… is from page 22 of Tufts University Professor of International Politics Daniel Drezner’s essay “Will Today’s Global Trade Wars Lead to World War III?,” which appears in the May 2019 issue of Reason:
Before the First World War started, powers great and small took a variety of steps to thwart the globalization of the 19th century. Each of these steps made it easier for the key combatants to conceive of a general war.
We are beginning to see a similar approach to the globalization of the 21st century. One by one, the economic constraints on military aggression are eroding. And too many have forgotten – or never knew – how this played out a century ago.
DBx: In this essay, Drezner explains that, despite the still-voluminous cross-border trade at the dawn of 1914, World War I is unlikely an exception to the capitalist-peace hypothesis.
Protectionism is not only a ‘civil’ conflict in which politically powerful interest groups wage war on their fellow citizens, it also increases the likelihood of international conflicts in which governments wage war on each other (with, of course, the bulk of the carnage and destruction suffered by the subjects of the belligerents).
