The Economic Weapon

Nicholas Mulder

The Wall Street Journal says that this volume from Yale University Press, subtitled The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, “offers many lessons for Western policy makers today.” It’s the first book by Mulder, a Cornell assistant professor of modern European history. As Foreign Affairs observes in a review: “For those who see economic sanctions as a relatively mild way of expressing displeasure at a country’s behavior, this book, charting how they first emerged as a potential coercive instrument during the first decades of the 20th century, will come as something of a revelation. In an original and persuasive analysis, Mulder shows how isolating aggressors from global commerce and finance was seen as an alternative to war that worked precisely because of the pain it imposed on the target society. From the very beginning, it was civilians who suffered the most.”

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