Great Power Politics in the Age of Imperial Expansion, 1856–99

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale C. Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
Crimean War ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Great Power Politics

This chapter explores the forty-five-year period after the Crimean War when great powers of all stripes fell into an intense competition for formal political control over third-party territories. The competition greatly increased the level of tension in the system, even if most of the struggles stopped short of a direct great power war. Most significantly, of course, France, Britain, and Germany dove into a scramble for colonial territory after 1880 that drew most of Africa and large parts of Asia into the European orbit. On two particular occasions—the Austro-Prussian “Seven Weeks' War” of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870—large-scale war between two great powers did break out. The purpose of the chapter is to uncover to what extent and in what manner economic interdependence shaped the struggles and wars of this almost-half-century period.

European Great Power Politics, 1790–1854

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale C. Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Crimean War ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Complete Survey ◽  
Great Power Politics

This chapter explores the relative importance of economic interdependence and trade expectations on the policies of the European great powers from 1790 to the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853–54. Since there are many cases where commerce had little or nothing to do with the outbreak of crisis or war, this chapter covers such cases briefly, highlighting their basic causes only to provide a complete survey of the origins of modern conflict and avoid charges of selection bias. Yet as the chapter shows, economic interdependence and trade expectations played a far more significant role in the dynamics of nineteenth-century geopolitics than has been previously recognized.

The Ubiquity of Oil

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Rosemary A. Kelanic
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Systematic Framework

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between oil and great power politics. For over a hundred years, oil has been ubiquitous as both an object of political intrigue and a feature of everyday life, yet its effects on the behavior of major powers remain poorly understood. This book focuses on one particular aspect of oil: its coercive potential. Across time and space, great powers have feared that dependence on imported petroleum might make them vulnerable to coercion by hostile actors. They worry that an enemy could cut off oil to weaken them militarily or punish them economically, and then use this threat as a basis for political blackmail. Oil is so essential to great powers that taking a state's imports hostage could give an enemy significant leverage in a dispute. The book presents the first systematic framework to understand how fears of oil coercion shape international affairs. Great powers counter prospective threats with costly and risky policies that lessen vulnerability, ideally, before the country can be targeted. These measures, which can be called “anticipatory strategies,” vary enormously, from self-sufficiency efforts to actions as extreme as launching wars.

Global versus National

Age of Iron ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 70-104
Author(s):  
Colin Dueck
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Clinton Presidency ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter describes the efforts of various Republican presidents and congressional leaders to strike balances between nationalist and internationalist priorities between the 1960s and 2015. Barry Goldwater championed a hawkish Sunbelt conservatism that in the long run helped remake the Republican Party. President Nixon pursued a foreign policy based upon assumptions of great-power politics and realpolitik. President Reagan led an ideologically charged effort at anti-Communist rollback, although he was careful not to overextend the United States in any large-scale wars on the ground. Republicans during the Clinton presidency struggled to reformulate conservative foreign policy assumptions in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. George W. Bush remade conservative foreign policy into a war on terror, aiming at the democratization of the Greater Middle East. Finally, during the presidency of Barack Obama, Republican foreign policy factions once again splintered, paving the way for a conservative nationalist resurgence.

scholarly journals Globalization, deglobalization and Great Power politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1317-1333
Author(s):  
Norrin M Ripsman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Commercial liberalism would suggest that whereas globalization was conducive to great power cooperation—or at least moderated competition—deglobalization is likely to ignite greater competition amongst the Great Powers. In reality, however, the picture is much more complex. To begin with, the intense globalization of the 1990s and 2000s is not responsible for moderating Great Power tensions; instead, it is itself a product of the security situation resulting from the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, while globalization did serve to reinforce cooperation between the United States and rising challengers, such as China, which sought to harness the economic gains of globalization to accelerate their rise, it also created or intensified fault-lines that have led to heightening tensions between the Great Powers. Finally, while we are currently witnessing increasing tensions between the US and both China and Russia, deglobalization does not appear to be the primary cause. Thus, geoeconomic conditions do not drive security relations; instead, the geoeconomic environment, which is itself influenced by Great Power politics, is better understood as a medium of Great Power competition, which may affect the character of Great Power competition and its intensity, but does not determine it.

