ABSTRACT
The Soviet system was highly centralized, economically as well as politically. Although the USSR was divided into nominally autonomous Union Republics, the command economy was run from the center as a single unit. Economic liberals expect that economic development and expanding trade will lead to a benign security environment. Students of political economy have taken a variety of theoretical approaches toward the issue of international trade. Trade will continue on a contractual basis, that is, on the basis of economic rationality and the principle of comparative advantage. Economic liberalism argues that minimal levels of government intervention are appropriate not only at the domestic level but also at the international level. A mercantilist perspective starts from the premise that security concerns have an important impact on the economic policies that states pursue, tending to pull them away from the non-interventionist, market-based policies that liberals would prescribe.
