Prof Suresh Chander
In the mid-20th century, the world came face to face with a new kind of threat-nuclear weapons. The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the looming threat of mutually assured destruction (MAD) led to a sobering realization: nuclear war is not a conflict where any side truly wins. Radiation knows no borders, and the aftermath of such a catastrophe lingers for generations, affecting not only the combatants but all of humanity.
Surprisingly, this principle of interconnected consequences hasn’t been applied with equal seriousness to economic warfare. Over the past few years, particularly under the leadership of U.S. President Donald Trump, the world witnessed the resurgence of protectionist policies, primarily in the form of tariff wars. While these may not yield the immediate devastation of a nuclear strike, the long-term damage they inflict-on global supply chains, economic stability, and geopolitical relations-may be more insidious and widespread than we are prepared to admit.
The Tariff War Trigger
Trump’s administration upended decades of multilateral economic cooperation by imposing tariffs on key trading partners, including China, the European Union, Canada, and Mexico. These measures were justified as necessary for “leveling the playing field” and “protecting American workers,” but they unleashed a retaliatory spiral. China hit back with its own tariffs, and other countries followed suit, targeting U.S. agricultural products, manufacturing, and even iconic goods like Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Kentucky bourbon.
What emerged was not mere policy disagreement but a global economic standoff-an “economic cold war”-where cooperation gave way to suspicion, and interdependence turned into weaponization. Like nuclear deterrents, tariffs were meant to coerce the other side into submission. But instead of deterring conflict, they fueled it.
The Fallout: Global and Indiscriminate
Tariffs, like radioactive fallout, don’t confine their damage to national borders. Consumers worldwide face higher prices. Small and medium enterprises, tightly integrated into global supply chains, suffer losses or will close down. Farmers in the U.S. will face unsold produce. Manufacturing in developing nations will slow. Multinational corporations are revising investment plans, triggering economic slowdowns in places far removed from Washington or Beijing.
Moreover, the uncertainty undermined confidence in global economic institutions like the WTO. Just as the doctrine of nuclear war rendered the United Nations seemingly impotent in moments of crisis, the rise of unilateral tariff regimes eroded the credibility of global economic governance.
A New Kind of Mutually Assured Destruction?
There’s an eerie resemblance between the strategic logic of nuclear deterrence and the conduct of tariff wars. Both rely on the threat of massive retaliation. Both assume that the other party will back down when confronted with unacceptable costs. Yet both are also deeply flawed because they underestimate the resilience-and stubbornness-of adversaries. In a nuclear standoff, the result is annihilation. In a tariff war, the result is a slow-burn economic catastrophe that erodes trust, stifles growth, and fosters nationalism.
But while the world eventually established nuclear arms control treaties and protocols, no similar framework exists for economic warfare. There’s no “economic non-proliferation treaty,” no agreed-upon red lines or verification mechanisms. Without such checks, the world is left vulnerable to the whims of nationalist leaders who may trigger global disruptions under the guise of domestic protection.
The Way Forward
If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s that the global economy is more interdependent than ever. Crises ripple across borders. Just as radiation from a nuclear blast can poison the atmosphere for all, economic disruptions-especially those engineered through tariffs-affect the global commons.
A new framework of economic cooperation, dispute resolution, and mutual restraint is urgently needed-not just to prevent another trade war, but to protect the very foundation of global peace and prosperity.
In the nuclear age, humanity learned to step back from the brink. In this economic age, we must do the same.
(The author is former Head of Computer Engineering Department in G B Pant University of Agriculture & Technology)
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