Regional trade agreements as military alliances

Some alliances lead to militarized interstate conflict while others lead to peace ( Gibler 2000). Liberal scholars argue that trade institutions minimize such hostilities. Trade institutions, however, can also be military alliances. Alliance commitments embedded in the treaties of regional trade agreements ( RTAs) are an emerging phenomenon in international politics. Similar to Gibler's ( 2000) territorial settlement treaties, RTA military alliances serve conflict management functions. Their purpose is to prevent RTA members, who are trading enemies, from attacking each other or supporting coups against other members' governments. These commitments are supposed to send signals to deter external aggression. Since RTA military alliances are a little known fact in the study of international relations, their theoretical and policy implications are not well understood. Analysis of RTA military alliances will help shed light on when alliances lead to war and peace as well as have little influence at all. The purpose of this study is ( 1) to demonstrate that RTAs can be military alliances through alliance commitments stipulated in RTA treaties and ( 2) to provide an empirical test of RTA military alliance influence on the likelihood of militarized conflict involving dyad members. Findings suggest that RTAs with alliance commitments exist. Second, traditional allies are more likely to experience political hostilities than other states while RTA military allies are less likely. Neither relationship is statistically significant. When country pairs share membership in a traditional alliance and a RTA military alliance, the interaction enhances the conflict encouraging effect of shared traditional alliance as well as the conflict inhibiting influence of shared RTA military alliance membership. The interaction is statistically significant. African RTAs, dyads and militarized interstate conflict from 1950-1992 are the focus of this study.