--- title: "Economic Warfare: How to Quietly Devastate a Country" description: "Humans have been fighting each other for about as long as they have existed. But while weapons have changed drastically over the years — from swords to guns to bombs — one strategy has stood the test of time and proven its effectiveness again and again throughout history: economic warfare. Waging a war on another nation's economy is one of the most effective ways to both end a war and to prevent one from starting in the first place. The remarkable impact that economic warfare has had on world history, and its quiet potential to cripple entire armies, is significant.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- The Allied blockade of Germany in World War I led to 763,000 civilian starvation deaths and the Turnip Winter of 1916-1917, contributing significantly to the war's end.\n- Fritz Haber's nitrogen fertilizer factories were converted to bomb production, inadvertently crippling German agriculture during WWI.\n- More than 30 countries joined sanctions against Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and over 1,000 companies withdrew from Russia by November 2022 according to Yale University analysis.\n- Russia resorted to refurbishing 800 Soviet-era T-62 tanks due to sanctions-driven production shortfalls and lost 10 jets in training crashes linked to parts shortages.\n- Ukraine accounts for 10% of the world's wheat and 15% of its corn exports, and nearly 20 million tons of grain were stuck in port when the war began — giving Russia leverage to weaponize food against dozens of dependent nations.\n\n## Starvation as Strategy: The Allied Blockade of Germany in World War I\n\nWhile it might be assumed that economic warfare is not generally deadly, there are several instances where its use was perhaps more lethal than any weapon could have been. The Allied Blockade of Germany in the First World War is a striking example. The goal of the naval blockade was mainly to restrict the Central Powers from importing war matériel, which it did very well, forcing them to manufacture weapons and ammunition without much help from overseas. But the blockade had another impact, one so great that, according to some historians, it was the true reason the war ended: starvation. Before the war had started, Germany was producing around 80% of its food from its own agricultural sector, and so it was not expected that a naval blockade would have much of an impact on food supply. Even if it did, they could always begin importing food by land, from Romania or Scandinavia. But as the war progressed, a few unforeseen factors came into play. First: nitrogen. Nitrogen is a crucial element in agriculture, a necessary element in the soil for plant growth. It is found naturally in the ground, but repeated farming of the same plot of land can deplete nitrogen levels faster than they can regenerate, leading to smaller yields or even total crop failure. Just as the Great War was starting, a German scientist named Fritz Haber developed a clever method to pull nitrogen from the air and return it to the soil — a cheap, efficient method to manufacture artificial fertilizer, for which he eventually won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Germany was confident in its food security, but this dependence on nitrogen fertilizer came back to bite them when Haber's factories were converted to use the nitrogen in bombs for the war effort. Without fertilizer production, farms struggled to produce enough food. Even the farms that were still producing enough food suffered from a massive labor shortage due to all young men being sent to war. The situation was worsened by an unusually cold autumn in 1916, and by December, everyday staples like bread, potatoes, and dairy were so scarce that the general population was already resorting to wartime substitute food, such as powdered milk. But even this was not enough. The winter of 1916–1917 was so brutal that even these rations ran low, and the German public was forced to survive with a diet centered around Swedish turnips. This became known as Turnip Winter, during which thousands of civilians died of starvation, malnutrition, and disease. There were riots, looted stores, and overall desperation. The following year, the German government announced that all men aged 16–70 now had to participate in mandatory employment, aimed at strengthening the food sector and figuring out an effective rationing system. By 1917, the goal was for each German citizen to consume just 1,000 calories each day. Immune systems were weak from malnutrition, and diseases like influenza spread like wildfire through the population. After the war was over, official German statistics stated that 763,000 civilians had starved to death due to the Allied blockade. A similar situation played out in another Central Power, the Ottoman Empire, where as many as 200,000 also died from starvation or malnutrition-related causes in the Great Famine of Lebanon. These food shortages were so extreme that many historians believe they were one of the most important factors that led to the end of the war, having brought much of the public to an anti-war stance.