Please join the Fletcher Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University for a talk by Dr. Mariya Grinberg who will analyze the phenomenon of continued economic interactions between states fighting a war against each other.

States at war with each other often make for resilient, if strange, trade partners. In the early 2020s, trade between India and China increased despite an eight-month border standoff between the two states. Until January 2025, Russian gas continued to flow through Ukrainian pipelines despite mounting battlefield casualties on each side. Russian oil still, in the fourth year of the war, flows through Ukrainian pipelines to supply European customers despite European commitment to reducing funds Russia can invest into the war effort.

At first glance, trade between these belligerents seems counterintuitive: why do states continue to trade with their enemies during war when the exchanged goods might help the rival secure the upper hand on the battlefield? This talk explains why states continue economic cooperation while inflicting devastating human and economic costs on each other on the battlefield. In setting wartime commercial policy, a state has to prevent the opponent from increasing in military strength, without surrendering its own gains from trade. Balancing these conflicting incentives requires a policy targeted at specific products, tailored to the specific war being fought. Ultimately, states trade with their enemies in products that take a long time to convert into military capabilities and products whose revenue they cannot afford to lose.

Dr. Mariya Grinberg is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the MIT Security Studies Program. Her book, Trade in War: Economic Cooperation across Enemy Lines (Cornell, 2025) examines why states trade with their enemies, investigating the product level and temporal variation in wartime commercial policies of states vis-a-vis enemy belligerents. Her second book project explores why states go to war unprepared, focusing on military war-planning and bureaucratic buck-passing.

Refreshments will be served. This in-person event is open to the public. Please register via the Google Form here.