support of dissidents and subversion, etc., took advantage of the weaknesses within the Soviet system to help to bring about its downfall. And without a single US Battalion having to be sent into battle against the Red Army. This sort of warfare was somewhat more in line with that of ancient Chinese military theory, for example, than with 20th Century Western military theory.

Nevertheless, US strategists of the 1980's clearly saw that to defeat the Soviets by military means was simply not worth the candle; other means were required, and in the circumstances, worked. At the risk of over-simplification, the US simply spent the USSR into the ground on military technology and procurement, knowing that the US could afford such expense, but the USSR would succumb to its own internal weaknesses in attempting to follow the US.

Nor is the US an amateur at economic warfare: that is how the US won during the Recent Unpleasantness, albeit in tandem with actual military force. The US Army pillaged, tore up, and burned out the economic heartland of the South in late 1864-early 1865; the US Army fighting in the Lower South deliberately avoided giving battle in most cases, and simply manoeuvered the Confederates out of their positions. Both World Wars involved the economic blockade and attempted strangulation of each others economies by both sides. In World War I, the Germany economy finally collapsed and the population starved; military collapse followed within months. Germany nearly accomplished the same thing with Britain in the spring of 1943.

Chinese strategic and military thought does not make a modern Western-style distinction between war on the one hand, and the life of society/civilization on the other. The use of military force is theoretically and ideally the final phase of a given war between enemies; prior to that, the war is waged by all other means, including economics. Only when the enemy is sufficiently weak, or is anticipated to become stronger later, is then directly struck with military force. But it is all war, the struggle for survival, growth, and supremacy, and from such perspectives, that's what life is about. A grim, red-in-tooth-and-claw neverending struggle for dominance.

It is only logical then that (sadly) many business types have long been devotees of Chinese strategic and military thought (amongst others).