\n\n## Sanctions Against Russia: A Financial Nuclear Bomb\n\nThe basic idea of a trade war is to deprive an enemy nation of certain war materials, ranging from mundane spare tank parts all the way to enriched uranium. In the modern era, this usually takes the form of international sanctions, wherein many nations collectively agree to refuse certain business with certain nations. And because the world's industry is so intertwined, sanctions often wield the power to cripple entire armies, all without firing a single bullet. The perfect example of modern sanctions is the absolute mountain of them that were thrown on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Some sanctions had already been in place since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, but the package put together in 2022 was of historic size. Putin was aware that more sanctions would be on the table after the invasion, but what he did not foresee was how extensive they would be, and the fact that more than 30 countries would join in, even including the notoriously neutral Switzerland. The overall goal of the sanctions was twofold: hurt Russia's military capabilities, slowing them down on the battlefield, and sink their economy so badly that they lose the ability to even fund the war. Russian assets around the world were immediately frozen, leading to some angry oligarchs who now had to spend the summer without their multi-million-dollar mega-yachts. But more relevant to the nation's wartime economy was the fact that all Russian companies capable of supplying the military were completely cut off from all imports — no spare parts, components, weapons, or ammunition. Nation-wide sanctions completely prohibited the selling of key items in the tech industry, such as semiconductor technology, microchips, lasers, and various types of sensors. This also includes so-called chokepoint technologies — products made by only a handful of companies in Europe, North America, or Japan, such as super-specific alloys, complex machine parts, and advanced software. These items are important because there is not really an alternative out there, so not even China can step in to fill the gaps. When all the sanctions hit, companies one after another withdrew from Russia, leaving gaping holes in nearly every industry across the nation. Even companies with products not under sanctions, such as food, made sure to announce their departure to avoid PR scandals. By November 2022, an analysis done at Yale University found that more than a thousand companies had already left — everything from airlines to fast food to car production. Visa and Mastercard stopped working in Russia, as did many functions of PayPal. As Russia's former deputy minister of finance put it, it was as if Russia was struck with a \"financial nuclear bomb.\"\n\n## Battlefield Impact and Brain Drain\n\nThe shockwaves from the sanctions have already reached the battlefield. After using up much of their supply of cruise missiles on Ukrainian cities, some analysts say that Russia may only have a few hundred left and is finding it difficult to replenish stockpiles without Western technology. Their aircraft are severely lacking in parts to properly repair and maintain, which could be the reason that 10 of their jets crashed into Russian cities while training in the first seven months of the war. Tank production has also slowed to a crawl, and desperately needing more tanks on the frontline, Russia has resorted to refurbishing 800 of its old Soviet-era T-62s that had been gathering dust for decades. Aside from hurting military and tech production, the sanctions on Russia have powerful side effects. One of these is known as brain drain — the mass exodus of educated minds from a nation. Tens of thousands of college-educated people have fled Russia since the sanctions hit, and even more fled when partial mobilization was announced. Many have moved to places like Georgia and Kazakhstan simply looking for work, having been left without any income when their foreign employer packed their bags and left overnight. Russia is also retaliating in the economic sphere, using its two biggest exports: energy and food. Russia is the world's largest exporter of natural gas, having exported more than 200 billion cubic meters in 2021, the majority of which goes to the European Union. This has given Russia blackmail material over many of the countries sanctioning it, threatening to turn off their gas and let them freeze in the winter if they continue supporting Ukraine. Russia has already turned off the majority of natural gas exports to the EU, causing countries such as Germany to tell citizens to prepare for a colder winter as they hurry to prepare alternate heating methods.\n\n## Weaponizing Grain: Russia's Agricultural Blackmail\n\nRussia's other leverage is agricultural blackmail. Ukraine is one of the world's largest grain exporters, accounting for 10% of the world's wheat and 15% of the world's corn, along with being the largest exporter of sunflower products. The war has disrupted much of the nation's farming, made worse by the fact that Russia has seized many tons of already harvested Ukrainian grain and continues to block Ukrainian grain ships from leaving port. When the war began, nearly 20 million tons of grain were stuck in port. The issue is that many countries rely quite heavily on Ukraine for their food. Top importers of Ukrainian wheat and corn include Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Yemen — countries that will have a difficult time switching food sources if Ukrainian grain stops arriving. Alongside Ukraine, Russia is also a top exporter, supplying many of the same countries with corn, wheat, and barley. Putin is essentially holding these countries hostage, perpetually poised to cause a global food catastrophe if things do not go his way. Ukraine has accused Russia of using the grain as blackmail, while the United States uses the phrase \"weaponizing food.