Explaining interstate trust/distrust in triadic relations

Emotion or affect is important to understanding the current international interactions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationships among interstate affects in triads. The hypotheses of structural balance, symmetry, subjectivity and objectivity are tested here. Nations are more likely to trust a target nation when the target trusts them, when their friend trusts the target, when they trust other nations in general, and when other nations in general trust the target. Their attitudes towards the target are not influenced by the fact that their enemy trusts or distrusts the target. The structural balance gives way to some dyads of imbalance. Rather, nations are unlikely to feel friendly towards an enemy of their enemy's. More than 80% of bilateral affects are correctly predicted with the other affect relations only. Some implications on the spread of anti-Americanism and on the role of mediator between two adversaries are discussed.