Fighting with Dollars and Energy: The Coercive Strategies of Weaponized Interdependence

The war in Ukraine has sparked an unprecedented conflict between the Russian Federation and both the United States and European Union within global networks. In this conflict, the Russians have used its hold over the energy trade to withhold natural gas imports to the European Union. The United States and European Union have used their hold over international finance to expel Russia from the SWIFT system. Instead of sending soldiers, the respective sides have sent the dollar and natural resources to do the fighting. In this thesis, I create a dynamic conceptual framework that merges network analytic conceptions of power with coercive strategy. In this framework, the strategies of both the coercer and the coerced are explained. I find that these strategies of coercion are generalizable beyond the actors associated with the war in Ukraine and that 1) states opt for offensive strategies in networks where they are the dominant power, and 2) these coercive strategies can be used both within and across multiple networks.