\" Several attempts have been made to reach agreements on allowing the food to be exported, often brokered by Turkey. One agreement was accepted by both countries, but Russia pulled out a short while later after their Black Sea Fleet was attacked in several drone strikes. After withdrawing, the Kremlin said, \"the Russian side cannot guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo ships.\" Despite the threat, 12 Ukrainian ships left port full of grain on Halloween and safely made it out of the warzone without encountering any problems, carrying an estimated 350,000 tons of food. Following the shipments, Russia changed its mind once again and re-entered the grain deal. On top of the direct blackmail, the disruption to food supply chains and energy prices in Europe have contributed to the rising cost of living across much of the world.\n\n## Historical Precedents: From Iran to the 1973 Oil Embargo\n\nWhile Russia has certainly made the word \"sanctions\" a term heard too often these days, they are far from the first to feel the pressure. Iran, after its Islamist revolution in 1979, was subject to crippling international sanctions. Just before the revolution, Iran had possessed the world's fifth largest army, but it was left to rot by trade embargoes, which deprived them of spare parts, weapons, ammunition, engineers, and pilot training, seriously hindering their war effort in the 1980s against Iraq, who, free of sanctions, was able to easily replenish their war supplies. Iran got so desperate that they even started to purchase arms from North Korea. When discussing sanctions, the conversation almost always concerns the Western world sanctioning a particular country of its choosing, but 1973 saw the US, UK, Japan, and other industrialized nations as the target of sanctions, placed on them by a coalition of Arab nations as protest for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Oil prices skyrocketed as a result, but the embargo failed to sever support for Israel. Destroying an enemy's crops and resources has always been a surefire way to force them into submission — for thousands of years, dating back to the Crusades and even Alexander the Great, who used scorched earth tactics. After all, it does not matter how well soldiers can fight, or how cutting-edge their equipment is; if their bellies are empty, they simply will not be able to fight for long.\n\n## World War II: The Full Spectrum of Economic Warfare\n\nWorld War II saw the use of nearly every aspect of economic warfare. The Allies quickly blockaded Germany once again once war had been officially declared. After all, it worked the first time around, and perhaps a repeat of the Turnip Winter could get the German people to rise up against their dictator. Unfortunately, it did not work as well the second time, for a few reasons. By the time the blockade was taking effect, Germany had already captured a lot of territory in Europe, expanding the places it could harvest if push came to shove. The Allies also could not do much to stop land trade, and neutral countries continued selling to both sides, with goods making their way to the Axis powers through the Middle East, occupied regions of China, or their outposts in North Africa. Germany did attempt blockading the United Kingdom, trying to stop vital American supplies from keeping the island nation afloat during the Blitz. U-boats were deployed in a vast network around the Atlantic Ocean, and dozens of merchant ships were sunk by the submarines, depriving Britain of food, ammunition, and medical supplies — a combination of both economic and traditional warfare. One of the most successful trade wars against Germany by the Allies was with Spain, who remained neutral. Spain was a big exporter of tungsten, something Germany's war machine was in high demand for. Britain simply outbid Germany for nearly every single shipment of tungsten, causing the price to skyrocket. The Allies also launched an oil campaign against the Axis, a combination of economic measures and conventional bombing of German oil supplies. But the nation hit hardest by economic warfare in World War II was the Empire of Japan. Western nations applied a complete embargo of oil, steel, and iron, even enforcing the blockade with submarines. This was a major problem for Japan, which does not have a great deal of natural resources within its own territory — which was part of the reason for invading Chinese Manchuria and French Indochina in the first place. During the early years of the war, Japan, faced with being slowly squeezed out by the West, invaded more nations in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, taking over old Dutch oil infrastructure. But all this did was delay the inevitable. Japan failed to cripple the US Navy during the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and soon enough the American war machine was in full swing. Japan, still grasping for resources