Abstract
The flux in the contemporary international order is a source of significant concern about peace and stability but it is also an important testbed for international relations scholars, especially for international relations theorists. The changes in the international arena allow for at least two kinds of tests: what changes can be expected? And what will be the consequences of these changes? This is not a new opportunity: the quarter century since the end of the Cold War has provided an extremely rich field of opportunity for testing international political theories. Testing theories in the social sciences are always difficult—and the paucity of actors and cases makes this arguably even more challenging in international politics—but the changes in the international order does permit some verifiable theoretical predictions to be made. The consequences of the end of the Cold War, the durability and stability of the unipolar order, the effects of economic growth on international stability, and the utility of ‘Western’ theories for explaining international politics in other areas are just some of the very active theoretical debates that have driven international theory debates and to which the flux has been both a necessary background and a useful laboratory.
One of the major contemporary issues is how the current international order will accommodate new, rising powers. While China is the most important of these, there are a number of other powers whose importance has grown in the last decade with their increasing economic clout. Specifically, in addition to China, the other three members of the so-called BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—are usually considered as rising powers, with South Africa being a recent addition. As Andrew Hurrell pointed out in an essay on these rising powers almost a decade back, one element that unites these countries is a belief ‘in their entitlement to a more influential role in world affairs’. Thus, their increasing material capacity is matched by a growing desire for their ‘place in the sun’, as the German statesman Bernhard von Bulow described the German ambition in the 18th century. The question then becomes how the established global power—the US—deals with the rise of these new claimants. History has repeatedly recorded serious conflicts and war as a relatively declining power and an ambitious new claimant makes contact. Is it possible for the rising power(s) and the existing hegemon to find an accommodation that would prevent conflict? This is the central problem that T.V. Paul and his collaborators address in this new book.
This is a complicated book at many levels. It includes a number of theoretical chapters from different viewpoints, as well as several chapters on previous cases of successful and unsuccessful accommodation of rising powers and of course, chapters on each of the current crop of rising powers—China, Russia, India and Brazil. The mix of historical and contemporary cases and theory occasionally makes for some heavy going but is in most cases quite rewarding.
Paul defines ‘accommodation’ as something ‘more than the achievement of stability or absence of war’, as something more positive that includes the elimination or reduction of hostility between the existing hegemon and the rising power(s). But Paul acknowledges that accommodation is also extremely rare in international politics. Though Paul does not give it sufficient attention, the primary reason is not so much the behaviour of the established powers—what Paul focuses most attention on—but the ambitions of the rising powers. One of the enduring mysteries of great power politics is why rising powers reach up to grab the prize much earlier than the rise in the material capacities would suggest they are ready for. Japan made this mistake, Germany did it twice in under a half-century, and now China seems to be repeating the same mistake. Unfortunately, as the title of the book indicates, this is not an issue that is explicitly addressed in the volume, though some of the country chapters do hint at it.
Questions about how changes in the power structure comes about and whether such changes will happen peacefully have largely been the preserve of Realism and related theories such as the power transitions approach. But as Steven E. Lobell points out in his chapter, this is not a settled question even in Realism, partly because Realism is itself such a divided school now. Lobell suggests a modified Realist approach to join Defensive and Offensive Realism, which he calls ‘components of power’ theory. This appears to be focused specifically on power transitions rather than being designed as a more general theory, though it is possible to imagine some broader applications in particular contexts. The approach suggests that states worry not so much about the overall balance of power but what specific components of power a potential challenger invests in. This resolves one puzzle within Realism: why is it that the USA is so relaxed about the rising China challenge? Components of power theory suggest that realists have wrongly looked at the overall balance whereas they should focus on the specific components of power that China is developing. It is only if these threaten American interests that the USA can be expected to respond. This suggests the possibility that China will not provoke balancing by the US as long as it invests only in military capabilities that are not aimed at the USA, such as land power. But China, of course, is directly targeting US capabilities, such as through its Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2AD) strategy, which could lead to a US response.
Other theoretical approaches are less focused on these issues, even Realism main challenger, Liberalism. One Liberal approach that should be applicable in addressing the issue of accommodation is the presumed positive relationship between trade and conflict. Phillip B.K. Potter points to the many problems that affect empirical evidence for the trade equals peace argument, but this becomes even greater when considering an issue like accommodation. As Potter points out ‘major power relationships will be outliers in a population of all states when it comes to both trade and conflict’ making the question of the applicability of any general propositions about the relationship even more fraught. Another leg of Liberalism is international law and institution building, but Krzysztof J. Pelc points out that the approach taken by Liberal Institutionalists refuse to recognise the political context within which international law operates, much like the Liberals of the interwar generation that E.H. Carr despaired of. It is foolish (utopian, Carr might say) to expect that law and institutions can replace international politics. Ideas are a critical aspect of accommodation but Mlada Bukovansky in her chapter points to the obvious but often ignored point that such accommodation goes both ways: both the challengers and the hegemon needs to accommodate each other.
