For more than one hundred years there were three recognized domains in military conflict: land, maritime and air. In the two last decades after significant debate, the cyber and space domains were officially defined by western allies. Rob Farley is in the studio with podcast editor Ron Granieri to explain why the United States and its allies need to consider adding the finance domain to the multi-domain discussion. Not to be confused with the economic lever of power in DIME, Rob makes the argument that the finance domain involves the technologies of finance and money that countries use to either maximize their own resource base or interfere in other states’ abilities to maximize their resources. As with all discussions at the War College, he begins with Thucydides and moves forward in time examining the British pound, the U.S. dollar, the gold standard and looking forward at cryptocurrency and digital currency.
I feel like we are developing into a situation where financial sanctions are being regarded as more acceptable and less escalatory than economic sanctions.
Podcast: Download
Rob Farley is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kentucky and has been a Visiting Professor at the U.S. Army War College. He is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force and The Battleship Book and co-author of Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology and the new book Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages.
Ron Granieri is an Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Army War College and the Editor of A BETTER PEACE.
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense.
Photo Credit: Ruble image courtesy of GetArchive Binary Stream Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik
The author does a good job of overviewing the finance domain but there are a few errors. The first is that the Army uses GAAP not IFRS. The second is that the Army Financial Management and Comptroller school is not in Huntsville, it is in Ft. Jackson, SC. What is the difference between GAAP and IFRS? What is the Army Financial Management and Comptroller school?