wherever it could, simply could not match the production and industry of the Allies. At crucial battles such as Midway or the Coral Sea, Japanese warships and aircraft carriers were sunk, airplanes were shot down, and ammunition stores were blown up — all things the empire struggled to replace in time. There simply was not enough metal to go around. Meanwhile, American naval production was off the charts. Unable to recoup their losses with each decisive battle, by 1945 nearly the entire Imperial Navy was sitting at the bottom of the ocean, and Japan had no hope of building enough warships in time to face the full wrath of both the United States and the Soviet Union. The cliché saying that the Second World War was won with British Intelligence, American Steel, and Soviet Blood is well-known, but the various forms of economic warfare waged by the Allies are what allowed these three factors to be so effective.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### How did the Allied blockade of Germany in World War I cause mass starvation?\n\nBefore the war, Germany produced about 80% of its own food and relied on Fritz Haber's nitrogen fertilizer factories to maintain soil productivity. When those factories were converted to produce explosives, crop yields collapsed. Combined with a severe labour shortage as men went to war and an unusually cold autumn in 1916, the result was the Turnip Winter of 1916-1917, when the German public survived on a diet centered around Swedish turnips. Official German statistics after the war recorded 763,000 civilian deaths from starvation caused by the blockade.\n\n### What made the 2022 sanctions against Russia historically unusual?\n\nThe 2022 sanctions package was extraordinary in its scale and participation. More than 30 countries joined, including traditionally neutral Switzerland. Beyond freezing Russian assets and cutting off military-supply chains, the sanctions targeted chokepoint technologies — products made by only a handful of companies in Europe, North America, or Japan — for which China could not easily substitute. By November 2022, a Yale University analysis found that more than 1,000 companies had voluntarily left Russia, collapsing whole industries even in sectors not formally covered by the sanctions.\n\n### How have the sanctions affected Russia's military on the battlefield?\n\nThe effects have been concrete. Russia is believed to have depleted most of its cruise missile stockpiles and struggled to replenish them without Western microchips and components. Aircraft maintenance has deteriorated badly enough that 10 jets crashed into Russian cities during training in the first seven months of the war. Tank production slowed so severely that Russia resorted to refurbishing 800 Soviet-era T-62s that had been in storage for decades, deploying ageing Cold War hardware in place of modern replacements.\n\n### How has Russia used grain as a weapon in the Ukraine war?\n\nUkraine accounts for 10% of the world's wheat and 15% of its corn exports, and nearly 20 million tons of grain were stuck in Ukrainian ports when the war began. Russia seized harvested Ukrainian grain and blocked grain ships from leaving, effectively holding food-import-dependent countries — including Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Yemen — hostage. The United States used the phrase \"weaponizing food\" to describe Russia's strategy. One agreement to allow exports was brokered but Russia withdrew after Black Sea Fleet drone strikes, illustrating how the food weapon is tied directly to the military situation.\n\n### How did economic warfare contribute to Japan's defeat in World War II?\n\nWestern nations applied a complete embargo of oil, steel, and iron against Japan, enforced in part by submarines. Since Japan lacked natural resources of its own — a key reason it had invaded Manchuria and Indochina — this embargo was existential. Japan invaded more of Southeast Asia to seize Dutch oil infrastructure, but it could never match Allied industrial production. At battles like Midway and the Coral Sea, Japanese warships, aircraft carriers, and aircraft were destroyed faster than Japan could replace them. By 1945 the Imperial Navy was effectively gone, and the resource blockade was a central reason Japan had no capacity to rebuild it.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [Is the 21st Century's Deadliest War about to Restart? And More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/is-the-21st-centurys-deadliest-war-about-to-restart-and-more)\n- [The Evolution of Naval Special Warfare](https://warfronts.pub/defense/navy-seals-evolution)\n- [When the Red Button Falls: The Unraveling After a Global Nuclear War](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/conflicts/when-red-button-falls-unraveling-global-nuclear-war)\n- [Is Russia's Economy Starting to Crack? And More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/is-russias-economy-starting-to-crack-and-more)\n- [Can NATO Beat Russia Without the United States? An Arsenal Analysis.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/can-nato-beat-russia-without-the-united-states-an-arsenal-analysis)\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/economic-warfare-how-to-quietly-devastate-a-country.