Sanctions, State Threats and Economic Security

Sanctions are now the preferred policy instrument to tackle a range of international security threats. However, the sanctions response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the challenges of implementation and enforcement, which undermines effectiveness and has increased the range of unintended consequences. RUSI’s research on sanctions aims to support policymakers and the private sector in designing, implementing and enforcing sanctions effectively across a range of geographies and themes.

Our approach is rooted in both research and convening and provides much-needed input for policymakers and the private sector on a tool that has become a core response to international security threats.

The rapidly rising threat posed by hostile state activity is complex and multi-faceted. RUSI’s work on state threats aims to support the UK and its partners in detecting, understanding, attributing and responding to the spectrum of complex state threats currently facing democracies.

The extent to which the UK government acknowledges these threats can be seen in the 2021 Integrated Review, the proliferation of 'Counter State Threat' policy units across Whitehall, and the activities of the National Cyber Security Centre. A similar picture exists across much of the Western world and our work has attracted interest from many of these likeminded countries.

Our research also examines the weaponisation of finance as a tool of international statecraft and considers the financial dimension of state threats and appropriate responses, including projects related to the role of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) in international security; and the politicisation and weaponisation of the financial system.

Growing security uncertainty and increasing economic rivalry between states have not only threatened this prosperity, but they have also turned ‘global goods’ and economic interdependence into meaningful security vulnerabilities.

Until relatively recently, the phrase ‘Economic Security’ did not feature heavily in the policymaker lexicon. However, since the G7 Hiroshima Summit in May 2023, the concept has rapidly come to dominate national and international security discourse. Despite this increased prevalence, the definition of Economic Security varies between countries, and the objectives and desired outcomes vary from adapting to global shocks, like the Covid-19 pandemic, to supply chain resilience as a means to safeguarding democracy and the international rule of law.

Against this background, from its office in Brussels, the Centre for Finance and Security (CFS) at RUSI, is establishing a European Economic Security Taskforce (EST) to provide much-needed clarity to the policy debate on this critical finance and security issue in the EU.