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I don't know who to attribute this to but I've heard a saying: "Countries that trade with each other don't make war with each other." As we isolate countries

I don't know who to attribute this to but I've heard a saying: "Countries that trade with each other don't make war with each other." As we isolate countries and disrupt trade we definitely are increasing the risk of conflict.

gpm 7y ago
You are interpreting a correlation as a causality. More likely (IMO) is a common cause, countries that consider themselves enemies for whatever reason are both unlikely to trade with eachother, and likely to go to war with eachother.
- dmix 7y ago
  China not wanting to mess with the amazing economic success is one of the strongest things pushing back against any military aggression by them. Tons of CPP members are getting rich off the economy which includes a lot of trade and foreign debt. There’s plenty of correlation here.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  The EU was founded with the explicit goal that increasing trade between European countries would prevent war. It's impossible to prove causality, but Europe has never seen longer and more widespread peace than the last 70 years.
  - 0ld 7y ago
    only if you think that europe is eu, which it is not
  - earthboundkid 7y ago
    Europeans tend to credit the EU/EEC for the peace, but as an American, I find that totally implausible. The peace was because Europe was divided into two vassal regions and the actual superpowers decided not to go to war because of MAD. Now that the Cold War is over, we've already had a series of wars in the Balkans and various wars in the Russian periphery. True, France and Germany have taken a break from fighting each other for a long-ish stretch, but I think that trend would continue even with a Frexit because it's mostly built on memories of how bad the last two wars were.
    - skrebbel 7y ago
      MAD and the cold war prevented war between countries on either side of the iron curtain, sure. But then you go on to claim that war among countries on the Western side was prevented by memories of war and not the EEC, without any reasoning as to why. I don't buy it. The first World War was already terrible, yet these countries were at each others' throats only a few decades later.
    - wongarsu 7y ago
      Russia and Ukraine are not EU/ECC members, and neither were the balkan states back when they balkanized. Wars outside the EU don't disprove that the EU plays a major role in bringing pace among its members. I would agree that it didn't necessarily bring peace to all of Europe, but that's a stronger statement than most people intend to make
dredmorbius 7y ago
At best, that has held in limited places and times since WWII. At worst, it was an affirmation repeated, as with most affirmations, in the hopes that the repetition would make it true, which it doesn't, and for the usual reason, that it generally wasn't.
- kortilla 7y ago
  So presumably you have evidence of most countries trading with each other while going to war with each other?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    The United States and Germany during WWII, as evidenced by Ford, General Motors, IBM, Coca-Cola, Kodak, Chase Bank, Random House, Associated Press, Dow Chemical, Brown Brothers Harriman, Woolworths, Alcoa, AT&T, and others. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers... https://www.phactual.com/8-american-companies-that-worked-with-the-nazis-during-world-war-ii/ https://www.phactual.com/8-american-companies-that-worked-wi... https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-american-companies-that-aided-the-nazis.php https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-american-companies-that-aided...
_red 7y ago
Yes, who cares about the forced labor camps and suicide nets around factories. I want my cheap plastic consumer devices!!
- oblio 7y ago
  > Yes, who cares about the forced labor camps and suicide nets around factories. Nobody really cares, except for those directly involved. Sad but true, nobody will ever go to war for that, for foreign citizens. > I want my cheap plastic consumer devices!! People do actually want that. And their cheap shoes and clothes and...
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    Speak for yourself, and let others speak for themselves.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > suicide nets around factories Foxconn's suicide rate is lower than China's, along with all 50 US states. They just employ a gargantuan amount of people (400k). I don't know much about the working conditions there, so I don't have a position, but it doesn't look like there's evidence to suggest that the working conditions have anything to do with the fact that some of their employees committed suicide. To put it another way, there's roughly as much evidence of this as there is that working in a factory in Nigeria causes sickle cell anemia.
- DanBC 7y ago
  A car park in the UK closed off the top storey and it's common to see older MSCPs adding tall fences to the top floor, and for new buildings to have these designed in from the start. Page 25 (but see also page 23) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/769006/Preventing_suicides_in_public_places.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Fencing off tall buildings is a useful short-term suicide prevention measure.
- throw5543265 7y ago
  If people cared, there wouldn’t be a prison labor system in the US. Especially one that pays inmates in cents.
throwaway2048 7y ago
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9555708/We-mustnt-fall-for-The-Great-Illusion-again.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/955570... This was a common argument as to why WWI couldn't happen, countries were far too economically dependent, everyone would be ruined. Except it did happen, and everyone was ruined.
- webXL 7y ago
  There were more guns and power mongers than economic ties. Plain and simple. Those arguments should have been qualified a lot more.
rurp 7y ago
> "Countries that trade with each other don't make war with each other." I'm pretty sure this was the prevailing thinking prior to World War 1. A large scale conflict would be so damaging on a human and economic level that most assumed the people in power would find away to stop a massive war from breaking out. Well, they were right about the first assumption, but very wrong about the second.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Yes, most famously put forward in Norman Angell's 1909 book The Great Illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion).
- wongarsu 7y ago
  It's also why the EU was founded, and in that instance it worked great. European powers used to be constantly at war with each other, but in the last 70 years there was no large-scale war within Europe (except for Ukraine/Russia, both not in the EU), and war between EU states has become unthinkable.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    This is surely a contributing factor, but being first-class citizens of Pax Americana US hegemony has been a larger one IMO (doubly so during the Cold War, when a common enemy on Western Europe's borders united them). There's plenty of good things from a moral perspective about power being diffused away from a hyperpower hegemon, but stability and peace have never been among the side effects.
masswerk 7y ago
I think, the principal argument is by Immanuel Kant in "Zum ewigen Frieden" (Perpetual Peace), 1795.
dustinmr 7y ago
Sometimes known as the “Golden Arches Theory of Diplomacy”
webXL 7y ago
"When goods don’t cross borders, Soldiers will." -unknown (often credited to Frederic Bastiat) Here's what Otto Mallery said though: "If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless the Shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky." https://fee.org/resources/if-goods-dont-cross-borders/ https://fee.org/resources/if-goods-dont-cross-borders/
st1ck 7y ago
Doesn't seem to work between Russia and Georgia, Moldova or Ukraine.

