The Solution To War

The same crazies who protest free trade in the United States and around the world are usually the same crazies who participate in anti-war protests. What they fail to realize is that they are contradicting themselves.

Economics--along with religion--is a major instigator of war. When a country is isolated from the rest of the world, it becomes a prime candidate to strike out at surroundings nations in order to insure its economic survival. The Second World War is a perfect example. Japan, isolated for centuries, attacked its neighbors to gain much needed land and resources. Germany, hamstrung by the Treaty of Versailles, took military action against its neighbors for the same reasons.

Only international free trade can forestall such catastrophies. This concept is the bane of leftists and socialists around the world, who see it in the narrow Marxist context of capitalist exploitation. In reality, it is the natural antidote to war.

When nations engage in open and free trade with other nations, they become entwined like tree roots, each dependent upon the other for its economic prosperity. With such economic co-dependence, it is highly unlikely countries will initiate military action against each other. Japan attacked us on December 7, 1941. Can anyone even remotely conceive of Japan doing the same tomorrow? Of course not. Why? Because we have become trading partners. And trading partners have too much to lose to go to war against one another.

Maybe one of these days the free trade protesters will realize they are railing against their own solution.