Using economic and war data, a pair of Stanford University researchers found a connection between the number of trading partners a country has and its likelihood of engaging in war. In particular, the more trading partners that a country has, the less likely that it will engage in war. The researchers came to the conclusion after first looking at the fact that many countries that go to war tend to have no trading partners, although they failed to find a correlation from this perspective, as outlined in a press release.
Although it is common knowledge that countries don't tend to go to war with their trading partners and modern countries currently have very low levels of warfare between each other, the relationship between trading partners and the number of wars has never been fully understood.
The researchers created a data network that utilized mathematical models to examine international trade and wars and found that in the absence of trade, alliances were more susceptible to shifting and this meant wars were more frequent. Furthermore, the more trading partners a country had, the fewer wars they engaged in.
The authors hope that the findings can be used to help countries foster better relationships with other countries in order to minimize conflict.
The findings were published in the Oct. 30 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
