Research involving the utility of economic sanctions introduces misrepresentations and if categorized would include: ignoring comparisons of economic sanctions with coercive alternatives, analyzing economic sanctions as a substitute to hard force exclusively, and redefining the uses of economic sanctions for political purposes. We present a definition of economic sanctions and show the sequence of power as it may be imposed across a spectrum at various intensities relative to characteristics. We analyze how characteristics between power groups are diffuse and that conclusions involving utility are insignificant without analyzing variance within power strata. We’ve categorized characteristics into two groups that are inversely positioned and regressed on a power interval: characteristics of prosperity (target size, intervention, predictability, attractiveness, efficiency, and communication) and characteristics of security (clarity, rate, return, control, risk, costs, and violence). We illustrate that as prosperity increase or decrease the security characteristics decrease or increase respectively as inverse substitutes.