Biden’s Biggest Foreign Policy Legacy Will Be in Economic Warfare
His administration has pushed back harder against rivals and adversaries such as China and Russia, and done so with more potent tools.
A new era of economic warfare.
Photographer: Bloomberg
Joe Biden’s foreign policy will be remembered for many things: the humiliating exit from Afghanistan, the stalwart response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the struggle to contain the fallout from Oct. 7 in the Middle East. But Biden has cast his longest shadow by shaping a new era of economic warfare likely to intensify in the years ahead.
Economic warfare has figured in great competitions and conflicts since the ancient age. As every reader of Thucydides knows, the Megarian Decree — a trade embargo imposed by Athens — was a signpost on the road to the Peloponnesian War. In 1941, a US oil embargo against Japan helped to trigger the attack on Pearl Harbor and globalize World War II. During the Cold War, the free world contained the Soviet Union in economic as well as military terms.