Intentions Pessimism

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-43
Author(s):  
Sebastian Rosato
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Future ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The One

This chapter outlines a theory called intentions pessimism. It begins by describing the information problems that confront states seeking to divine each other’s intentions. The first problem is that it is particularly difficult for a great power to access firsthand information about another state’s current intentions, that state’s actual ideas about how it intends to behave. The second problem is that although great powers can acquire information about each other’s declarations, interests, and actions, all of which are related to its intentions, this secondhand information is unreliable, which is to say that it is consistent with both benign and malign intent. The third problem is that states cannot access firsthand information about each other’s future intentions, while secondhand information on the matter is especially unreliable. The chapter then argues that given the inextricable link between information, on the one hand, and certainty and uncertainty on the other, these problems of access, reliability, and the future virtually preclude great powers from being confident that their peers have benign intentions, or more simply, from trusting them. Indeed, they typically cause states to be acutely uncertain about each other’s intentions. The chapter concludes by exploring the effects of uncertainty on great power politics.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Sebastian Rosato
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Real World ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Great Power Politics

This chapter begins by explaining that the question of whether or not great powers can be confident that their peers have benign intentions is of enormous importance in both the real world and in international relations theory. In a nutshell, confidence causes peace and uncertainty causes security competition with the potential for war. The chapter then addresses the intentions question in three ways. First, it briefly describes a theory—intentions pessimism—that says great powers can rarely if ever be confident that their peers have benign intentions, because it is extraordinarily difficult for them to obtain the requisite information. Second, it argues that intentions pessimism matches up well with the historical record, and specifically, that it offers a compelling explanation of how great powers have actually thought about each other’s intentions over the past 150 years. Third, it applies intentions pessimism to the future of great power politics, predicting that the United States and China will each be uncertain about the other’s intentions, which will, in turn, cause them to compete for security and perhaps go to war.

Seeking support beyond alliance? Rethinking great power partner politics after the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Ding ◽  
Xuefeng Sun
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Self ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Since the end of the Cold War, establishing partnerships has been part and parcel of the grand strategy of great powers. The partners that great powers seek fall under the two categories of security partners and political-economic partners. Statistics show a significant variation in the proportions of great powers’ security partners. The authors argue that such variation is mainly determined by two factors, namely, great powers’ strategic threats, and their ways of maintaining national security [self-help or security-dependent (on the United States)]. Specifically, both the security-dependent great powers that are under China’s strategic threat and the self-help great powers that are under the US’s strategic threat have a higher proportion of security partners than the security-dependent great powers that are not under China’s strategic threat and the self-help great powers that are under China’s strategic threat. These findings will help to refine the current theories of great power politics.

IX. Projects for an Italian-led Balkan Bloc of Neutrals, September–December 1939

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-788 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Marzari
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
High Odds ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Balkan Countries ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
Balkan States

The countries of south-eastern Europe at the beginning of the last war were caught, as they themselves put it with as much self-deprecation as fear, between the Axis hammer and the Russian anvil. There was almost a touch of defiance in their description, as if the extraordinarily high odds against their survival confirmed in their eyes their claim to national independence and to world attention. In fact over the 20 years of their existence they had made a virtue of the politics of Kleinstaaterei, of the fact that their destiny was determined not by themselves but by the Great Powers surrounding them. The Balkan states were creatures of Great Power politics and, with an unerring appreciation of their dependence on powerful neighbours, they looked to London or Paris or Rome or Berlin or Moscow for sustenance and direction. And yet—and this is the crucial paradox—they continued to harbour, side by side with their acknowledged dependence on the Great Powers, a deeply felt longing for collective independence and for political self-sufficiency. This paper is concerned with the desperate attempts of the Balkan countries in the autumn of 1939 to harmonize these conflicting requirements by promoting collective independence in the form of a bloc of neutrals under the leadership of a Great Power.

The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789-1989

2006 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry ◽  
Mark L. Haas
Keyword(s):  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Great Power Politics
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