economic warfare
economic warfare noun: the strategic use of economic measures (such as sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, or the freezing of assets) to weaken the economy of another state, often to achieve political or military objectives.
Noun
economic warfare (uncountable)
- The strategic use of economic measures (such as sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, or the freezing of assets) to weaken the economy of another state, often to achieve political or military objectives.
- The government shifted from kinetic operations to economic warfare to pressure the regime without deploying troops.
- Some of Mr. Trump’s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that — the second time around — Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.2026 March 11, Mark Mazzetti, Tyler Pager, Edward Wong, “How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 11 Mar 2026
Origin of economic warfare
From economic + warfare.
Questions about economic warfare
- What does economic warfare mean?
- Economic warfare means the strategic use of economic measures (such as sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, or the freezing of assets) to weaken the economy of another state, often to achieve political or military objectives.
- What part of speech is economic warfare?
- Economic warfare is a noun.
Words near economic warfare in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: economic warfare (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “economic warfare.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/economic_warfare. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.