World economic expansion and national security in pre-World War I Europe

I build on the Stolper-Samuelson theorem from international trade theory to argue that profound and rapid changes in the costs and risks of internatio nal economic exchange can significantly influence the security politics of states. Increasing exposure to the international economy will increase the state's difficulty of mobilizing locally abundant resources for security pu rposes and ease the difficulty of mobilizing locally scarce resources. Decl ining exposure reverses these effects. A preliminary survey of the five Eur opean great powers before World War I supports the pattern of shifting econ omic constraints predicted by the theory and further suggests that internat ional economic expansion was an important cause of World War I. The theory thus challenges the conventional wisdom that trade promotes peace. It also has important implications for several other areas of international relatio ns, including the relationship between trade and military power, the relati ve gains debate, and the dynamics of hegemonic theory.