The current paper seeks to explore the contribution that international businesses can make to the achievement and sustainability of collective ‘soft’ and economic security, smart transformation and more consensually based power relations at the regional level by instituting and developing international trade and foreign direct investment flows between countries located in the global 'shatterbelt' regions surrounding the Baltic and Yellow Seas. A country and company case study approach is employed to identify and evaluate the linkages between international trade and investment activity and the resultant impact on wealth creation, conflict mitigation and peace building amongst formerly antagonistic neighbouring countries in each of these two shatter belt regions of the world