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
Collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery Collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery In 1992 the Canadian Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, John Crosbie, declared a moratorium on the Northern Cod fishery, which for the preceding 500 years had largely shaped the lives and communities of Canada's eastern coast. Fishing societies interplay with the resources which they depend on: fisheries transform the ecosystem, which pushes the fishery and society to adapt. In the summer of 1992, when the Northern Cod biomass fell to 1% of earlier levels, Canada's federal government saw that this relationship had been pushed to the breaking point, and declared a moratorium,