Actually, no. Countries are forced to trade all the time, despite their best interests. From the Opium Wars ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars ) to NAFTA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agree... ). Ask a citizen of any "banana republic" about it.

Moreover, trading relationships are not usually based on one-off trades. Which means that you'll want to trade again. Which means that getting into a war with the other party would be a bad idea.

In this naive worldview there are only two parties that trade. It also presumes, "getting into a war" means you don't get to trade anymore. Like, how Japan and Germany do not trade with the US after WWII, right? The only thing it means is that you get to dictate the terms for subsequent trading.

But the worst about this view is that it also presumes this traded material comes out of thin air: ie. it forgets that trade can lead to war for control of natural resources, trade routes, and, of course, markets.

Here's a funny story:

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The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in Britain in 1909 and republished in 1910 and subsequently in various enlarged and revised editions under the title The Great Illusion. (The "Great Illusion" of the title was the belief that there would soon be another major and destructive European war.)

According to John Keegan "Europe in the summer of 1914 enjoyed a peaceful productivity so dependent on international exchange and co-operation that a belief in the impossibility of a general war seemed the most conventional of wisdoms. In 1910 an analysis of prevailing economic interdependence, The Great Illusion, had become a best-seller; its author Norman Angell had demonstrated, to the satisfaction of almost all informed opinion, that the disruption of international credit inevitably to be caused by war would either deter its outbreak or bring it speedily to an end."

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We know how that one ended.

All this reminds me of a quote by the late philosopher Robert Nozick, who defined "Marxist exploitation" as "the exploitation, by Marxists, of people's ignorance of economics."*

Yeah, except most marxists have also studied thoroughly traditional and liberal economists of their time, from Ricardo and Smith to Hayek and Friedman. Including Marx himself, who was a walking encyclopedia of political economy. Criticizing something does not mean you are ignorant about it. While not a Marxist, I'm with the camp that calls the entrenched political economy a "dismal science", 90% ideology and 10% applied mathematics.

It really is quite sobering to appreciate how people back then really believed that mutual dependence and globalization would make large-scale warfare impossible.

Resources (either shortages or riches) do cause wars, but simple trade links are a great way to prevent wars.

Well, historically large scale trade has been more like mugging. Perfect "free trade" only exists in dogma/ideology. Just consider the "East India Company", how the rich cities of the american South worked, etc. Also of so-called Banana Republics, Africa colonialism and post-colonialism, etc. (Not to miss the party, USSR also had a whole array of "socialist" countries to buy their production and "trade"). Of course, there are millions of examples of political pressure to "buy our stuff", "give our companies your resources at our terms", etc. A multinational is seldom cosmopolitan -- they go where the might is.

One of books I suggest is "Debt the first 5000 years" (here's a favorable review by Financial Times, no, less: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/04e44606-d9a0-11e0-b16a-00144feabd... )

http://treasureislands.org/

I'm reading it at the moment and, to be honest, I'm finding it utterly fascinating but also a bit depressing. If even half of what that book says is true then I really was very naive about how utterly corrupt the world is at a large scale.