gpm 7y ago

You are interpreting a correlation as a causality. More likely (IMO) is a common cause, countries that consider themselves enemies for whatever reason are both unlikely to trade with eachother, and likely to go to war with eachother.

dmix 7y ago
China not wanting to mess with the amazing economic success is one of the strongest things pushing back against any military aggression by them. Tons of CPP members are getting rich off the economy which includes a lot of trade and foreign debt. There’s plenty of correlation here.
skrebbel 7y ago
The EU was founded with the explicit goal that increasing trade between European countries would prevent war. It's impossible to prove causality, but Europe has never seen longer and more widespread peace than the last 70 years.
- 0ld 7y ago
  only if you think that europe is eu, which it is not
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  Europeans tend to credit the EU/EEC for the peace, but as an American, I find that totally implausible. The peace was because Europe was divided into two vassal regions and the actual superpowers decided not to go to war because of MAD. Now that the Cold War is over, we've already had a series of wars in the Balkans and various wars in the Russian periphery. True, France and Germany have taken a break from fighting each other for a long-ish stretch, but I think that trend would continue even with a Frexit because it's mostly built on memories of how bad the last two wars were.
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    MAD and the cold war prevented war between countries on either side of the iron curtain, sure. But then you go on to claim that war among countries on the Western side was prevented by memories of war and not the EEC, without any reasoning as to why. I don't buy it. The first World War was already terrible, yet these countries were at each others' throats only a few decades later.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    Russia and Ukraine are not EU/ECC members, and neither were the balkan states back when they balkanized. Wars outside the EU don't disprove that the EU plays a major role in bringing pace among its members. I would agree that it didn't necessarily bring peace to all of Europe, but that's a stronger statement than most people intend to make

dredmorbius 7y ago

At best, that has held in limited places and times since WWII. At worst, it was an affirmation repeated, as with most affirmations, in the hopes that the repetition would make it true, which it doesn't, and for the usual reason, that it generally wasn't.

