Combined-arms financial planning

Combined-arms financial planning is James J. Tennant's proposed method for coordinating financial restrictions with diplomatic, informational, technological, commercial and, where authorised, military instruments. The analogy is to combined-arms operations, in which different capabilities compensate for one another's limits. It does not make sanctions a military act, erase legal distinctions between peace and armed conflict, or create a licence to target civilian economic life.

Planning method

The method starts with a political objective and a theory of change. Planners identify the target's decision makers, revenue, reserves, suppliers, logistics, payment routes and domestic constraints. They then assign different instruments to different functions. Diplomacy can build coalition coverage; export controls can restrict replacement inputs; asset measures can deny access to funds; public communication can clarify conditions; enforcement can raise the cost of evasion; and positive offers can create an off-ramp.

Sequencing matters. A premature designation can prompt asset flight, while an unannounced control may confuse legitimate trade. Public threats can destroy surprise but improve deterrence. The relevant comparison is therefore not between one sanction and no sanction, but between alternative packages, timings and exit terms.

Tennant's framework adapts the objective-to-assessment logic found in military targeting and campaign planning. United States joint-targeting doctrine matches capabilities to desired effects and uses assessment as feedback. Treasury's 2021 sanctions review similarly requires a clear objective, calibration, multilateral strategy, enforceability and reversibility. The institutional settings and legal consequences remain different.

Application and safeguards

The coalition response to Russia after February 2022 illustrates cross-instrument planning: financial restrictions, export controls, energy measures, diplomatic coordination and enforcement were applied together. It does not prove that one integrated command designed every measure or that the package achieved every stated objective. The public record supports coordination, not a single causal account.

Planning should include legal review, humanitarian protection, market-spillover analysis and a documented assessment plan. It should distinguish blocking property from restricting new finance, export licensing from asset freezing, and state responsibility from allegations about private conduct. Positive instruments, such as conditional relief or financing, belong in the same plan because coercion without a credible settlement path can harden resistance.

Limits

The military metaphor can encourage false precision. Markets adapt, intermediaries make independent choices and political leaders may value resistance more than expected. Effects also arrive on different timelines. A package can impose cost without compelling change, or signal resolve while degrading coalition support. Combined-arms financial planning is useful only if it disciplines those uncertainties rather than concealing them.

A usable plan assigns each measure a purpose, legal authority, owner, trigger, expected transmission path and termination condition. It records second-order effects on allies, civilians, market liquidity and friendly intelligence access. Measures aimed at the same target are not automatically complementary. An asset freeze may preserve property for negotiation, while forfeiture changes the legal and diplomatic problem. These conflicts should be identified before execution, with decision points for escalation, relief and recovery.

See also

Economic Kill Chain (EKC) · Allied financial targeting coordination · Coordinated economic coercion · Export control as strategic instrument · sanctions relief as a bargaining instrument

Sources

1. United States Department of Defense, Gregory M. Tomlin, "The Joint Force Needs a Global Engagement Cycle", 2020.
2. United States Department of the Treasury, *The Treasury 2021 Sanctions Review*.
3. United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, *Deter, disrupt and demonstrate: UK sanctions strategy*, 2024.
4. G7, *Preventing Russian Export Control and Sanctions Evasion: Updated Guidance for Industry*, 2024.
5. James J. Tennant, Defining and Operationalising Economic and Financial Warfare, unpublished doctoral manuscript.