Network Theory used to Analyze Wars and Conflict in the World
The article “Network Theory Reveals the Hidden Link Between Trade and Military Alliances That Leads to Conflict-Free Stability” by the MIT Technology Review discusses the links between countries to understand how alliances and trade agreements affect conflict between nations. These models were created to see if there was any possible network where its perfect-stability could potentially prevent future wars. The article discusses how this network is not possible, as it would only occur if no country in the network were vulnerable to attack by others and could not change links to make an attack viable. The only network found to be completely stable, was a network in which there were no links. The article also considered the decrease in conflicts among countries in the period 1960- 2000 and between 1820 and 1959, where it was found that the alliances between countries has grown four times since the first time period.
Nuclear weapons were also considered as a possible explanation to why there is reduced incentive to attack other nations, on top of increased trade alliances. Because so many nations have increased military strength, which can be very detrimental to other nations and in return to them, it would be more harmful to act on any conflict with another nation, as the damage, both physical and economic, would not be worth it. Thus, the article states that a useful model would be one where the costs and benefits of war are considered. The following analogy was stated to describe the network model that would be most beneficial.
“The best models also have predictive power. There is an interesting analogy with forest fires, which can occur on a wide range of scales, some many orders of magnitude larger than others. The size of these fires is almost entirely dependent on the network of links between trees in the forest. If these links are sparse, the fire dies out. But if they are dense, the fire can spread easily.
A crucially important point is that the eventual size of the fire has little, if anything, to do with the spark that started it. So an analysis that concentrates on this spark will inevitably ignore a great deal about the nature of the fire” (MIT Technology Review).
This description of networks and how conflicts arise, shows that the true benefits of each link between countries is very important in determining where a potential rift may arise. The particular nodes (countries) where a conflict begins may have little to do with the overall rift that occurs, due to the trade and military alliances in play, which can be seen by the polarized nature of World Wars I and II. This also shows that the focus on where conflicts start may be the wrong approach in considering what effects future conflicts could have.
The idea of there not being a perfectly stable network where war can be prevented, essentially combines the discussions of strong and weak ties and structural balance. The strength of the ties between nations determines where Triadic Closure may occur to form weak ties among nations who have strong ties to a common nation, but once stability is also considered and weak ties of nations are enemies, instability may occur. Because there are also a lot more links between nations now, as trade agreements have increased, stability and the strength of ties are more intertwined and have created a global network where many nations have links but there is no way to attain that perfect stability. This article essentially shows how these concepts of network theory are applied to international relations and trade.
Article Link: