scholarly journals Revising the Status Quo of Revisionism, Grand Strategy, and International Order

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onur Erpul
Keyword(s):  
International Order ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
The Status

Grand Strategy and Technological Futures

2021 ◽  
pp. 705-720
Author(s):  
Robert G. Cantelmo ◽  
Sarah E. Kreps
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Change ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Technical Innovation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Returns On Investment ◽  
Benefit And Risk

How do we understand the consequences of technical innovation for grand strategy? We argue that technology has an indirect, but significant impact on how states formulate and implement strategic priorities. This process of updating is dynamic and iterative as grand-strategic change is incremental rather than a wholesale abandonment of the status quo. New capabilities may produce shifts to state cost, benefit, and risk considerations and produce a corresponding adjustment to grand strategy. Technological innovation may also serve as an intermediate end unto itself. State confidence in positive returns on investment in research and development will produce a corresponding emphasis on innovation as a matter of national policy. We evaluate these claims by applying them to three new and emerging technical innovations: precision-guided munitions, robotic autonomy, and computing.

scholarly journals Revising order or challenging the balance of military power? An alternative typology of revisionist and status-quo states

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (04) ◽  
pp. 689-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Cooley ◽  
Daniel Nexon ◽  
Steven Ward
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
International Order ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Important Variation ◽  
Dimensional Property ◽  
The Status ◽  
Property Space ◽  
Distribution Of Power

AbstractUnimensional accounts of revisionism – those that align states along a single continuum from supporting the status quo to seeking a complete overhaul of the international system – miss important variation between a desire to alter the balance of military power and a desire to alter other elements of international order. We propose a two-dimensional property space that generates four ideal types: status-quo actors, who are satisfied with both order and the distribution of power; reformist actors, who are fine with the current distribution of power but seek to change elements of order; positionalist actors, who see no reason to alter the international order but do aim to shift the distribution of power; and revolutionary actors, who want to overturn both international order and the distribution of capabilities. This framework helps make sense of a number of important debates about hegemony and international order, such as the possibility of revisionist hegemonic powers, controversies over the concept of ‘soft balancing’, and broader dynamics of international goods substitution during power transitions.

scholarly journals Challenging the liberal order: the US hegemon as a revisionist power

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1335-1352
Author(s):  
Steve Chan
Keyword(s):  
Decisive Role ◽  
International Order ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Transition Theory ◽  
Power Transition Theory ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Rising Power ◽  
Trump Administration

Abstract Current discourse on International Relations conflates international order and the interstate distribution of power. Many studies fail to clarify the concept of international order or to provide systematic empirical analysis that compares states' conduct in relation to this order. The prevailing tendency relies instead on rhetorical assertion or definitional fiat to attribute revisionist and status-quo motivations to different countries. For example, power-transition theory claims that rising states are typically revisionist, whereas established states are committed to the status quo. This article presents a contrarian view, arguing that the dominant or established state can be a revisionist. This state is not forever committed to those rules and institutions of international order that it has played a decisive role in fostering. Conversely, a rising state is not inevitably bent on challenging the order that has enabled its ascendance. Revisionism is thus not unique to a rising power; moreover, this state is not destined to be a challenger to international order and an instigator of systemic war as typically depicted in the current literature. I advance these propositions in the context of recent conduct by China and the US, suggesting that whereas China has become less revisionist over time (even while its power has increased), the US has become more so especially during the Trump administration. The major impetus challenging the liberal international order has come more from domestic sources in the West than from China.

scholarly journals The Polar Silk Road and China's role in Arctic governance

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Heljar Havnes
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
International Order ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Status ◽  
Recent Developments

