That's a good point. Perhaps globalization alone only marginally reduces the risk and it's the combination of globalization + trust (or at least not mistrust) that reduces the likelihood of war.

If that's the case then the US government's efforts to take supplies away from some of our closest allies is even more dangerous and short-sighted than I initially thought.

A month ago I would have said a mask factory in Canada vs. US is nearly equal in terms of national security because Canada could be trusted to help in a time of crisis. I'm sure many Canadians felt the same way. Now I'm not so sure that's true and I certainly don't blame the Canadians.

Back then every component of a battleship, the most powerful and advanced weapon of the time could be built independently by Britain, France, Germany, Italy, USA, Japan etc. Today, there are very few weapons systems that do not depend on allied countries for a critical component. E.g. it is quite well known that Britain's nuclear powered subs use US reactors and US missiles, but even the steel plate for the hull is likely sourced from another country as there is only one steelworks left in the UK which probably is not able to produce the right alloy in the desired thicknesses. In fact, industry in the UK has declined to the extent that we could not independantly produce a WW1 era battleship any more without a vast restructuring of the economy which would take decades.

If a half-arsed backward place like N Korea can produce ships , rockets and nuclear weapons I am pretty sure the UK could pull it off.

That's the thing, though: being self-sufficient in manufacturing is now considered "backwards".

I wasn't familiar with this counterargument, and did a quick dig and found this primer:

https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/06/14/th...

Do you have any particular recommendations/sources for further discussion around this argument?

Not really, it's just something I've seen used as the most common counterargument to "tighter economic connections decreases risk of war", given that apparently in 1914 people thought international war was nearly impossible due to all the trade interdependencies. I honestly never dug deeper into the similarities and differences between then and now.

No shortage of ink was spilled on the wishful thinking that globalization will prevent future wars... All through the 1910s.

"Reducing" and "completely eliminating" are very different things.