VoxEu.org just published an interesting article on globalization and the risk of war written by Philippe Martin, Thierry Mayer, and Mathias Thoenig. The authors argue that:
“countries that are more open to trade with the rest of the world are more inclined to military conflicts. Another way to put it is that two countries that trade more with each other pacify their bilateral relations but make it more likely that a conflict will arise with a third country. The interpretation of this seemingly provocative result is that when two countries are very open to trade, the bilateral economic dependence and therefore the opportunity cost of a bilateral conflict are lowered. The incentive to make concessions in order to avert escalation is weakened when globalisation provides economic insurance during bilateral conflicts by diversifying trade partners.”
Such analysis provides a helpful corrective to the “doux-commerce” hypothesis developed by Montesquieu and Kant, according to which trade favors peace. Interestingly, in contrast to what many critiques of globalization claim, this article suggests that multilateralism and multipolarity could undermine rather than favor peace. Bilateral trade could thus yield unfair outcomes but nonetheless feed stability.
Having said that, one can question the conception of war on which these authors rely. They boil down war to military inter-state conflict. However, the current “war on terror” as well as the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan show that many wars include unconventional means and actors that escape traditional categories. Moreover, some authors, such as Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, argue that the modern strategy of trying to free politics from war (war being then a limited state of exception) is less and less viable given the emergence of innumerable global civil wars and the decline of nation-states’ sovereignty:
“The state of exception has become permanent and general; the exception has become the rule, pervading foreign relations and the homeland.
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. . . When the state of exception becomes the rule and when wartime becomes an interminable condition, then the traditional distinction between war and politics becomes increasingly blurred.
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. . . One consequence of this new kind of war is that the limits of war are rendered indeterminate, both spatially and temporally. The old-fashioned war against a nation-state was clearly defined spatially, even if it could at times spread over to other countries, and the end of such war was generally marked by the surrender, victory, or truce between the conflicting states. By contrast, war against a concept or set of practices, somewhat like a war of religion, has no definite spatial or temporal boundaries. Such wars potentially extend anywhere for any period of time. Indeed, when U.S. leaders announced the ‘war against terrorism’ they emphasized that it would have to extend throughout the world and continue for generations. A war to create and maintain social order can have no end. It must involve the continuous, uninterrupted exercise of power and violence. In other words, one cannot win such a war, or, rather, it has to be won every day. War has thus become virtually indistinguishable from police activity.”
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- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004): 7, 12, and 14.
Hardt and Negri’s argument suffers from some flaws. For example, one can question the claim that the sovereignty of nation-states has declined. Furthermore, arguing that war is no longer a state of exception and that war and politics are one entails a relativization of the situation of people confronted with extreme conditions of violence in, say, Iraq or Darfur. If they become indistinguishable, the concepts of war and politics loose their analytical value and should be abandoned. What would be the cost of such shift, analytically, politically, and morally speaking?
Nonetheless, Hardt and Negri’s argument has the merit of questioning our assumptions and providing a stimulating complement to Martin, Mayer, and Thoenig’s article. There can be war without military inter-state conflict.
