Where Great Powers Meet

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Shambaugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Stable Region ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Cold War

After the end of the Cold War, it seemed as if Southeast Asia would remain a geopolitically stable region within the American imperious for the foreseeable future. In the last two decades, however, the re-emergence of China as a major great power has called into question the geopolitical future of the region and raised the specter of renewed great power competition. As this book shows, the United States and China are engaged in a broad-gauged and global competition for power. While this competition ranges across the entire world, it is centered in Asia, and here this text focuses on the ten countries that comprise Southeast Asia. The United States and China constantly vie for position and influence in this enormously significant region, and the outcome of this contest will do much to determine whether Asia leaves the American orbit after seven decades and falls into a new Chinese sphere of influence. Just as important, to the extent that there is a global “power transition” occurring from the United States to China, the fate of Southeast Asia will be a good indicator. Presently, both powers bring important assets to bear. The United States continues to possess a depth and breadth of security ties, soft power, and direct investment across the region that empirically outweigh China’s. For its part, China has more diplomatic influence, much greater trade, and geographic proximity. In assessing the likelihood of a regional power transition, the book looks at how ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the countries within it maneuver between the United States and China and the degree to which they align with one or the other power.

The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Murray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Peaceful Rise ◽  
Rising Power ◽  
Struggle For Recognition ◽  
Power Transitions

How can established powers manage the peaceful rise of new great powers? With The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations, the author offers a new answer to this perennial question in international relations, arguing that power transitions are principally social phenomena whereby rising powers struggle to obtain recognition of their identity as a great power. At the center of great power identity formation is the acquisition of particular symbolic capabilities—such as battlesheips, aircraft carriers, or nuclear weapons—that are representative of great power status and that allow rising powers to experience their uncertain social status as a brute fact. When a rising power is recognized, this power acquisition is considered legitimate and its status in the international order secured, leading to a peaceful power transition. If a rising power is misrecognized, its assertive foreign policy is perceived to be for revisionist purposes, which must be contained by the established powers. Revisionism—rather than the product of a material power structure that encourages aggression or domestic political struggles—is a social construct that emerges through a rising power’s social interactions with the established powers as it attempts to gain recognition of its identity. The question of peaceful power transition has taken on increased salience in recent years with the emergence of China as an economic and military rival of the United States. Highlighting the social dynamics of power transitions, this book offers a powerful new framework through which to understand the rise of China and how the United States can facilitate its peaceful rise.

Economic containment as a strategy of Great Power competition

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (6) ◽  
pp. 1423-1441
Author(s):  
Dong Jung Kim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Viable Option ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Distinct Strategy

Abstract Economic containment has garnered repeated attention in the discourse about the United States' response to China. Yet, the attributes of economic containment as a distinct strategy of Great Power competition remain unclear. Moreover, the conditions under which a leading power can employ economic containment against a challenging power remain theoretically unelaborated. This article first suggests that economic containment refers to the use of economic policies to weaken the targeted state's material capacity to start military aggression, rather than to influence the competitor's behaviour over a specific issue. Then, this article suggests that economic containment becomes a viable option when the leading power has the ability to inflict more losses on the challenging power through economic restrictions, and this ability is largely determined by the availability of alternative economic partners. When the leading power cannot effectively inflict more losses on the challenging power due to the presence of alternative economic partners, it is better off avoiding economic containment. The author substantiates these arguments through case-studies of the United States' responses to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The article concludes by examining the nature of the United States' recent economic restrictions against China.

The Iranian Crisis of 1945–1946 and the Spiral Model of International Conflict

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred H. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Northern Iran ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
The Government ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Spiral Model ◽  
The Cold War

Diplomatic historians of all persuasions agree that the Iranian Crisis of 1945–1946 played a considerable part in initiating the Cold War. For revisionist writers, the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that took place during these months resulted from American efforts to carve out a sphere of influence in the oil-producing areas of the Middle East. By the autumn of 1945, according to this view, U.S. firms had gained controlling interests in the consortia holding exclusive rights to work the extensive petroleum deposits located in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; more importantly, Iranian officials were making repeated overtures to American concerns in an effort to counterbalance established British interests with more dynamic ones based in the United States. When the Red Army prevented the government in Tehran from suppressing separatist movements in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan in December 1945, the Truman Administration manipulated the Security Council of the United Nations into mandating a Soviet withdrawal from northern Iran.

Southeast Asia and the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenton Clymer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asian Countries

