… is from pages 140-141 of my Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold’s excellent 2009 book, Mad About Trade:
Our more globalized world has also yielded a “peace dividend.” It may not be obvious when our daily news cycles are dominated by horrific images from the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan, and Darfur, but our more globalized world has somehow become a more peaceful world. The number of civil and international wars has dropped sharply in the past 15 years along with battle deaths. The reasons behind the retreat of war are complex, but again the spread of trade and globalization has played a key role.
DBx: Pictured above is a statue, in Manchester, England, of Richard Cobden – one of history’s greatest champions of peace and free trade.