The People's Republic of China (PRC) wants to become a key regional actor in the Arctic. PRC's underlying priority in the region is gaining access to commercial opportunities from trade and natural resources. To this end, PRC is building its domestic capacities for research and commercial development in the Arctic, increasing its involvement in multilateral forums on Arctic governance and deepening ties to Arctic nations, especially Russia.Attitudes towards PRC among Arctic nations are diverging, but Beijing generally faces high levels of skepticism and opposition to its Arctic involvement, explicitly grounded in perceptions of PRC as a state undermining the rules-based international order and potential military build-up in the high north.The analytical framework in this article builds on an outline authored by Exner-Pirot in 2012 (Exner-Pirot, 2012) to detail the current schools of thought within Arctic governance, and builds on it by including more recent developments in Arctic governance, incorporating the updated Arctic policies of most Arctic countries and connecting it to PRC.This article contends that Beijing wants to change the status quo of Arctic governance and shift it towards a more accommodating approach to non-Arctic states. This article finds, based on the stated Arctic strategies of the eight Arctic states and PRC, that there are different views on Arctic governance where Arctic countries for the most part indicate an openness to a Chinese entry into the Arctic, albeit in diverging ways. This creates a complex governance scenario for PRC to navigate as it seeks to become a key Arctic player

scholarly journals Globalization, international mobility and the liberal international order

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1559-1577
Author(s):  
Jeannette Money
Keyword(s):  
International Order ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
International Mobility ◽  
World War ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

Abstract Since the Second World War, globalization has been underpinned by a liberal international order, a rules-based system structured around the principles of economic interdependence, democracy, human rights and multilateralism. However, the relationship between international mobility and the liberal international order (LIO) is contested. In the article, I disaggregate ‘international mobility’ into three regimes: the travel regime, the voluntary (labour) migration regime, and the refugee regime—each governed by distinct norms and operating procedures. I outline the characteristics of the LIO that pertain to international mobility and provide evidence to demonstrate that none of the three dimensions of international mobility—travel, migration, and asylum—reflects these characteristics. Given the LIO principles enumerated above, the exclusion of international mobility from the LIO is surprising. I survey the scholarship on the LIO and international mobility and argue that the exclusion of international mobility from the LIO rests on benefits provided to core states by the status quo ante governing international mobility. That is, the status quo ante permits countries of destination to determine the level and type of cross-border mobility. Thus, international mobility continues to be underpinned by the play of state preferences rather than the principles of the LIO. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to shape these norms and operating procedures in ways that reinforce the status quo.

Grand Strategy in a Fractured Marketplace of Ideas

2021 ◽  
pp. 656-672
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Drezner
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Marketplace Of Ideas ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Policy Elites

In theory, grand strategies should benefit from a robust marketplace of foreign policy ideas, in which experts can critique and improve upon the status quo. There is growing evidence, however, that in practice this marketplace has shifted in ways that make the sustainable articulation of grand strategies more difficult. This chapter reviews these shifts and considers how they weaken the ability of foreign policy elites to influence grand strategy. The erosion of trust in expertise, increase in political polarization, and weakening of legislative interest in grand strategy have degraded the ability of experts to proffer new ideas and critique alternatives. These trends ensure that the lifespan of each grand strategy has been shortened, reducing their utility.

Not Quite the Same as It Ever Was

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Wohlforth
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Peer Status ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Economic Output ◽  
The Status ◽  
Dominant State ◽  
Hegemonic Transition

The chapter addresses the claim that rising powers will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the current order and establish new rules using the classical Gilpinian framework as well as more recent rise-and-decline scholarship. It argues against this view and points to a more nuanced position: a harder-to-manage world has arrived, but the essential structural imperatives that have operated for twenty years are likely to remain. The chapter grounds this argument in the near certainty that all-out systemic war is off the table as a mechanism for hegemonic transition; the fact that the rising challenger to the system’s dominant state is approaching peer status on only one dimension of state capability, gross economic output; and the historically unprecedented degree of institutionalization in world politics coupled with the central role institutions play in the dominant power’s grand strategy. Each change favors the status quo states and makes revisionism harder.

Grand Strategy and the Challenge of Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 522-538
Author(s):  
William D. James
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Change ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Measuring Change ◽  
The Status ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

Why do some states persist with grand strategies that have become excessively burdensome? Generations of great powers have become overstretched by squandering resources in areas of peripheral importance, instead of cutting their losses and focusing on core interests. This chapter explores the incentives, barriers, and enablers of grand-strategic change. It first offers a definition of grand strategy, before outlining a two-tiered framework for measuring change. The chapter then examines the structural incentives for altering a state’ grand strategy, as well as the psychological, cultural, organizational, and domestic impediments. Short of a catastrophic strategic shock, grand-strategic change is rare. It is possible, however, given the right systemic conditions, as well as the presence of change agents and a viable alternative to the status quo.

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