Question

"As the First World War demonstrated, economic integration leads to more, rather than less, violent conflict." Discuss. (Please discuss the answer within 800 words - at most 1000 words! Thanks!)

Answer 1

The Global economic integration is a very good reforms in terms of business development, human resource development, Trade benefits,employment and labour reforms.It increase the cooperation and coordination with other members countries and also enhances the goods and services exchange.The resource of one country is fully utilized and idle resources are used in other countries.

The other important aspect of economic integration is to reduce the trade barriers, tariffs and to seek overall development.

The global integration of economies led to many disadvantages also as we know every coin has two sides. The major disadvantages are trade blocs which hinders the other non members from doing trade,trade diversion is another reason as countries have to divert the produce to members countries only and some countries have to compromise with their national policies to comply with trade union policies.

The another cause which is more dangerous and harmful is the tensions between countries due to trade growth which was also the reason for most of the wars as one country wants to take over other country to make them economic super power. This economic rivalry leads to massive destruction in terms of economies and sometimes have very serious financial losses to countries.

The economic integration increases rather decreases the the risk of conflict which sometimes becomes very violent.The positive welfare advantage is linked to the economic integration but have negative impact on economies also.

The First world war was the witness of the same scenario. The negative impact of European economic union led to civil war.The West European economies was integrated in 1914 for coal,iron and steel. The European integration saw a huge growth and unprecedented growth in interdependence in terms of trade and capital flows. The growth in internation scenario of Europe was uneven.The Austria, Hungary and Serbia was les developed and led to discomfort of their growth. The inevitable reason for such integration led to the tensions and one of the major reason for World War I.

There was huge gap in European economies as some part was growing and others were not growing in same pace.The created the internal conflicts and civil violence.

Due to integration and global developments, the Germany and Britain were growing very fast and the conflict was developed between them.The rapid and profound changes which were growing due to rapid industrialization in both the countries, the economic rivalry and competition arose and created tensions between nations.

Thus we can conclude the same by saying that definitely one of the reason for World War I was increased economic integration also.