To inquire about any of these projects, please contact our Project Coordinator Sarah Mesich at sarahstokes@tamu.edu or email economicstatecraft@tamu.edu.
Defining Economic Statecraft
How do firm-level activities impact the grand strategies of nation-states? Too often theoretical treatments of “economic power” fail to account for the empirical reality that a nation’s economic interaction is largely the aggregate result of micro-economic, firm-level behavior. Much of the field’s approach to economic statecraft has focused on the tools states can use. This theory note offers an improved definition of economic statecraft, linking the behavior of firms to security outcomes that states care about.
Mapping the Landscape of Economics and Security Literature
This innovative review organizes extensive foundational literature into seven bodies of scholarship. This landscape reveals fascinating associations within and among the intellectual traditions linking economics and security. The resulting synthesis not only contextualizes the study of economic statecraft but also illuminates how various literatures which connect economics and security fit together intellectually. This synthesizing exercise serves to provide insightful organization to the wide-ranging families of literature addressing the intersection of economics and security. Our aim is to provide a timely comparison of classically relevant literatures as the United States (and much of the rest of the world) revisits the future of globalization and how international economics relates to security.
Conceptualizing Security Externalities
This project showcases a typology of security externalities that specifies the full range of ways by which economic interaction may be used to generate security consequences for states. The objective is to provide a more precise vocabulary and analytical framework for thinking about the relationship between economics and national security. Doing so illuminates the strategic consequences of various economic interactions and specifies the mechanisms states can use to pursue their grand strategic objectives. The resulting paradigm greatly improves our field’s understanding of precisely how economics relates to national security.
Principles and Recommendations for US Economic Statecraft
This multi-year research effort elucidates foundational principles and the key assumptions that inform US efforts to engage in economic statecraft. The project examines such assumptions through empirical validation, compiling a novel dataset of recent economic statecraft cases to evaluate what does and does not work in contemporary economic statecraft. This effort is designed to help forge a common lexicon, shared concepts, and an overarching approach to doctrine that can inform deliberate strategy and planning processes across the multitude of US government departments and agencies; equipping any office utilizing economic tools of national power in this important and rapidly emerging arena of competition.
Mapping and Organizing Economic Statecraft Authorities in the US Government
This project entails the compilation of a comprehensive collection of organizational charts identifying economic statecraft authorities resident across 36 government departments and agencies including the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, and State, among others. It aims to produce a complete picture of the actors, strategies, and policies the US government can utilize within the arena of economic statecraft. This work complements and advances some of the principles for strategic organization that emerged as part of our project on Principles and Recommendations for US Economic Statecraft. This work informs a framework for cohering disparate authorities and scattered capabilities into functional communities of interest.
University Research Security
This project seeks to continue the conversation about security considerations for the university research and development (R&D) enterprise. In the context of the current technology competition between the US and China, this sort of original, innovative, and sustainable policy-focused research exploring the relationship between academia and government is vital to protecting US national security and the innovation system.
Globalization and Security
This project has produced two related lines of research on globalization: a) how global standard-setting and the creation and maintenance of international institutions generate structural power for states, and b) how the tradeoffs between productivity and security might be mitigated on a spectrum of isolation and integration when determining how to pursue/produce critical and emerging technologies.