kortilla 7y ago
So presumably you have evidence of most countries trading with each other while going to war with each other?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The United States and Germany during WWII, as evidenced by Ford, General Motors, IBM, Coca-Cola, Kodak, Chase Bank, Random House, Associated Press, Dow Chemical, Brown Brothers Harriman, Woolworths, Alcoa, AT&T, and others. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers... https://www.phactual.com/8-american-companies-that-worked-with-the-nazis-during-world-war-ii/ https://www.phactual.com/8-american-companies-that-worked-wi... https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-american-companies-that-aided-the-nazis.php https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-american-companies-that-aided...

_red 7y ago

Yes, who cares about the forced labor camps and suicide nets around factories. I want my cheap plastic consumer devices!!

oblio 7y ago
> Yes, who cares about the forced labor camps and suicide nets around factories. Nobody really cares, except for those directly involved. Sad but true, nobody will ever go to war for that, for foreign citizens. > I want my cheap plastic consumer devices!! People do actually want that. And their cheap shoes and clothes and...
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  Speak for yourself, and let others speak for themselves.
wutbrodo 7y ago
> suicide nets around factories Foxconn's suicide rate is lower than China's, along with all 50 US states. They just employ a gargantuan amount of people (400k). I don't know much about the working conditions there, so I don't have a position, but it doesn't look like there's evidence to suggest that the working conditions have anything to do with the fact that some of their employees committed suicide. To put it another way, there's roughly as much evidence of this as there is that working in a factory in Nigeria causes sickle cell anemia.
DanBC 7y ago
A car park in the UK closed off the top storey and it's common to see older MSCPs adding tall fences to the top floor, and for new buildings to have these designed in from the start. Page 25 (but see also page 23) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/769006/Preventing_suicides_in_public_places.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Fencing off tall buildings is a useful short-term suicide prevention measure.
throw5543265 7y ago
If people cared, there wouldn’t be a prison labor system in the US. Especially one that pays inmates in cents.

throwaway2048 7y ago

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9555708/We-mustnt-fall-for-The-Great-Illusion-again.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/955570... This was a common argument as to why WWI couldn't happen, countries were far too economically dependent, everyone would be ruined. Except it did happen, and everyone was ruined.

webXL 7y ago
There were more guns and power mongers than economic ties. Plain and simple. Those arguments should have been qualified a lot more.

rurp 7y ago

> "Countries that trade with each other don't make war with each other." I'm pretty sure this was the prevailing thinking prior to World War 1. A large scale conflict would be so damaging on a human and economic level that most assumed the people in power would find away to stop a massive war from breaking out. Well, they were right about the first assumption, but very wrong about the second.

smacktoward 7y ago
Yes, most famously put forward in Norman Angell's 1909 book The Great Illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion).
wongarsu 7y ago
It's also why the EU was founded, and in that instance it worked great. European powers used to be constantly at war with each other, but in the last 70 years there was no large-scale war within Europe (except for Ukraine/Russia, both not in the EU), and war between EU states has become unthinkable.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  This is surely a contributing factor, but being first-class citizens of Pax Americana US hegemony has been a larger one IMO (doubly so during the Cold War, when a common enemy on Western Europe's borders united them). There's plenty of good things from a moral perspective about power being diffused away from a hyperpower hegemon, but stability and peace have never been among the side effects.

masswerk 7y ago

I think, the principal argument is by Immanuel Kant in "Zum ewigen Frieden" (Perpetual Peace), 1795.

dustinmr 7y ago

Sometimes known as the “Golden Arches Theory of Diplomacy”

webXL 7y ago

"When goods don’t cross borders, Soldiers will." -unknown (often credited to Frederic Bastiat) Here's what Otto Mallery said though: "If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless the Shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky." https://fee.org/resources/if-goods-dont-cross-borders/ https://fee.org/resources/if-goods-dont-cross-borders/

st1ck 7y ago

Doesn't seem to work between Russia and Georgia, Moldova or Ukraine.