International relations in the Pacific Basin: The impact of trade on international cooperation and conflict

The studies on the international relations in the Pacific Basin have emphasized mostly the economic aspects of its dynamism while paying little attention to other aspects of the region's international relations. This thesis attempts to redress this imbalance in scholarly tradition by analyzing the relationship between trade and international interactions. Specifically it analyzes the impact of trade upon international cooperation and conflict behavior.;This study concludes with a suggestion that there is need to differentiate the trade and export and import for the effect of exports on international interaction tends to dominate that of imports.;The thesis begins with an investigation into the factors behind the economic dynamism of the Pacific. Chapter Two identifies these factors as Japan's success; the emergence of the Newly Industrializing Countries; the orientational shift of Australia, New Zealand, United States, and Canada, and the recent political economic development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Chapter Three analyzed the interaction behavior of cooperation and conflict utilizing event data which are then statistically analyzed in Chapter Four. From the analysis of the Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB), international interactions in the Pacific Basin are found to be dominated by cooperative events and hence conflict was minimal in the Pacific Basin. The results of statistical analyses support the proposition that trade leads to increased cooperation between the nations of the region.