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/economic-warfare-how-to-quietly-devastate-a-country datePublished: 2026-03-04 dateModified: 2026-03-04 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/Hj8W22I8Siw/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 184b081f4c2e54422cb9c3b41e30c2c77dd5eee636a481370f8db766ff09b967 tokens: 5244 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/economic-warfare-how-to-quietly-devastate-a-country.md.summary.md --- Humans have been fighting each other for about as long as they have existed. But while weapons have changed drastically over the years — from swords to guns to bombs — one strategy has stood the test of time and proven its effectiveness again and again throughout history: economic warfare. Waging a war on another nation's economy is one of the most effective ways to both end a war and to prevent one from starting in the first place. The remarkable impact that economic warfare has had on world history, and its quiet potential to cripple entire armies, is significant. ## Key Takeaways - The Allied blockade of Germany in World War I led to 763,000 civilian starvation deaths and the Turnip Winter of 1916-1917, contributing significantly to the war's end. - Fritz Haber's nitrogen fertilizer factories were converted to bomb production, inadvertently crippling German agriculture during WWI. - More than 30 countries joined sanctions against Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and over 1,000 companies withdrew from Russia by November 2022 according to Yale University analysis. - Russia resorted to refurbishing 800 Soviet-era T-62 tanks due to sanctions-driven production shortfalls and lost 10 jets in training crashes linked to parts shortages. - Ukraine accounts for 10% of the world's wheat and 15% of its corn exports, and nearly 20 million tons of grain were stuck in port when the war began — giving Russia leverage to weaponize food against dozens of dependent nations. ## Starvation as Strategy: The Allied Blockade of Germany in World War I While it might be assumed that economic warfare is not generally deadly, there are several instances where its use was perhaps more lethal than any weapon could have been. The Allied Blockade of Germany in the First World War is a striking example. The goal of the naval blockade was mainly to restrict the Central Powers from importing war matériel, which it did very well, forcing them to manufacture weapons and ammunition without much help from overseas. But the blockade had another impact, one so great that, according to some historians, it was the true reason the war ended: starvation. Before the war had started, Germany was producing around 80% of its food from its own agricultural sector, and so it was not expected that a naval blockade would have much of an impact on food supply. Even if it did, they could always begin importing food by land, from Romania or Scandinavia. But as the war progressed, a few unforeseen factors came into play. First: nitrogen. Nitrogen is a crucial element in agriculture, a necessary element in the soil for plant growth. It is found naturally in the ground, but repeated farming of the same plot of land can deplete nitrogen levels faster than they can regenerate, leading to smaller yields or even total crop failure. Just as the Great War was starting, a German scientist named Fritz Haber developed a clever method to pull nitrogen from the air and return it to the soil — a cheap, efficient method to manufacture artificial fertilizer, for which he eventually won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Germany was confident in its food security, but this dependence on nitrogen fertilizer came back to bite them when Haber's factories were converted to use the nitrogen in bombs for the war effort. Without fertilizer production, farms struggled to produce enough food. Even the farms that were still producing enough food suffered from a massive labor shortage due to all young men being sent to war. The situation was worsened by an unusually cold autumn in 1916, and by December, everyday staples like bread, potatoes, and dairy were so scarce that the general population was already resorting to wartime substitute food, such as powdered milk. But even this was not enough. The winter of 1916–1917 was so brutal that even these rations ran low, and the German public was forced to survive with a diet centered around Swedish turnips. This became known as Turnip Winter, during which thousands of civilians died of starvation, malnutrition, and disease. There were riots, looted stores, and overall desperation. The following year, the German government announced that all men aged 16–70 now had to participate in mandatory employment, aimed at strengthening the food sector and figuring out an effective rationing system. By 1917, the goal was for each German citizen to consume just 1,000 calories each day. Immune systems were weak from malnutrition, and diseases like influenza spread like wildfire through the population. After the war was over, official German statistics stated that 763,000 civilians had starved to death due to the Allied blockade. A similar situation played out in another Central Power, the Ottoman Empire, where as many as 200,000 also died from starvation or malnutrition-related causes in the Great Famine of Lebanon. These food shortages were so extreme that many historians believe they were one of the most important