There's a new study out of Rice University that's pretty interesting - and timely. According to researchers, when a country joins a defense pact like NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), that country is less less likely to be attacked by another nation. It also makes the country that joined the pact less likely to attack some other country.
The authors of the study are Rice Professor Ashley Leeds and grad student Jesse Johnson. Leeds draws this conclusion from her research:
Leeds and Johnson published the study in Foreign Policy Analysis, an international relations and political science journal. They looked at defense agreements from the world over signed between 1816 and 2001 to draw their conclusions. Fascinating stuff, no?
