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Exit Costs, Economic Interdependence, And Bilateral Military Conflict

Posted on:2012-05-05Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:F F JiFull Text:PDF
GTID:2216330335985471Subject:International relations
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
There are mainly two features of international relations in recent decades: the reinforcement of economic cooperation and the decrease of military conflict. So, are there any correlations between these two features? The debate on this issue has last for hundreds of years and never come to a conclusion. This paper argues that the exit theory whose core concept is the threshold and exit cost given by Crescenzi can answer this question properly. The exit cost is the opportunity cost a country has to pay when it cut its economic relationship off with another country; while the threshold is the upper limit of economic loss born by a country in a bilateral conflict. Crescenzi assumes that a military war would be more likely to happen if the challenging country's exit cost is lower than its threshold, and vice versa. Thus does there exist such a threshold? What on earth is this threshold if it practically exists? This paper holds the idea that the threshold practically exist, take the USA as an example, its threshold is the exit cost when America cut off its economic relationship with Japan before the Pacific War. This conclusion is drew by calculating, rearranging and summarizing America's exit costs before every wars it undertook as a challenging country, and by analysis the case before the Pacific War that the USA and Japan were economically interdependent but ended with war. This paper has testified the exit theory and come up with an approximation of America's threshold. Thus in this paper, exit theory will be improved, the debate on whether economic interdependence can promote peace will be better answered. Moreover, the approximation of America's threshold derived by this paper has a significant meaning to our country's diplomatic policies.
Keywords/Search Tags:economic interdependence, exit cost, threshold, war
PDF Full Text Request
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