Several months ago I made a post on the controversial topic of whether schools in California, with their limited resources, should be focusing more on Mandarin and less on Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, etc. Click here to read that post.

Last week the always oustanding China Law blog made a related post concerning a similar language dispute in Oregon that also generated some great discussion (click HERE to view; over 60 comments the last time I checked). Apparently a fellow had written a letter to the Oregon legislature encouraging more Mandarin in schools.

The CLB’s post got me thinking about the following two questions:

• When the people of a society learn another society’s language (e.g., American’s learning Mandarin) does that lead to greater economic integration between the two countries/societies?
• Does greater economic integration lead to a lower likelihood of those two countries/societies going to war?

As you will see from the CLB comments, answers to these hypotheses/questions are all over the place, and at times the discussion was heated. Great stuff and debate! I love it!

To try and reach more resolution on this topic and find out what the research actually did/did not support, I emailed a colleague, Tim Fort, formerly of the University of Michigan and now at George Washington University. Tim is a pre-eminent scholar in the field of ethics and corporate governance, and he has written great stuff about peace through commerce (see, e.g., his books The Role of Business in Fostering Peaceful Societies, Cambridge University Press 2004 and Ethics and Corporate Governance: Business As a Mediating Institution, Oxford University Press 2001). Tim’s work should be required reading for all the business haters out there and people who are convinced that business and multinationals are Satan’s children. His books highlights that, indeed, business can be a noble profession and here is where I am coming from when I make that statement — my own view and bias is that business people who help create quality goods and services that help make the average Joe’s life better are just as heroic as the poet, fireman, garbage man, peace activist, non-profit worker, teacher, etc. I really do believe this. Many folks out there just do not fully appreciate how difficult it is to be a successful entreprenuer and business person. So there is no need to feel guilty for being in business or a business student — when you go about creating and doing your business ethically, you can make the world a better place.

Let me share with you what Tim had to say:

Hi Chris:

Re: the first [question], I don’t know of any studies suggesting that learning another’s language assists in economic integration, but it sure would seem to make sense. Actually, it seems so obvious - why else would everyone in the world have English as a second language - to make the point, but sometimes such obviousness misses the point too. So makes sense, but don’t know of studies to back it up.

Re: the second [question], it’s a mixed bag. Again, lots of people point to it. Tom Friedman has his Golden Arches Thesis which is that two countries with a McDonalds have never gone to war with each other. He amended that slightly after the Balkan problems a few years ago, but he also said that the issue was resolved once the electical grid in Belgrade was cut, thereby making McDonalds inoperable. The World Bank has some nice studies showing that a good predictor for civil war is if the main export product is an undifferentiated commodity - oil, diamonds, etc. There is a lot of economic argument - Hayek for example that international trade leads to international peace. On the other hand, if all this were true, why did World War I happen? In fact, at a talk I gave at Georgetown, one of the political scientists said that if there was ever a false connection that political scientists hoped they had killed it was that economic integration leads to peace, precisely because of WWI. The fellow did like my amendment that it is a particular type of integration - one that features ethical business behavior - that could contribute to peace rather than just integration. Colonialism, after all, was well integrated.

Hope this helps a bit. You are welcome to post these comments to get discussion going.

I read Professor Fort’s response as suggesting that the jury is still out on the second question (and/or perhaps it can’t be effectively measured); but he also suggests that economic integration that brings ethical behavior with it may help foster peace and stability.

What are your thoughts re: the answers to these two questions?