Does Globalization Bring War or Peace?
Do high levels of international trade lead to peace? Norman Angell authored the best-selling book on international politics in history, arguing that economic interdependence between Germany and England made any war between the two unthinkable — an illusion. His book, The Great Illusion, was translated into 17 languages and sold one million copies; Angell himself won the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, within a few years of publication, Britain and Germany eagerly threw themselves into the abyss of the First World War. The analytic literature on the Commercial Peace is much less robust than scholarship on the Democratic Peace, the latter positing the improbability of war between democracies. The Commercial Peace literature displays less consistency and theoretical rigor, with precise causes largely untested. Statistical analyses of trade relationships generally find that trade is conducive to peace; however, numerous case studies find that international trade either played no part in
