The United States, extraordinary rendition and the idea of great power responsibility

2013 ◽  
pp. 115-136
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great 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.

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.

Germany's relations with the United States and China from a strategic triangle perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Biba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Puzzle Piece ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Angela Merkel

Abstract As the Sino-American Great Power competition continues to intensify, newly-elected US President Joe Biden's administration now seeks to enlist the support of its allies and partners around the world. As Europe's largest economy and a, if not the, leading voice within the European Union, Germany represents an important puzzle-piece for Biden. But Germany, at least under outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel, has been reluctant to take sides. It is against this backdrop that this article looks into Germany's past and present trilateral relationships with the US and China through the theoretical lens of the so-called strategic triangle approach. Applying this approach, the article seeks to trace and explain German behaviour, as well as to elucidate the opportunities and pitfalls that have come with it. The article demonstrates that Germany's recently gained position as a ‘pivot’ (two positive bilateral relationships) between the US and Chinese ‘wings’ (positive bilateral relations with Germany and negative bilateral relations with each other) is desirable from the perspective of the strategic triangle. At the same time, being pivot is also challenging and hard to maintain. Alternative options, such as entering a US–German ‘marriage’ directed against China, are also problematic. The article therefore concludes that Germany has tough decisions to take going forward.

The World of Uncertainty: Is America Losing Its Leverage Towards a Looming New China–Russia Alliance?

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Vitaly KOZYREV
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
21St Century ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Window Of Opportunity ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Alliance Building

The recent deterioration of US–China and US–Russia relations has stumbled the formation of a better world order in the 21st century. Washington’s concerns of the “great power realignment”, as well as its Manichean battle against China’s and Russia’s “illiberal regimes” have resulted in the activated alliance-building efforts between Beijing and Moscow, prompting the Biden administration to consider some wedging strategies. Despite their coordinated preparation to deter the US power, the Chinese and Russian leaderships seek to avert a conflict with Washington by diplomatic means, and the characteristic of their partnership is still leaving a “window of opportunity” for the United States to lever against the establishment of a formal Sino–Russian alliance.

scholarly journals The Influence of Information Power Upon the Great Game in Cyberspace: U.S. Wins Over Russian Meddling in the 2018 Elections

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Schafer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Information Power ◽  
Power Operations ◽  
Great Game ◽  
The U.S

The 2018 U.S. pivot in information and cyberspace degraded Russian operations in the 2018 election. Following pervasive Russian information power operations during the U.S. 2016 elections, the United States progressed from a policy of preparations and defense in information and cyberspace to a policy of forward engagement. U.S recognition of renewed great power competition coupled with Russia’s inability to compete diplomatically, militarily (conventionally), or economically, inspires Russia to continues to concentrate on information power operations. This great game in cyberspace was virtually uncontested by the U.S. prior to 2017. Widespread awareness of Russian aggression in 2016 served as a catalyst which highlighted the enormity of Russian campaigns and the crippling constraints on U.S. information power. This catalyst pivoted the U.S. from a passive policy of preparations and defense in information and cyberspace to a policy of forward engagement that successfully attenuated Russian efforts in 2018. By examining information power from theory development and Russian practice to recent reports and primary sources we find that the U.S. demonstrated the capability and willingness to defend forward successfully during the 2018 elections. Going forward, the U.S. must continue and expand efforts to contest cyberspace and counter disinformation to secure our democracy and the U.S. 2020 presidential election.

Watching the Soviet Union Decline

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Relative Position ◽  
State Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Union Decline

Chapters 2 and 3 helped confirm that rising states support declining great powers when decliners can help rising states against other great power threats. In contrast, Chapters 4 and 5 assess the logic of rising state predation by examining the United States’ response to the Soviet Union’s decline in the 1980s and early 1990s. Chapter 4 first provides an overview of the Soviet Union’s waning relative position and discusses U.S. efforts to monitor the trend. Next, it reviews existing research on the course of U.S. strategy and relates this work to alternative accounts of rising state policy. The bulk of the chapter then uses extensive archival research to evaluate the factors central to predation theory and predict U.S. strategy given the argument. These predictions are analyzed in Chapter 5.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
Eastern Question

This introductory chapter outlines why the American response to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians offers such critical insights into the US rise to world power, its evolving relationship with Britain, and the development of ideas on humanitarian intervention and global order at the turn of the twentieth century. It introduces the Armenian question, setting it within the larger Eastern question, and explains why the Ottoman Empire became a target for outside intervention by the European great powers in the nineteenth century. It explains why the United States, which had traditionally avoided political entanglement in the Near East even while its missionaries established an exceptional role there, began to take a greater interest in the region as its emergence as a great power coincided with the first large-scale Armenian massacres.

Britain and decolonization in an Era of Global Change

2017 ◽  
pp. 64-84
Author(s):  
Sarah Elizabeth Stockwell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Informal Empire ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

This chapter considers processes of decolonization in Britain’s ‘empires’, incorporating discussion not just of the key dynamics and manifestations of decolonization in the colonial empire in India, Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, but also in Britain’s residual ‘informal’ empire in the Middle East, and in the ‘old’ Commonwealth countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. The chapter argues that decolonization across these different contexts was driven by geo-political forces operating across the European empires, as the international order was reconfigured by two world wars, tilting power away from Britain and other European imperial powers. Stockwell nevertheless identifies elements of British imperial exceptionalism. She suggests that these were not to be found, as contemporaries liked to claim, in the form of a British liberal imperialism. Rather, Britain, which was at the centre of an empire larger than any other, retained a semblance of great power status, shaping British relations with the United States and Britain’s ambitions to exercise influence after empire.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document