STICHWORTE: • •von

Die Illusion vom Frieden durch Handel?

Nobelpreisträger Paul Krugman schrieb am 11. April 2022 in seiner The New York Times-Kolumne unter dem Titel “Trade and Peace: The Great Illusion” unter dem Eindruck des Krieges in der Ukraine folgendes:

  • „(…) the U.S. Civil War (…) eventually became a catastrophe for the South (…). But why did the secessionists believe they could pull it off? One reason was they believed themselves to be in possession of a powerful economic weapon. The economy of Britain, the world’s leading power at the time, was deeply dependent on Southern cotton, and they thought a cutoff of that supply would force Britain to intervene on the side of the Confederacy. (…) In the end, of course, Britain stayed neutral.“ – bto: Trotz starker ökonomischer Anreize gibt es also keine Bereitschaft, in den Krieg einzugreifen.
  • „It seems fairly clear that Vladimir Putin saw the reliance of Europe, and Germany in particular, on Russian natural gas the same way slave owners saw Britain’s reliance on King Cotton: a form of economic dependence that would coerce these nations into enabling his military ambitions. And he wasn’t entirely wrong.“ – bto: Er erinnert dann daran, dass wir 5000 Helme liefern wollten.
  • „(…) I’m also trying to make a broader point about the relationship between globalization and war, which isn’t as simple as many people have assumed. There has been a longstanding belief among Western elites that commerce is good for peace, and vice versa. America’s long push for trade liberalization, which began even before World War II, was always in part a political project: Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of state, firmly believed that lower tariffs and increased international trade would help lay the foundations for peace.“ – bto: eine These, die ich trotz der Ereignisse in der Ukraine noch teilen würde.
  • „The European Union, too, was both an economic and a political project. Its origins lie in the European Coal and Steel Community, established in 1952 with the explicit goal of making French and German industry so interdependent that there could never be another European war.“ – bto: was einen Grund hatte. Frankreich und Deutschland haben in der Tat weniger miteinander gehandelt als zum Beispiel Großbritannien und Deutschland.
  • „So does trade promote peace and freedom? Surely it does in some cases. In other cases, however, authoritarian rulers more concerned with power than with prosperity may see economic integration with other nations as a license for bad behavior, assuming that democracies with a strong financial stake in their regimes will turn a blind eye to their abuses of power.“ – bto: Das mag sein, aber es genügt meiner Meinung nach nicht, um den Umkehrschluss zu ziehen, man sollte nicht mehr mit den anderen Nationen handeln.
  • „Does Xi Jinping see China’s close integration with the world economy as a reason to avoid adventurous policies — such as invading Taiwan — or as a reason to expect a weak-kneed Western response? Nobody knows.“ – bto: Die Frage ist doch die nach der Konfrontation zwischen den USA und China.
  • „I am suggesting that national-security concerns about trade (…) need to be taken more seriously than I, among others, used to believe. More immediately, however, law-abiding nations need to show that they won’t be deterred from defending freedom. Autocrats may believe that financial exposure to their authoritarian regimes will make democracies afraid to stand up for their values. We need to prove them wrong.“ – bto: Doch wie machen wir das?

→ nytimes.com: „Trade and Peace: The Great Illusion“, 11. April 2022