China's Ascent: Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics

China’s Ascent

Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics

EDITED BY

Robert S. Ross and Zhu Feng

Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON

Contents

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Robert S. Ross and Zhu Feng

Part I Structure, Power Transitions, and the Rise of China

1 Power Transition Theory and the Rise of China

Jack S. Levy

2 China’s Rise Will Be Peaceful

Zhu Feng

3 Parsing China’s Rise

Avery Goldstein

Part II International Institutions and the Rise of China

4 The Rise of China

G. John Ikenberry

5 Structures, Processes, and the Socialization of Power

Qin Yaqing and Wei Ling

Part III Chinese Policymaking and the Rise of China

6 From Offensive to Defensive Realism

Tang Shiping

7 Purpose Transitions

Jeffrey W. Legro

Part IV Responding to the Rise of China

8 Between China, America, and North Korea

Byung-Kook Kim

9 A Japanese Perspective on China’s Rise and the East Asian Order

Akio Takahara

10 The Consequences of China’s Economic Rise for Sino-U.S. Relations

Jonathan Kirshner

11 The United States and the Rise of China

Robert J. Art

Part V Conclusion

12 The Rise of China

Robert S. Ross and Zhu Feng

Contributors

ROBERT ART is Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations at Brandeis University and Director of MIT’s Seminar XXI Program.

AVERY GOLDSTEIN is Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate Director of its Christopher Browne Center for International Politics.

G. JOHN IKENBERRY is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

BYUNG-KOOK KIM is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for Peace Studies, Korea University. He has also directed the East Asia Institute, an independent think tank based in Seoul.

JONATHAN KIRSHNER is Professor of Government at Cornell University. He is coeditor of the book series Cornell Studies in Money.

JEFFREY W. LEGRO is Compton Professor of World Politics, Chair of the Department of Politics, and Co-Director of the Governing America in a Global Era Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia.

JACK S. LEVY is Board of Governors’ Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, President of the International Studies Association (2007–8), and past President of the Peace Science Society (2005–6).

QIN YAQING is Professor of International Studies at China Foreign Affairs University. He is also Vice President of the China National Association for International Studies.

ROBERT S. ROSS is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Group, U.S.-China Working Group, United States Congress.

AKIO TAKAHARA is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Politics at the Graduate School of Law and Politics, University of Tokyo.

TANG SHIPING is Se nior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

WEI LING is Associate Professor at China Foreign University. She is also Deputy Director of the East Asian Studies Center, China’s national coordinator for the Network of East Asian Think Tanks.

ZHU FENG is Professor of International Relations and Deputy Director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CISS), Peking University.

Acknowledgments

The editors are grateful to the Ford Foundation and to Andrew Watson, Ford Foundation China Representative, for the financial support that made this project possible. They are also grateful to the School of International Studies, Peking University, and to Ren Qimin of the Center for Peace and Development for additional funding. The School of International Studies provided critical staff support that contributed to the success of the conference.

Introduction

Robert S. Ross and Zhu Feng

This volume is a collaborative effort among Chinese, American, Japanese, and South Korean scholars to apply the theoretical international relations literature on power transitions to the contemporary dynamics brought on by the rise of China. Our objective is to understand the implications of the ongoing U.S.-China power transition for contemporary international politics.

The contributions to the volume do not reflect the perspective of a single theoretical tradition. Rather, the volume brings together the scholarship of specialists on various aspects of international politics to consider the U.S.-China power transition from multiple theoretical and national foreign policy dimensions. The authors do share an understanding that the direction of international politics and the behavior of states are not determined by a single variable and that the outcome of power transitions is not predetermined. This shared understanding of international politics and of state behavior extends to our perspectives on the dynamics of power transitions in general and to the specific dynamics of the U.S.-China power transition.

Power Transitions and International Conflict

Power transitions are among the most destabilizing events in international politics. Shifts in the distribution of power among the great powers, together with associated conflicts over the redistribution of the goods of the international system, have been recurring sources of great power conflict and of prolonged and destructive great power wars. The scholars in this volume recognize this reality and understand that the U.S.-China power transition will be characterized by significant economic and political conflicts of interest and persistent strategic competition. This is expected great power behavior during periods of stable distributions of power; it is even more so during power transitions.

Nonetheless, the participants in this volume also concur that war is not the inevitable outcome of great power transitions. Although the redistribution of great power capabilities may necessarily exacerbate conflicts of interest, this redistribution alone cannot determine the intensity or outcome of those conflicts, or whether there is a peaceful resolution of them. This is because the costs that great powers are prepared to incur, and thus the intensity and means with which they pursue their more expansive interests, are responsive to the particular international and domestic policy conditions during each transition. In this respect, despite recurring heightened conflict associated with power transitions generally, each power transition is a unique event. It reflects the particular historically bounded combination of multiple factors that bear on the behavior of great powers and on the sources of conflict and cooperation among them.

