We investigate the role of networks of military alliances in preventing or encouraging wars between groups of countries. A country is vulnerable to attack if there is some fully-allied group of countries that can defeat that country and its (remaining) allies based on a function of their...

Drawing on global media reports, we conduct a sentiment analysis of the image of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the evolution of its image over time. Our main finding is that perceptions of the initiative deteriorated significantly in many geographies from 2017 to 2022. The notable...