There was a time when the President of the United States stated that "…the chief business of the American people is business." Yet, those in the Executive office have in recent years, decided time and time again, that the American people somehow wish for its government and thereby its military to get involved in endless conflicts around the globe, of which not a single one of these conflicts has a thing to do with either one of our two contiguous neighboring countries. So that, America does not have any border wars, whatsoever; nor is it even reasonably considered to be threatened by these other foreign nations that it engages in military battles with, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Syria, in which the cost of these foreign entanglements as reported by businessinsider.com, "….has blown past $6 trillion in 'war on terror' spending since 2001." While America still remains the largest economy in the world, it is in danger of ceding that title to China, of which China, while spending money on its military, concentrates almost exclusively its military excursions on relevant border and territorial disputes with neighboring nations, and does not engage in any extracurricular war-like behavior outside of its own sphere of influence.
This thus signifies that one nation, that is America, wastes an extraordinary amount of its resources and personnel engaging in wars that it need not engage in, that costs its taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars, while, for the most part, solving little or nothing, in addition to fostering bad blood with those nations so engaged; whereas China deals strictly with its aspirations that are relevant to its sovereignty within its geographical sphere, and does not overly waste military monies on engagements that serve no good abiding purpose or that involve no vital strategic goals. So that, when one nation spends billions upon billions of dollars to kill insurgents and those civilians that just so happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; whereas, the other nation spends billions upon billions in the pursuit of business with other foreign lands, then that country that concentrates on that business so left available, by that other country's ill advised foreign engagements, is able to thereby gain valuable market share.
The bottom line is that governments can only concentrate on so many things, and can only do a certain amount of things at a competent level. Further to the point, the nature of international business ideally requires meaningful coordination between the government in conjunction with those domestic multinational companies that are engaging in business with foreign countries, in the understanding that more business will be done, when the government of that country is of integral help to its corporations, thereby aiding in the increase for those businesses. In other words, when nations spend an inordinate amount of time on military engagements, far too many businesses are left to their own devices to increase their exports overseas; whereas, in a country which is primarily about engaging in trade and securing deals of substance with foreign nations, business prospers.
That is to say, war is war, and trade is trade. Therefore, those countries that concentrate on war will do more business in war, and those that concentrate on the trading of goods, will get more of the same.