factors that led to the end of the war, having brought much of the public to an anti-war stance. ## Sanctions Against Russia: A Financial Nuclear Bomb The basic idea of a trade war is to deprive an enemy nation of certain war materials, ranging from mundane spare tank parts all the way to enriched uranium. In the modern era, this usually takes the form of international sanctions, wherein many nations collectively agree to refuse certain business with certain nations. And because the world's industry is so intertwined, sanctions often wield the power to cripple entire armies, all without firing a single bullet. The perfect example of modern sanctions is the absolute mountain of them that were thrown on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Some sanctions had already been in place since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, but the package put together in 2022 was of historic size. Putin was aware that more sanctions would be on the table after the invasion, but what he did not foresee was how extensive they would be, and the fact that more than 30 countries would join in, even including the notoriously neutral Switzerland. The overall goal of the sanctions was twofold: hurt Russia's military capabilities, slowing them down on the battlefield, and sink their economy so badly that they lose the ability to even fund the war. Russian assets around the world were immediately frozen, leading to some angry oligarchs who now had to spend the summer without their multi-million-dollar mega-yachts. But more relevant to the nation's wartime economy was the fact that all Russian companies capable of supplying the military were completely cut off from all imports — no spare parts, components, weapons, or ammunition. Nation-wide sanctions completely prohibited the selling of key items in the tech industry, such as semiconductor technology, microchips, lasers, and various types of sensors. This also includes so-called chokepoint technologies — products made by only a handful of companies in Europe, North America, or Japan, such as super-specific alloys, complex machine parts, and advanced software. These items are important because there is not really an alternative out there, so not even China can step in to fill the gaps. When all the sanctions hit, companies one after another withdrew from Russia, leaving gaping holes in nearly every industry across the nation. Even companies with products not under sanctions, such as food, made sure to announce their departure to avoid PR scandals. By November 2022, an analysis done at Yale University found that more than a thousand companies had already left — everything from airlines to fast food to car production. Visa and Mastercard stopped working in Russia, as did many functions of PayPal. As Russia's former deputy minister of finance put it, it was as if Russia was struck with a "financial nuclear bomb." ## Battlefield Impact and Brain Drain The shockwaves from the sanctions have already reached the battlefield. After using up much of their supply of cruise missiles on Ukrainian cities, some analysts say that Russia may only have a few hundred left and is finding it difficult to replenish stockpiles without Western technology. Their aircraft are severely lacking in parts to properly repair and maintain, which could be the reason that 10 of their jets crashed into Russian cities while training in the first seven months of the war. Tank production has also slowed to a crawl, and desperately needing more tanks on the frontline, Russia has resorted to refurbishing 800 of its old Soviet-era T-62s that had been gathering dust for decades. Aside from hurting military and tech production, the sanctions on Russia have powerful side effects. One of these is known as brain drain — the mass exodus of educated minds from a nation. Tens of thousands of college-educated people have fled Russia since the sanctions hit, and even more fled when partial mobilization was announced. Many have moved to places like Georgia and Kazakhstan simply looking for work, having been left without any income when their foreign employer packed their bags and left overnight. Russia is also retaliating in the economic sphere, using its two biggest exports: energy and food. Russia is the world's largest exporter of natural gas, having exported more than 200 billion cubic meters in 2021, the majority of which goes to the European Union. This has given Russia blackmail material over many of the countries sanctioning it, threatening to turn off their gas and let them freeze in the winter if they continue supporting Ukraine. Russia has already turned off the majority of natural gas exports to the EU, causing countries such as Germany to tell citizens to prepare for a colder winter as they hurry to prepare alternate heating methods. ## Weaponizing Grain: Russia's Agricultural Blackmail Russia's other leverage is agricultural blackmail. Ukraine is one of the world's largest grain exporters, accounting for 10% of the world's wheat and 15% of the world's corn, along with being the largest exporter of sunflower products. The war has disrupted much of the nation's farming, made worse by the fact that Russia has seized many tons of already harvested Ukrainian grain and continues to block Ukrainian grain ships from leaving port. When the war began, nearly 20 million tons of grain were