The “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP) and Free Trade Associations in the controversy – Instruments of Peace or Promotion of War?

Abstract

The question whether free trade and TTIP serve peace or conversely promote war, is answered completely contrary in the current and highly politicized debate. In the article at hand, this observation is taken as an occasion to closer examine free trade in terms of peace policy and security policy. In the first instance, an internal perspective (significance of a free trade area for its members among each other in terms of peace policy) is distinguished from an external perspective (significance of a free trade area towards third parties in terms of peace policy). Resulting from this, the connection between peace and war on the one side and free trade on the other, is much more complex and ambiguous, than the public debate often suggests.