Ebook: US Economic Statecraft for Survival, 1933-1991: of sanctions, embargoes, and economic warfare

How have US economic defence policies promoted the United States’ security since
1933?
US Economic Statecraft for Survival 1933–1991 concentrates on an important and
neglected facet of America’s fight for survival in the latter half of the twentieth century.
It explains how US policy-makers crafted and used instruments of economic statecraft
against states that posed vital threats to the survival of the USA. This study situates
economic defence policy within the broad context of US foreign policy and explores its
response to the totalitarianism of the 1930s, the Second World War and the complex
strategic and political developments of the Cold War.
Dobson charts an extraordinary change in US policy, from its defence of neutral rights
to trade in wartime to its denial of trade to prospective enemies in peacetime. From his
explanation of how it developed and evolved over the years there emerges a new
perspective. This study emphasises the importance that economic instruments of
statecraft have for symbolic, communication and political bargaining objectives.
Economic instruments of statecraft are more important for what they say than what they
do in an instrumental sense. Without being aware of these factors it is not possible to give
a credible account of much of US economic statecraft in the post-war period.
This book reassesses the nature and character of economic instruments of statecraft in
the light of the detailed narrative of, and findings about, US policy from 1933 to 1991.
Among other things, it raises difficulties about how to assess the effectiveness of such
instruments of statecraft, once it is appreciated that assessment by purely objective
economic criteria is inappropriate. It includes details of US economic actions against
Japan, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Alan P.Dobson teaches US government and foreign policy and has published
extensively on Anglo-American relations, US foreign policy and international aviation.
He was a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in 1997, and since 1999
he has been Professor of Politics at the University of Dundee, from where he will launch
The Journal of Transatlantic Studies. He is currently working on the single European
aviation market and, in collaboration with Dr Steve Marsh, on Anglo-American summitry
since 1941.