The concurrency of economic interdependence and inter-state competition characterizes today’s international system. This situation appears to directly challenge the liberal interdependence paradigm of inter-state cooperation and invigorates the competitive zero-sum paradigm of realism. Strong empirical evidence supports the idea that states increasingly resort to the use of economic means to achieve strategic objectives, whereby the purposeful entrenchment and exploitation of economic dependencies is the lowest common denominator in the empirical evidence.