Turning enemies into friends: the role of economic relationships in building security and sustaining peace

There are two critical steps involved in reducing enmity between two nations and transforming their relationship into one of mutual accommodation and ultimately even friendship. The first step is finding a way to break through the wall of mutual hostility and suspicion. That depends primarily on communication. Since messages are more powerfully and credibly communicated when they are carried by behavior as well as words, the Graduated Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction (GRIT) strategy is offered as a possible path to achieving this breakthrough. The second step is creating and cementing friendship by building strong positive ties. That depends on creating a system of properly structured economic relationships.

There is a longstanding debate as to whether economic relationships build peace or provoke war. But it is not simply the existence or the extent of economic relationships that is key to their impact – it is the character of these relationships. Economic relationships that are balanced and mutually beneficial create strong positive incentives to settle or manage conflicts short of violence while economic relationships that are unbalanced and exploitative produce hostility and create incentives for violent disruption.

If two nations that have long been enemies can begin to build peace, establishing a widening and deepening web of balanced, mutually beneficial economic relationships between them can support that peacebuilding process, strengthen it, and make it sustainable into the indefinite future. This paper defines and explores the aspects of balance that are most critical to creating peacebuilding economic relationships, as well as their connection to both economic development programs and environmental quality.