War and interdependency

I was reading The Guns of August, which describes the events leading up to the first World War. What immediately struck me was the passage about another book, released in 1910 called The Great Illusion. Way it's described in Guns of August is that it popularized the notion that economically interdependent nations don't fight wars:

Angell showed that in the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no nation would be so foolish as to start one.

The Guns of August, referring to The Great Illusion

Clearly that was not whole truth before first World War, and isn't whole truth today.

Idea has nonetheless persisted and was used to justify certain projects. In Finland one former prime minister even campaigned for natural gas pipelines between EU and Russia as "pipes of peace". I still think there has truth to it, but my rather obvious thought here is that if the leadership ceases to care about about economics more than other grandiose plans then interdependency isn't guarantor of peace.

We should look at the leadership of the nations, and see how well they are accountable to the people and the businesses. In countries where accountability happens then interdependency clearly has chance to work as guarantor of peace. Accountability is a form of pressure, all leaders have their own thoughts and those of constituency, if there is no pressure from constituency there is no accountability.

We in Europe clearly failed with Russia, we didn't see or wanted to see that Russian leadership isn't accountable to majority of the business or people.