Economic Warfare a la Russe: The Energy Weapon and Russian national security strategy

Abstract

If this scenario repeats itself in Ukraine, it will be a textbook example of how energy chains can be manipulated to exert economic pressure and territorial influence.6 However, these actions are only part of Moscow's overall continuing economic war against Ukraine and represent merely the culmination to date of a campaign of economic warfare that included high tariffs, embargos, or delays of imports to prevent Ukraine from signing an Association Agreement (DCF TA-Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement) with the EU in 2013 and similar tactics against Moldova and Armenia for the same purpose.7 It is important to understand that while energy policy as a form of economic warfare can be and generally is deployed autonomously, Moscow often uses economic warfare in conjunction with military force, arms sales, or to force the adoption of policies favoring Russian immigrants in the Baltic States. [...]Moscow continues to use economic coercion as an instrument of warfare against its neighbors, e.g. the imposition of tariffs and excluson of Ukraine from the Eurasian Customs Union in December, 2015 because it refused to give up its Association Agreement with the European Union and Russia's ongoing efforts to gain control over both gas flows through Ukraine and the distribution of Russian gas within Ukraine.8 RUSSIAN STYL E ECONOMIC WARFARE Moscow habitually practices what experts have long since called economic warfare.