The chapters in this volume address various factors that combine to shape the behavior of the great powers involved in power transitions and that influence the severity of conflicts and the likelihood of a peaceful adjustment to the redistribution of power. They consider how these factors combine to create the unique dynamics of the U.S.-China power transition and the prospects for a peaceful transition.

The Structure of the Volume

The chapters in this volume divide into four parts. Part I considers the content of contemporary global and East Asian structures and their effect on the U.S.-China power transition. Part II addresses the potential role of international and regional multilateral institutions in mitigating the sources of instability in this power transition. The focus of Part III are the domestic sources of China’s evolving ambitions and its foreign policy behavior, the potential sources of policy change, and the resulting implications for China’s contribution to a stable power transition. The response of South Korea, Japan and the United States to the rise of China and the implications for the emerging regional and global orders and for the prospects for a stable power transition are dealt with in Part IV. The volume’s concluding chapter offers some preliminary findings regarding the sources and likelihood of a peaceful U.S.-China power transition.

The argument underlying Part I is that fundamental aspects of interstate behavior, including the causes and outcome of conflict, are shaped by circumstances common to all states, so that there are recurring aspects of power transitions that transcend time and space. The most fundamental element of this structural approach is the anarchic structure of the international system. Anarchy determines that states seek security through self-help mechanisms, including war, and that they are preoccupied with their power position relative to other countries. Anarchy leads states to focus on other states’ capabilities, not their intentions, in assessing threats. This creates the security dilemma, whereby what one state does to enhance its security contributes to another state’s insecurity. Anarchy thus explains why shifts in relative power can create insecurity and conflicts.

But the content of structure is not determined by anarchy, which is a constant in international politics. Other structural factors that shape the intensity and outcome of great power conflict include the polarity of the system, the geography of great power placement in the system, and the characteristics of weapons technologies in a particular era or region. Unlike anarchy, the precise effect of these factors varies, thereby making the nature of power transitions indeterminate. Polarity can influence threat perception, thus affecting security dilemma dynamics and balance of power politics; it therefore can influence the intensity of great power conflict associated with power transitions. Geography can influence great power conflict, despite the advent of high-technology warfare, by directly affecting the severity of threat perception and the likelihood of war. Mountains, water, climate (including deserts and permafrost), and access to natural resources continue to influence capabilities, threat perception, and great power allocation of strategic resources. Military technology is the third component of structure that influences the security dilemma and the course of great power politics. Nuclear weapons, for example, have had a fundamental impact on the character of international politics, including the role of force in resolving great power conflicts of interest. The offense-defense balance, reflecting the characteristics of weapon technologies and capabilities, can also affect the intensity of conflict and the propensity for war through their effect on the likelihood of arms races and crisis instability. In the context of anarchy, how these three factors combine in different historical and/or regional circumstances creates the particular characteristics of security dilemma dynamics and thus of the intensity of conflict associated with a power transition.

International structure influences great power competition, but multiple structures can exist simultaneously. In any particular era, the content of structure can vary depending on the arena of great power competition, reflecting the different reach of great powers across the globe. For example, in the contemporary era, the United States is a global power and China is a regional great power. In such circumstances, distinct global structures and regional structures can exist simultaneously, so that polarity can vary across regions, geographic circumstances will be regionally unique, and the prevalence of certain weapons systems can depend on regional circumstances, including geography. Insofar as great power competition can take place in different arenas simultaneously, the course of a power transition can reflect the combined effect of distinct global and regional structures on great power behavior.

All the chapters in Part I share this structural perspective. Jack Levy’s chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of factors that have determined historical variation in the occurrence of power transition wars in European history. He considers the relative importance of raw sources of power, such as population and GDP, and of technology and geography as sources of power transitions. He also considers the affect of the interaction between regional and global structures on power transitions and the implications for the U.S.-China transition occurring in a context of U.S. global dominance. Zhu Feng’s chapter places the U.S.-China power transition in the context of the unipolar global balance of power. It analyzes the constraints imposed by U.S. hegemony on China’s ability to challenge U.S. power through either internal or external balancing. Avery Goldstein’s chapter considers the influence of various aspects of both the global structure and the regional East Asian structure on China’s rising power strategy and on U.S.-China security dilemma dynamics and the corresponding prospects for stable regional balance of power politics. Taken together, these three chapters suggest that the particular global and regional structural context of the U.S.-China competition may facilitate a peaceful power transition.

The chapters in Part II reflect a shared understanding that the international sources of great power relations are not limited to intrinsic and immutable structural factors. This research indicates that the great powers can influence international politics insofar as they create and participate in international multilateral institutions that influence threat perception and constrain the use of force. These institutions thus influence the intensity and means with which rising powers pursue new ambitions.