stuck in port. The issue is that many countries rely quite heavily on Ukraine for their food. Top importers of Ukrainian wheat and corn include Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Yemen — countries that will have a difficult time switching food sources if Ukrainian grain stops arriving. Alongside Ukraine, Russia is also a top exporter, supplying many of the same countries with corn, wheat, and barley. Putin is essentially holding these countries hostage, perpetually poised to cause a global food catastrophe if things do not go his way. Ukraine has accused Russia of using the grain as blackmail, while the United States uses the phrase "weaponizing food." Several attempts have been made to reach agreements on allowing the food to be exported, often brokered by Turkey. One agreement was accepted by both countries, but Russia pulled out a short while later after their Black Sea Fleet was attacked in several drone strikes. After withdrawing, the Kremlin said, "the Russian side cannot guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo ships." Despite the threat, 12 Ukrainian ships left port full of grain on Halloween and safely made it out of the warzone without encountering any problems, carrying an estimated 350,000 tons of food. Following the shipments, Russia changed its mind once again and re-entered the grain deal. On top of the direct blackmail, the disruption to food supply chains and energy prices in Europe have contributed to the rising cost of living across much of the world. ## Historical Precedents: From Iran to the 1973 Oil Embargo While Russia has certainly made the word "sanctions" a term heard too often these days, they are far from the first to feel the pressure. Iran, after its Islamist revolution in 1979, was subject to crippling international sanctions. Just before the revolution, Iran had possessed the world's fifth largest army, but it was left to rot by trade embargoes, which deprived them of spare parts, weapons, ammunition, engineers, and pilot training, seriously hindering their war effort in the 1980s against Iraq, who, free of sanctions, was able to easily replenish their war supplies. Iran got so desperate that they even started to purchase arms from North Korea. When discussing sanctions, the conversation almost always concerns the Western world sanctioning a particular country of its choosing, but 1973 saw the US, UK, Japan, and other industrialized nations as the target of sanctions, placed on them by a coalition of Arab nations as protest for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Oil prices skyrocketed as a result, but the embargo failed to sever support for Israel. Destroying an enemy's crops and resources has always been a surefire way to force them into submission — for thousands of years, dating back to the Crusades and even Alexander the Great, who used scorched earth tactics. After all, it does not matter how well soldiers can fight, or how cutting-edge their equipment is; if their bellies are empty, they simply will not be able to fight for long. ## World War II: The Full Spectrum of Economic Warfare World War II saw the use of nearly every aspect of economic warfare. The Allies quickly blockaded Germany once again once war had been officially declared. After all, it worked the first time around, and perhaps a repeat of the Turnip Winter could get the German people to rise up against their dictator. Unfortunately, it did not work as well the second time, for a few reasons. By the time the blockade was taking effect, Germany had already captured a lot of territory in Europe, expanding the places it could harvest if push came to shove. The Allies also could not do much to stop land trade, and neutral countries continued selling to both sides, with goods making their way to the Axis powers through the Middle East, occupied regions of China, or their outposts in North Africa. Germany did attempt blockading the United Kingdom, trying to stop vital American supplies from keeping the island nation afloat during the Blitz. U-boats were deployed in a vast network around the Atlantic Ocean, and dozens of merchant ships were sunk by the submarines, depriving Britain of food, ammunition, and medical supplies — a combination of both economic and traditional warfare. One of the most successful trade wars against Germany by the Allies was with Spain, who remained neutral. Spain was a big exporter of tungsten, something Germany's war machine was in high demand for. Britain simply outbid Germany for nearly every single shipment of tungsten, causing the price to skyrocket. The Allies also launched an oil campaign against the Axis, a combination of economic measures and conventional bombing of German oil supplies. But the nation hit hardest by economic warfare in World War II was the Empire of Japan. Western nations applied a complete embargo of oil, steel, and iron, even enforcing the blockade with submarines. This was a major problem for Japan, which does not have a great deal of natural resources within its own territory — which was part of the reason for invading Chinese Manchuria and French Indochina in the first place. During the early years of the war, Japan, faced with being slowly squeezed out by the West, invaded more nations in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, taking over old Dutch oil infrastructure. But