Cod Wars and institutions are supposed to pacify interstate behavior. The Cod Wars are also held up as an example of the decreasing salience of hard power in international relations, with implications for realist theory which emphasizes the importance of hard power. Theorists on asymmetric bargaining have emphasized how Iceland, lacking structural power, can still have an issue power advantage, with its greater commitment to the cause. A 2017 study argues that the occurrence of the Cod Wars is inconsistent with liberal international relations theory, including the democratic peace thesis, as the "supposedly pacifying factors of the liberal peace – democracy, trade
Cod fishing in Newfoundland food source contributed to a decrease in the Beothuk population. Beothuk numbers began to dwindle rapidly due to a combination of factors directly relating to European, Inuit and Mi'kmaq migration, and by the 19th Century, the tribe no longer existed. After his voyage in 1497, John Cabot's crew reported that the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets. and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them. In the early sixteenth century,