Commerce and Conflict

Summary:
What is the relationship between commerce and conflict in international affairs? In this seminar, Professor Rosato will present his research that shows great powers have a powerful incentive to use force in order to establish or maintain commercial relations because commerce — trade and investment — is a source of power and security. Whether or not they act on their incentives is largely a function of the balance of military capabilities between them and their targets. The theory offers a simple explanation for the course of three multilateral great-power competitions: the Great Game (1830-1907); the Scramble for Africa (1870-1914); and the Scramble for China (1832-1945).

Bio:
Sebastian Rosato is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also a fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. He is the author of Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community (Cornell, 2011), Intentions in Great Power Politics: Uncertainty and the Roots of Conflict (Yale, 2021), and How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy (Yale 2023) (with John Mearsheimer). He has also published scholarly articles in several journals, including the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, International Security, Perspectives on Politics, and Security Studies.

Professor Rosato has been a fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He is also the recipient of major research grants from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Earhart Foundation, and the Charles Koch Foundation, as well as a fellowship from the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Professor Rosato has also won two teaching awards. He received the Morton Grodzins Prize Lectureship when he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and he won the Reverend Edmund P. Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Notre Dame in 2013. He received a B.A. (Honors) in History from Cambridge University, an M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Before attending graduate school, he worked for Goldman Sachs in London.