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BOOK REVIEW: WAR BY OTHER MEANS: GEOECONOMICS AND STATECRAFT BLACKWILL, R. D. - HARRIS, J. M.: War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. 384 p. ISBN 978-0-674-73721-1.
A well-known U.S. think-tank The Council on Foreign Relations published in 2016 a book called War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft. Its authors are Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer Harris. The first one is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and he was the U.S. Ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. After that, he worked in the National Security Council as the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for strategic planning under President George W. Bush. He also served as presidential envoy to Iraq. Robert D. Blackwill is the author and editor of many foreign policy books and articles as well. His best-selling book co-authored with Graham Allison is Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World.
Jennifer Harris is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and prior to joining CFR she worked in the U.S. National Intelligence Council and at the State Department as a member of the policy planning staff. She was the lead architect of Hillary Clinton's economic statecraft agenda launched in 2011.
The book aims to analyse all important aspects of current geoeconomics. The authors define geoeconomics as "the systematic use of economic instruments to accomplish geopolitical objectives" (p. 1). They argue that states nowadays are increasingly carrying out geopolitical combat through economic means. Geoeconomics includes many aspects from trade and investment policy to energy, exchange rates or even cyber-economic actions, which are used to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries, and coerce those in between. The main message of the book is to point out that the political representatives of the United States often use military methods instead of economic instruments to advance its interests abroad. Authors argue that economic instruments are usually more suitable to fulfil U.S. interests and USA should...