International institutions are not unique to the contemporary era. The earliest institution of the state system is sovereignty, which was first established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia at the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War. Just as the norm of sovereignty constrains intervention in the domestic affairs of states, other institutions have contributed to the peaceful resolution of great power conflict. The nineteenth-century Concert of Europe was an international institution that contributed to negotiated solutions to great power conflicts and to the prolonged peace from the Napoleonic Wars to World War I. In the aftermath of World War II, the international system experienced the widespread growth of international institutions. Under U.S. leadership, the reach of international institutions has spread to nearly every facet of international security and economic affairs, and they have exercised unprecedented influence over the foreign policies of the advanced industrial economies.

Following the end of the Cold War and of the ideological and economic polarization of international politics, membership in the American-led institutional order spread throughout the globe and now all of the great powers are included in this order. Indeed, China is as much a participant in international global economic and security institutions as the United States. Moreover, regional powers have increasingly taken the initiative to develop local economic and security institutional frameworks. In East Asia, Chinese membership and even leadership of economic and security institutions are especially pronounced. Thus, the global and East Asian institutional orders are critical parts of the international environment that influence the course of the U.S.-China power transition.

John Ikenberry addresses the role of global multilateral institutions in constraining U.S. unilateralism and the use of force and in lessening Chinese threat perception, reducing the likelihood of a power transition war. Complementing Ikenberry’s focus on global institutions, Qin Yaqing and Wei Ling address the implications of Chinese participation in regional institutions for the power transition. They observe the impact of Chinese membership in East Asian security dialogues on Beijing’s readiness to seek negotiated consensus solutions to regional disputes. These two chapters suggest that not only has China become an engaged beneficiary of the contemporary institutional order and that it possesses an interest in maintaining and consolidating this order. Equally important, they argue that the combined effect of Chinese and American participation in global institutions and Chinese involvement in regional institutions can mitigate the competition inherent in the U.S.-China power transition.

Great power transitions create heightened competition over security; international institutions affect the intensity of the competition by constraining the use of force, influencing threat perception, and promoting peaceful resolution of conflicts of interest. But state-level variables can operate within certain international and regional structures and within the context of international institutions to contribute to the course of power transitions. This is the focus of the chapters in Part III.

Rising powers will develop more expansive ambitions. But neither the content of a rising power’s new ambitions nor the intensity of its dissatisfaction with a given order are predetermined. Rather, a rising power’s domestic policymaking environment can contribute to the extent of its demand for change and of its impatience for change. Domestic economic conditions can affect foreign policy behavior. On the one hand, prolonged economic success can result in foreign policy overconfidence and to expansive ambitions. On the other hand, prolonged economic decline can contribute to foreign policy belligerence. But economic factors can also contribute to foreign policy moderation, insofar as rising powers engaged in the early stages of economic development or experiencing economic instability may seek a peaceful international environment to enable allocation of resources to economic growth. Frequently, the critical variable affecting the impact of economic conditions on foreign policy is the rising power’s political system and the legitimacy of its leadership. Leaders in authoritarian states and in states in transition to a democratic system may be especially likely to engage in destabilizing foreign policy nationalism to promote their legitimacy and to preserve their political power.

Tang Shiping and Jeffrey Legro address particular domestic factors that can contribute to the intensity of a rising power’s determination to revise the international order. Tang argues that a fundamental determinant of the propensity for heightened conflict is the extent of leadership appreciation of the security dilemma and of the necessity for restraint in pursuing security. He examines the implications of the far-reaching ideological and political transformation in China following the death of Mao Zedong for China’s approach to national security and for the possibility of international conflict. He argues that contemporary China’s implicit appreciation of the security dilemma contributes to foreign policy moderation and a peaceful power transition. Legro maintains that all rising powers can choose among alternative strategies to achieve their unfulfilled ambitions and that their selections over time can be a function of the changing balance of forces among domestic policy coalitions. He argues that a critical factor affecting the emergence and persistence of a foreign policy coalition advocating a cooperative rising power strategy is the policy of the status quo power. From this perspective, he addresses the domestic sources of China’s historical policy transitions and the sources of its contemporary rising power strategy. Legro concludes with a discussion of how U.S. policy toward China can contribute to the consolidation of China’s contemporary foreign policy moderation.

Avery Goldstein and Jonathan Kirshner in his chapter in Part IV also consider the domestic sources of Chinese foreign policy. Goldstein considers how domestic instability, reflecting the uncertainties of economic development, could encourage China’s authoritarian government to pursue a belligerent nationalist policy in order to sustain its domestic political legitimacy, thus contributing to intensified U.S.-China conflict. Kirshner’s chapter considers how international economic instability could trigger the domestic economic instability that Goldstein considers a potential source of Chinese foreign policy nationalism and international instability.

