Since the conclusion of World War II in 1945, international military conflicts have largely been between nations of great power and “underdog” nations. This paper studies the network of military treaties between states in the international system. Examining this network leads to important conclusions about how state actors are prone to respond if an international or regional conflict were to arise. One influential such scenario was the launch of World War I, when great power nations got dragged into conflict due to their binding military treaties with lesser power states. The network below is highly connected with all small countries connected to “hubs” representing global powers. Main centrality measures and network analytics are performed on the data and differences between binding and non-binding treaties are highlighted.