The most interesting chapters are the ones that deal with the historical experience of accommodation, the second section of the book, which considers the transition of power from Britain to the USA at the turn of the twentieth century, the US accommodation of China in the 1970s, and the well-known cases of the German and Japanese attempt to challenge the hegemons in the first half on the twentieth century. Ali Zeren and John A. Hall argue that it is a British myth that it ‘passed the baton’ to the Americans because the reality was far more of an exercise in brute power in which the USA took over as the hegemon when it could. But the conditions were so different that Zeren and Hall are sceptical that this experience has any lessons for the future. An odd case is the US ‘accommodation’ of communist China in the 1970s, odd because it is not even clear that it was a case of accommodation at all. As Lorenz M. Luthi points out in his chapter, both USA and China had great strategic need for seeking a partnership because of their common adversary, the Soviet Union. This did lead to the USA accommodating China, both in the UN and later by re-establishing full diplomatic ties. But surely there is a difference between such a change in policy driven by balancing requirements and ‘accommodation’ even as it is used in this volume, which refers to a hegemon and a rising challenger. China in the 1970s was not a rising power that was challenging the USA, making this case somewhat incongruous.
One of the better cases of failed accommodation is of Great Britain and Germany. In the space of about a half-century, Germany challenged Britain twice, and each time Britain attempted accommodation first before resolving to contain. Martin Claar and Norrin M. Ripsman argue that both times Britain attempted accommodation because it faced multiple threats that prevented them from containing Germany, and to boot, by the 1930s, Britain also was a declining power. But the German persistence in challenging Britain’s position ultimately left no choice for London but to pick up the gauntlet. Thus, as suggested earlier, the actions of the challenger is an important factor in whether or not accommodative strategies work, with obvious implications for contemporary international politics. India and Brazil are not seeking to overthrow or even militarily challenge US hegemony, but China appears increasingly eager to do so, making peaceful accommodation between Washington and Beijing somewhat less likely.
Jeffrey W. Taliaferro’s excellent chapter on USA and Japan also point to the behaviour of both the hegemon and the challenger, as well as to the difficulty in characterising ‘rising’ states. Much like Russia today, Japan did not think of itself as a rising state but as a declining one, and its behaviour that ultimately led to war with the USA was much more a preservative war than an aggressive one that it appears at first light. By the 1930s, Taliaferro argues, accommodation was no longer possible. That said, the Roosevelt administration may also have used Japan as a back door to enter the Second World War.
On the contemporary cases, the obvious one is China. In his contribution, Kai He suggests that the current turbulence in USA–China ties is more of a bargaining between the USA and China and that conflict between the two is not inevitable. But he also points out that China first need to make the right strategic choice in deciding on peaceful accommodation, which it is not clear Beijing has. The other case studies on India (Aseema Sinha), Brazil (David R. Mares) and Russia (Nicola Contessi) are competent efforts but suffer from a fundamental problem: these are not states that are really challenging the hegemon (even Russia), and their minor status demands is more amenable to accommodation. Theodore McLauchlin’s concluding chapter suggests structural approaches are insufficient, which is unobjectionable, but there is little doubt that a structural approach would suggest a USA–China confrontation, which is not particularly outlandish either.
One significant problem comes through in the overall design of this project, which affects many chapters but especially the theoretical ones. There is usually only one hegemonic great power and one challenger, and the question then becomes whether the rising challenger and the existing hegemon can find some accommodation. The current order is not particularly different: the USA is still the global hegemon, and China is the rising challenger. This is a pattern that has repeated itself many times in the past, even in the last two centuries, and as Paul notes, this tussle has usually (but not always) ended in war. Understanding even this one-on-one dynamic is not easy, but this book addressed the challenge of accommodating all the BRIC countries. This is both empirically and theoretically problematic. Empirically, though the other rising powers want a larger role in world affairs, they simply do not have anywhere near the kind of material capacities that would make them capable of replacing the current hegemon, and as some of the country chapters make clear, they are not even interested in such a project. On the other hand, China is both materially capable and appears interested in doing precisely this. Mixing the challenge posed by China to the existing order with that of Brazil, India and Russia tends to confuse the issue, as is evident in the theory chapters of the volume. The theoretical difficulty also flows from this: Accommodation is a different problem when considering countries like India and Brazil which want accommodation and acknowledgment within the existing (or slightly modified) order, and China which wants to overthrow the existing order. Overall, this is an excellent volume, with both important theoretical explorations and historical and contemporary case studies. Maintaining quality in edited volumes is always a problem, but Paul has managed to get his contributors to write chapters that are almost all uniformly good, which suggests a very tight hand at the helm and an excellent refereeing process.