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A look at some history of trade for peace (T4P)
The link between trade and peace has been known throughout written history. Pericles talked of it when addressing his fellow Athenians 2500 years ago. The philosophers of the Enlightenment revived the idea that trade and peace are inextricably linked.
We know that the two are linked from experience in modern times. France and Germany went to war three times in the space of three-quarters of a century, from 1870 to 1945. For the last two of these wars, they dragged in much of the rest of the world, costing millions of lives.
Farsighted Leaders, Monnet, Schumann, and Spaak decided that economic integration, in part through trade, creation of the Common Market and the European Economic Community, could prevent war being reignited in Western Europe.
The European Union now has 27 countries. It is the world's foremost peace project. Trade is an essential component. One could not have looked at France and Germany as well as Japan and Italy and others as they were in 1945, and not say that they were then "fragile and conflict affected."
Fast forward to 2017 when a number of fragile and conflict affected countries and WTO members decided to join together to deploy trade as a vitally important tool to work towards peace through the economic integration of fragile and conflict affected countries into the world economy through WTO accession.
Academics will tell you, correctly, that trade is absolutely no guarantee of peace.
- England and Germany had engaged in strong trade relations in 1914 and the years before, and nevertheless went on to a cataclysmic war with each other.
- Vladimir Putin's Russia and Ukraine traded with each other before 2014, before the Russian seizure of Crimea, and later with the full invasion by Russia to try to take all of Ukraine. While Ukraine was not a big trading partner for Russia, the Russian market was very important to Ukraine. This bilateral trade did not prevent Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Economist Fréderic Bastiat is credited with saying, "if goods cross borders, then soldiers will not do so." It is not that simple. But there is a connection between trade and peace when the circumstances allow.
Countries deeply in need of peace—Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and others, see trade as a mechanism to increase their viability as countries, their stability, the economic well-being of their peoples. They wish to use WTO accession, integration into the world economy, to have a better chance at peace. This much is clear.1
What today's youth can contribute
What can today's youth bring to the negotiating table concerning trade and peace? What activities are the most promising for the action and innovation of youth, drawing from world experiences.
Youth can bring a fresh perspective. The young can contribute to making peace more possible and more sustainable once achieved.
You can look at the world we inhabit and see where trade may have a role to help achieve and maintain peace. You can examine what works and what does not. You can encourage the WTO members and Secretariat to continue their efforts to help create the conditions for peace. You can communicate your findings broadly through the use of the Internet as those who have prepared videos on this subject have done. This is what the students at the Graduate Institute in Geneva and the University of Saint Gallen have done
You can add to this, essays examining trade for peace (T4P) efforts. You can expand practical knowledge about efforts to deploy trade in peace-building efforts. There are a lot of current subjects to examine.
- How best the African Continental Free Trade Agreement can be deployed to "silence the guns," which is the fervent prayer of that grand experiment, to which the WTO has pledged its support.
- You can examine the Middle East which is so greatly troubled and consider where trading relations can build bridges between peoples, reduce the level of hostility and improve the economic outlook where most needed.
- You can examine the Good Friday Agreement that seeks to lift the two Irelands from a cauldron of internal warfare. The violence existed, after all, amid one people. The risk remains there, just below the surface of watching peace slip away. But it is being maintained despite Brexit, despite many difficulties. Trade without doubt supports the peace.
It does not always work. It helped smooth the way to German reunification even with very modest trade between East and West Germany. But this week the North Koreans have blown up roads and railroads. A prior Korean government had reached out to North Korea to establish trading relations. The offer was not accepted. Restoration of trade clearly threatens the regime in Pyongyang. The examples that research will uncover will consist of successes and failures. With trade for peace (T4P), nothing is guaranteed, nothing is sure.
Conflict feeds on want in many parts of the world. Food insecurity can be destructive of domestic peace. The world trading system is an engine for growth and economic development to counter the threats to peace that arise where economies are fragile.
You can explore what works and what doesn't and convey your findings to governments, nongovernmental organizations and academia.
And, upon graduation, some of you will be able to carry on in the important mission of figuring out how best to use trade to foster peace.
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