At that time, the volume of US-China trade was just below the 90th percentile for their data, and the authors conclude that the growth of US-China trade reduced the chance of conflict by 27%.[18]
That said, while a 27% reduction in the chance of war is nice, itâs not a big enough effect to fully explain the Long Peace. Other reasons to think that the pacifying effect of global trade is smaller than is sometimes claimed include: [...]
This passage seems a bit off in a few ways. Not sure how important this is, but feels like some people might get a bit of a distorted picture from the passage?
â27% reduction in the chance of warâ is already using a metric we fairly directly care about. I shouldnât get less excited about a 27% reduction in the chance of war as a result of it being only a fraction of some other even better thing, or see it as less impressive as a result, or something like thatâI already know roughly how useful a 27% reduction in the chance of war seems to me.
As you note, the Long Peace is plausibly just a lucky role of the dice anyway, so there might not even be anything to explain. Or the Long Peace might be a smaller-than-it-first-appears effect, plus some luck, and then maybe 27% of the apparent effect could be roughly the whole âactual effectâ.
Trade only explaining 27% doesnât seem to obviously suggest that tradeâs effect is smaller than itâs sometimes claimed. Is it sometimes claimed that trade explains much more than 27%? My guess is that that does sometimes happen but that most scholars who see trade as important would already only be arguing that trade accounts for something like 5-40% of the reduction in the risk of war.
But in any case, 27% was just the reduction of the US-China chance of war (I think). So then it obviously doesnât fully explain the Long Peace, but the reason isnât that itâs just 27% but that itâs focused on only one great power dyad.
(Again, not sure how important this is. Also not sure how well I explained what Iâm thinking here.)
Good points, thanks! I agree the wording in the main post there could be more careful. In deemphasizing the size of the effect there, I was reacting to claims along the lines of âUS-China conflict is unlikely because their economic interdependence makes it too costlyâ. I still think that thatâs not a particularly strong consideration for reasons discussed in the main post. But youâre probably right that Iâm probably responding to a strawman, and that serious takes are more nuanced than that.
This passage seems a bit off in a few ways. Not sure how important this is, but feels like some people might get a bit of a distorted picture from the passage?
â27% reduction in the chance of warâ is already using a metric we fairly directly care about. I shouldnât get less excited about a 27% reduction in the chance of war as a result of it being only a fraction of some other even better thing, or see it as less impressive as a result, or something like thatâI already know roughly how useful a 27% reduction in the chance of war seems to me.
As you note, the Long Peace is plausibly just a lucky role of the dice anyway, so there might not even be anything to explain. Or the Long Peace might be a smaller-than-it-first-appears effect, plus some luck, and then maybe 27% of the apparent effect could be roughly the whole âactual effectâ.
Trade only explaining 27% doesnât seem to obviously suggest that tradeâs effect is smaller than itâs sometimes claimed. Is it sometimes claimed that trade explains much more than 27%? My guess is that that does sometimes happen but that most scholars who see trade as important would already only be arguing that trade accounts for something like 5-40% of the reduction in the risk of war.
But in any case, 27% was just the reduction of the US-China chance of war (I think). So then it obviously doesnât fully explain the Long Peace, but the reason isnât that itâs just 27% but that itâs focused on only one great power dyad.
(Again, not sure how important this is. Also not sure how well I explained what Iâm thinking here.)
Good points, thanks! I agree the wording in the main post there could be more careful. In deemphasizing the size of the effect there, I was reacting to claims along the lines of âUS-China conflict is unlikely because their economic interdependence makes it too costlyâ. I still think that thatâs not a particularly strong consideration for reasons discussed in the main post. But youâre probably right that Iâm probably responding to a strawman, and that serious takes are more nuanced than that.