RE NEGATIVE SUM GAME ATTACKER STATE ECONOMIC ATTRITION

I would say, I haven't researched this term,
but it occurs to me now anyway,
that another nice, tidy, term for this concept of Negative Sum Game
might best be
economic attrition, or more simply but less accurately, trade attrition.

The concept of free rider hardly captures even the tip of the iceberg of the reality, really. 

Economic attrition seems to capture the flavor,
following on Gabor Steingart 's notion of attacker states,
rather nicely.

The best actual military conflict situation analogy I can think of might be, say, the Western Front in WWI.

Another that springs to mind, The Punic Wars.