all this did was delay the inevitable. Japan failed to cripple the US Navy during the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and soon enough the American war machine was in full swing. Japan, still grasping for resources wherever it could, simply could not match the production and industry of the Allies. At crucial battles such as Midway or the Coral Sea, Japanese warships and aircraft carriers were sunk, airplanes were shot down, and ammunition stores were blown up — all things the empire struggled to replace in time. There simply was not enough metal to go around. Meanwhile, American naval production was off the charts. Unable to recoup their losses with each decisive battle, by 1945 nearly the entire Imperial Navy was sitting at the bottom of the ocean, and Japan had no hope of building enough warships in time to face the full wrath of both the United States and the Soviet Union. The cliché saying that the Second World War was won with British Intelligence, American Steel, and Soviet Blood is well-known, but the various forms of economic warfare waged by the Allies are what allowed these three factors to be so effective. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How did the Allied blockade of Germany in World War I cause mass starvation? Before the war, Germany produced about 80% of its own food and relied on Fritz Haber's nitrogen fertilizer factories to maintain soil productivity. When those factories were converted to produce explosives, crop yields collapsed. Combined with a severe labour shortage as men went to war and an unusually cold autumn in 1916, the result was the Turnip Winter of 1916-1917, when the German public survived on a diet centered around Swedish turnips. Official German statistics after the war recorded 763,000 civilian deaths from starvation caused by the blockade. ### What made the 2022 sanctions against Russia historically unusual? The 2022 sanctions package was extraordinary in its scale and participation. More than 30 countries joined, including traditionally neutral Switzerland. Beyond freezing Russian assets and cutting off military-supply chains, the sanctions targeted chokepoint technologies — products made by only a handful of companies in Europe, North America, or Japan — for which China could not easily substitute. By November 2022, a Yale University analysis found that more than 1,000 companies had voluntarily left Russia, collapsing whole industries even in sectors not formally covered by the sanctions. ### How have the sanctions affected Russia's military on the battlefield? The effects have been concrete. Russia is believed to have depleted most of its cruise missile stockpiles and struggled to replenish them without Western microchips and components. Aircraft maintenance has deteriorated badly enough that 10 jets crashed into Russian cities during training in the first seven months of the war. Tank production slowed so severely that Russia resorted to refurbishing 800 Soviet-era T-62s that had been in storage for decades, deploying ageing Cold War hardware in place of modern replacements. ### How has Russia used grain as a weapon in the Ukraine war? Ukraine accounts for 10% of the world's wheat and 15% of its corn exports, and nearly 20 million tons of grain were stuck in Ukrainian ports when the war began. Russia seized harvested Ukrainian grain and blocked grain ships from leaving, effectively holding food-import-dependent countries — including Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Yemen — hostage. The United States used the phrase "weaponizing food" to describe Russia's strategy. One agreement to allow exports was brokered but Russia withdrew after Black Sea Fleet drone strikes, illustrating how the food weapon is tied directly to the military situation. ### How did economic warfare contribute to Japan's defeat in World War II? Western nations applied a complete embargo of oil, steel, and iron against Japan, enforced in part by submarines. Since Japan lacked natural resources of its own — a key reason it had invaded Manchuria and Indochina — this embargo was existential. Japan invaded more of Southeast Asia to seize Dutch oil infrastructure, but it could never match Allied industrial production. At battles like Midway and the Coral Sea, Japanese warships, aircraft carriers, and aircraft were destroyed faster than Japan could replace them. By 1945 the Imperial Navy was effectively gone, and the resource blockade was a central reason Japan had no capacity to rebuild it. ## Related Coverage - [Is the 21st Century's Deadliest War about to Restart? And More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/is-the-21st-centurys-deadliest-war-about-to-restart-and-more) - [The Evolution of Naval Special Warfare](https://warfronts.pub/defense/navy-seals-evolution) - [When the Red Button Falls: The Unraveling After a Global Nuclear War](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/conflicts/when-red-button-falls-unraveling-global-nuclear-war) - [Is Russia's Economy Starting to Crack? And More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/is-russias-economy-starting-to-crack-and-more) - [Can NATO Beat Russia Without the United States? An Arsenal Analysis.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/can-nato-beat-russia-without-the-united-states-an-arsenal-analysis) <!-- youtube:Hj8W22I8Siw -->