State interests,military power and international commerce: Some cross‐national evidence

This article argues that the military power and commerce of states moves together in peacetime, and that the nature of this relationship is bound up with peacetime patterns of conflict. After constructing an essentially realist argument for such a relationship, and attempting to present the various ways in which military power and commerce interact, I estimate several cross‐sectional regressions with data from a number of countries. The regressions provide some support for a relationship between military spending and trade, but the connections between military spending and protectionism are not well supported.