The U.S. relationship with Southeast Asia has always reflected the state of U.S. interactions with the three major powers that surround the region: Japan, China, and, to a lesser extent, India. Initially, Americans looked at Southeast Asia as an avenue to the rich markets that China and India seemed to offer, while also finding trading opportunities in the region itself. Later, American missionaries sought to save Southeast Asian souls, while U.S. officials often viewed Southeast Asia as a region that could tip the overall balance of power in East Asia if its enormous resources fell under the control of a hostile power. American interest expanded enormously with the annexation of the Philippines in 1899, an outgrowth of the Spanish-American War. That acquisition resulted in a nearly half-century of American colonial rule, while American investors increased their involvement in exploiting the region’s raw materials, notably tin, rubber, and petroleum, and missionaries expanded into areas previously closed to them. American occupation of the Philippines heightened tensions with Japan, which sought the resources of Southeast Asia, particularly in French Indochina, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia). Eventually, clashing ambitions and perceptions brought the United States into World War II. Peeling those territories away from Japan during the war was a key American objective. Americans resisted the Japanese in the Philippines and in Burma, but after Japan quickly subdued Southeast Asia, there was little contact in the region until the reconquest began in 1944. American forces participated in the liberation of Burma and also fought in the Dutch Indies and the Philippines before the war ended in 1945. After the war, the United States had to face the independence struggles in several Southeast Asian countries, even as the Grand Alliance fell apart and the Cold War emerged, which for the next several decades overshadowed almost everything. American efforts to prevent communist expansion in the region inhibited American support for decolonization and led to war in Vietnam and Laos and covert interventions elsewhere. With the end of the Cold War in 1991, relations with most of Southeast Asia have generally been normal, except for Burma/Myanmar, where a brutal military junta ruled. The opposition, led by the charismatic Aung San Suu Kyi, found support in the United States. More recently American concerns with China’s new assertiveness, particularly in the South China Sea, have resulted in even closer U.S. relations with Southeast Asian countries.

Conclusion

After Victory ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 257-274
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Power ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Cold War

This concluding chapter evaluates the implications that emerge from this book's theoretical and historical analysis for American foreign policy. The United States begins a new century as an unrivaled global power. American foreign policy makers need to be reminded what characteristics of the postwar order have made American power reasonably acceptable to other states and peoples during and after the Cold War. American power is not only unprecedented in its preponderance, but it is also unprecedented in the way it is manifest within and through institutions. This helps explain why it has been so durable. If American policy makers want to perpetuate America's preeminent position, they will need to continue to find ways to operate within international institutions, and by so doing restrain that power and make it acceptable to other states.

The Return of Great Power Rivalry

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Leadership ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
The Cold War

The United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world for the past seventy years, but will Washington’s reign as the world’s leading superpower continue? The U.S. National Security Strategy declares that the return of great power competition with Russia and China is the greatest threat to U.S. national security and economic well-being. Perhaps surprisingly, international relations scholarship does not have much to say about who wins great power rivalries, and many contemporary analysts argue that America’s autocratic rivals will succeed in disrupting or displacing U.S. global leadership. In sharp contrast, this book makes the novel argument that democracies enjoy built-in advantages in international geopolitics. Drawing on the writings of political philosophers—such as Herodotus, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu—and cutting-edge social science research, this book explains the unique economic, diplomatic, and military advantages that democracies bring to the international arena. It then carefully considers the advantages and disadvantages possessed by autocratic great powers. These ideas are then examined in a series of seven case studies of democratic-versus-autocratic rivalries throughout history, from ancient Greece to the Cold War. The book then unpacks the implications of this analysis for the United States, Russia, and China today. It concludes that, despite its many problems, America’s fundamentals are still much better than Russia’s and China’s. By making the “hard-power” argument for democracy, this book provides an innovative way of thinking about power in international politics and provides an optimistic assessment about the future of American global leadership.

South Asia

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Reaction ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the history of the Cold War in South Asia. It describes the position of South Asia in the Cold War, and investigates the reasons why Pakistan decided to side with the United States while India sought to avoid great power alliances and keep the Cold War at arm's length. The chapter highlights the negative reaction of India on the decision of the U.S. government to provide military aid to Pakistan, its main rival, and also considers Cold War legacies and the legacy of colonialism in India and Pakistan.

The Conundrum of American Power in the Age of World War I

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-365
Author(s):  
Katherine C. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Power Projection ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Moment

Reports of the rise of the United States to a lead role on the global stage in the early twentieth century have been greatly exaggerated. As many Americans at the time recognized, the United States continued to have less capacity for overseas power projection and remained far more dependent on the world's reigning hegemon, Great Britain, than is generally now realized. The United States, it is true, acquired an overseas empire in 1898. But it lacked the basic attributes of a great power, such as economic sovereignty, naval power, and domestic consensus on the desirability of global great-power status. Even after World War I, which was a better candidate than the Spanish-American War as the moment when the United States became a leading global power, both the material and the cultural basis of that power remained fragile.

Conditional Convergence and the Rise of China: A Political Economy Approach to Understanding Global Power Transitions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Beckley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
Conditional Convergence ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Growth Prospects ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
The Rise Of China

Abstract Many scholars predict that China will soon challenge the United States for global primacy. This prediction is largely based on power transition theory, which assumes that rising challengers inevitably “converge” economically and militarily with reigning hegemons. Economists, however, have shown that convergence is a conditional process: sometimes poor countries grow faster than rich countries, but sometimes they fall further behind. Determining whether a US-China power transition will occur in the years ahead, therefore, requires specifying the drivers of long-term economic growth and assessing each country's growth prospects in light of these factors. This article does exactly that. Drawing on recent research in economics, I show that there are three main growth drivers—geography, institutions, and demography—and that the United States scores highly across these factors whereas China suffers from critical weaknesses. These results suggest that a US-China power transition is unlikely.

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