The Power to Divide

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Alliance Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Power Politics

This book examines the use of wedge strategies, a form of divisive statecraft designed to isolate adversaries from allies and potential supporters to gain key advantages. With a multidimensional argument about the power of accommodation in competition, and a survey of alliance diplomacy around both world wars, the book artfully analyzes the past and future performance of wedge strategy in great power politics. It argues that nations attempting to use wedge strategy do best when they credibly accommodate likely or established allies of their enemies. It also argues that a divider's own alliances can pose obstacles to success and explains the conditions that help dividers overcome them. The book advances these claims in eight focused studies of alliance diplomacy surrounding the world wars. Through those narratives, the book adeptly assesses the record of countries that tried an accommodative wedge strategy, and why ultimately, they succeeded or failed. These calculated actions often became turning points, desired or not, in a nation's established power. For policymakers today facing threats to power from great power competitors, the book argues that a deeper historical and theoretical grasp of the role of these wedge strategies in alliance politics and grand strategy is necessary. The book drives home the contemporary relevance of the analysis with a survey of China's potential to use such strategies to divide India from the United States, and the United States' potential to use them to forestall a China–Russia alliance, and closes with a review of key theoretical insights for policy.

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.

Canada as a peninsula state: Conceptualizing the emerging geopolitical landscape in the 21st century

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-362
Author(s):  
Tsuyoshi Kawasaki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
Arctic Ice ◽  
Rising Power ◽  
The Rise Of China

An unprecedented geopolitical landscape, driven by the reduction of Arctic ice and the rise of China as “a Polar power,” is emerging. What does this mean for Canada, and how should Canada respond to it in a systematic and strategic manner? We need a coherent and holistic conceptual framework to answer these key policy questions. Yet, the current literatures do not offer us such a concept. In an attempt to fill the void, this article presents a vision that conceives of Canada as “a peninsula state” exposed to great power politics in its vicinity, involving China as a rising power as well as the United States and Russia as resident powers. Furthermore, it argues that Canada should be prepared for three kinds of strategic dynamics as it enters the game of great power politics: theatre-linkage tactics and wedge-driving tactics vis-à-vis China and Russia, as well as quasi-alliance dilemma with the United States. Moreover, in order for Canada to cope with this complex international environment effectively, this article calls for creating a cabinet-level unit to coordinate various federal bureaucracies’ foreign and security policies.

China and the Emergence of Bangladesh: Role of Great Power Global Perceptions

1983 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.N. Mahanty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
The United States ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The Real ◽  
The World

China's attitude to the Bangladesh Question has evoked a great deal of interest among China watchers. Its professed aim to end exploitation all over the world while extending assistance to West Pakistani exploiters expectedly provoked both academics and activists. Here an attempt is made to examine China's strategic thinking on a vital region, that is South Asia, and the real-politik that pushes into irrelevance the revolutionary pledges. China's failure to forestall the birth of Bangladesh forced it initially to fabricate a fake rationale and finally to reverse, through quick recognition, a hostile population into a friendly nation. History ends where politics begins; history, however, explains the present South Asian political scenario—the emerging triangle of China-Pakistan-Bangladesh, favourably disposed to the United States, while fetching sustenance from an anti-Indian prejudice.

Selective Accommodation in Great Power Competition and U.S. Grand Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-210
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Short Circuit ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
Hinge Points

This chapter examines a pair of scenarios built around hinge points in current U.S. grand strategy. The scenarios envision surprising departures from current alignment trends and prevailing precepts in U.S. foreign policy. One explores how China might undermine the deepening Indo-American partnership by accommodating India. The other explores how the United States might short-circuit the emerging Russia–China alliance by accommodating Russia. These scenarios show how the book's theoretical constructs may describe and explain future developments. They also illuminate potential changes in great power politics that today's orthodoxies in U.S. grand strategy make hard to imagine, let alone think about carefully. The chapter then concludes with commentary for policy practitioners seeking to make selective accommodation work.

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.

Differing Global and Regional Perceptions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukon Huang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
The West ◽  
World Views ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World

Deng Xiaoping’s death in 1997 marked the end of an era and provides the starting point for a discussion about public perceptions. Today’s China emerged from his reforms, which opened the country to the outside world. Views of outsiders have shifted markedly over the past several decades. The majority of Americans see China’s rise as a threat to their country’s global stature, but Europeans are less preoccupied with power politics. Both groups wrongly see China as the leading economic power contrary to the rest of the world which see the United States. Popular feelings toward China vary widely across and within regions; they are influenced by proximity and colored by history and ideology. This chapter discusses the geopolitical factors that shape these opinions in the West, among the BRICS, in the developing world, and among China’s neighbors, as well as China’s efforts to influence these opinions.

Will Japan Become a Global Power?

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-351
Author(s):  
Richard Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The World ◽  
International Systems

AbstractMany have argued that Japan will soon emerge as one of the world's greatest powers. During the nineteenth century, Japan had pressed for pre-eminence in Asia and beyond. Does this earlier military expansion and more recent economic dynamism indicate Japan's desire and capacity to play the role of a great power? Japan's regional economic and diplomatic activity, her prominence in such international bodies as the IMF and the World Bank, her status as a leading creditor and technological innovator, all suggest that she does. Just as Britain and the United States created and dominated international systems when they were leading creditors, perhaps Japan in its turn will become a global power.

The Influence of Economists on Public Attitudes toward Government

2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott A. Beaulier ◽  
William J. Boyes ◽  
William S. Mounts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Government Intervention ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Capita

One of John Maynard Keynes's most quoted statements (1935, p. 383) is: … the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. The number of economists per capita in the United States has risen in the past few decades. At the same time, the public has become more comfortable with big government. This raises intriguing questions regarding just how economists are influencing public opinion; we are left wondering whether economists are instilling a desire in the public for more government or whether, in opposition to Keynes's statement, economists are losing influence. In this paper, we provide some answers. We find that the increased role of economists in society and in policymaking has led to an increase in favorable attitudes toward government intervention.

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