Strangle a country to change its king’s mind?

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter defines the term ‘legitimacy’ in contrast to ‘legality’ in the context of economic warfare. It applies it to ethical dilemmata in relation to trade wars. It refers to classical Augustinian just war theory applying it to economic conflicts in order to test if and how it seems able to ground an ethical analysis of economic sanctions and economic coercion among states. Are trade wars ethically comparable to conventional warfare in its military context? The ethical discourse about those topics in a book about trade war seems unavoidable as international law and economic sanctions are often criticized in a public discourse for being a toothless tiger while hard economic sanctions are frequently criticized in terms of the ethical legitimacy when they produce their debilitating effects harming civilians/non-combatants. Is it fair and legitimate that modern economic warfare against an adversary’s economic potential without armed conflict may have a higher death toll than conventional warfare, mainly harming innocent civilians and employees instead of warlords? Are those responses of the international community not only legally, but ethically appropriate and, therefore, legitimate? Can economic warfare and economic sanctions, therefore, be ethically just and justified? Examples given pro and contra such questions include the Iraq conflict and the related US sanctions and their effects in the late 1990s.