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States form defensive military alliances to enhance their security in the face of potential or realized interstate conflict. The network of these international alliances is increasingly interconnected, now linking most of the states in a complex web of ties. These alliances can be used both as a tool for securing cooperation and to foster peace between direct partners. However, do indirect connections—such as the ally of an ally or even further out in the alliance network—result in lower probabilities of conflict?
[...] Beyond the three-degree horizon of influence, we observe a sharp decline in the effect of indirect alliances on bilateral peace.
[...] The tendency of political organizations to ally likely dates back to the earliest permanent human settlements and certainly predates the modern political state by at least two millennia [...] The past century has seen the advent of alliances meant to exist in times of peace as well as war, and the corresponding increase in the interconnectedness of the alliance network has been dramatic. The system has gone from 8 individual alliance ties in 1900 to 1115 in 2000, including bilateral and multilateral defense pacts.
Data used for analysis covers the years from 1965 to 2000.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1601895.full
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)
We've been through this before. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I [wikipedia.org] and search for "entangled international alliances."
Wars are generally started over something stupid, but WWI wins a prize in that regard.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:45PM
You mean the putative cause. You shouldn't believe it. The war of Jenkin's Ear wasn't really started about Jenkin's Ear, either, that was the the synecdoche that was used to sell/explain it to the public.
That said, entangling alliances really make some of the failure modes worse. Sometimes, for some countries, this is advantageous. More frequently it's advantageous for some groups within some countries, even if the countries end up doing a lot worse because of it. OTOH, they can also decrease the frequency of war as well as making it worse when it does come.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.