Part IV considers how the behavior of other countries can shape Chinese behavior and the regional order, thus influencing the course of the power transition. Chinese foreign policy will inevitably reflect developments within China, but equally important will be the affect on Chinese behavior of the policies of other countries. Scholars have long recognized that foreign policies of other countries need to be responsive to the particular ambitions of a rising power. This is the familiar appeasement/containment dilemma: appeasement (or accommodation) of an ambitious rising power by a status quo power can elicit unconstrained ambition, but containment of a conservative rising power can also produce unconstrained ambition. Appeasement is best directed at a conservative rising power, while containment is the appropriate policy toward a highly ambitious rising power. But equally important in the development of the status quo state’s policy toward a rising power is its assessment of its own security interests. Appeasement is possible only to the extent that it does not compromise a country’s understanding of its vital interests. Thus, a country’s policy toward a rising power will necessarily combine consideration of its own security interests with the rising power’s ambitions. This process will affect the course of the power transition.

The chapters on the Korean, Japanese, and U.S. responses to the rise of China address how each country views its national interests in the context of China’s rising power and how its China policy contributes to the course of the power transition. These chapters also analyze how domestic factors in each country operate within these evolving structural conditions to contribute to policymaking. The inclusion of chapters on South Korean and Japanese policy reflects the understanding that secondary states can affect the course of power transitions. Secondary states’ maneuvering between the great powers can influence the process of accommodation and containment of a rising power and thus the prospects for a stable transition.

Byung-kook Kim’s chapter analyzes the evolution of South Korea’s strategic adjustment imposed by China’s emerging authority over the Korean peninsula. He observes the emergence of South Korean foreign policy instability and the erosion of its domestic foreign policy consensus in the context of its determined realignment between the great powers, reflected in its moderate policy toward North Korea and in its eroding alliance relationship with the United States. Akihara Takahara discusses the effect of the rise of China on Japanese security policy. Whereas South Korean realignment accommodates the rise of China, Japanese policy resists it. Takahara shows that Tokyo is adopting a more proactive defense policy by easing restrictions on its regional and global military activities and by enhancing its contribution to the U.S.-Japan alliance. He further considers the impact of the rise of China on trends in Japanese nationalism and the implications for the management of the rise of China.

Reflecting the importance of the U.S.-China relationship on the course of the power transition, Part IV includes two chapters on U.S. policy toward China. Jonathan Kirshner’s chapter analyzes the effect of the rise of the Chinese economy on the political economy of US.-China relations and its implications for conflict over trade and global sources of petroleum. He argues that these two issues should not contribute to excessive conflict. But Kirshner is more concerned by the potential implications of possible U.S. mismanagement of its economy, in particular the size of the federal budget deficit and the overleveraged dollar. A U.S. recession could undermine the country’s ability to contend militarily with the rise of China. It could also undermine China’s domestic economic prospects and thus contribute to a destabilizing nationalist foreign policy. Robert Art’s chapter addresses U.S. global and regional interests in the context of U.S.-China relations, and Washington’s ability to reconcile these interests with the rise of China and associated U.S.-China conflicts of interests. He suggests policies that have the potential to promote both a peaceful great power transition and American security. From a realist perspective, he is optimistic that the United States can accommodate key Chinese interests while protecting its own vital interests and maintaining a favorable regional balance of power.

The volume’s concluding chapter considers the prospects for a peaceful U.S.-China power transition. It considers how the many factors discussed in this volume either complement or offset each other to shape the particular dynamics of U.S.-China relations. Taking into account the impact of the global structure and the East Asian regional structure on security dilemma dynamics, the prominent role of international institutions in shaping U.S. and Chinese international behavior, the domestic sources and direction of contemporary Chinese foreign policy, and the foreign policies of the United States and other key states, it suggests that while the U.S.-China power transition will necessarily reflect heightened strategic competition over significant conflicts of interest, there is also the likelihood that China and the United States can avoid a destructive power transition war. Considering the historical record of great power transitions, this is an optimistic conclusion.

This volume offers only a preliminary judgment on the course of the U.S.-China power transition, and its cautious optimism is simply one of various possible perspectives on the transition. There are other perspectives, including more pessimistic and more strongly optimistic ones. Thus, scholarship in this volume does not present all perspectives on either theoretical or policy perspectives on the U.S.-China transition. But the contributors hope that this collaborative effort and its preliminary understanding of the U.S.-China transition will encourage further collaborative research into the dynamics of great power transitions generally and into the U.S.-China transition in particular.

Part I

STRUCTURE, POWER TRANSITIONS, AND THE RISE OF CHINA

CHAPTER 1

Power Transition Theory and the Rise of China

Jack S. Levy

Many scholars writing on the rise of China and its consequences for world politics in the twenty-first century attempt to ground their analyses in power transition theory.¹ This is not surprising, given the theory’s emphasis on international hierarchies, differential rates of economic development, power shifts, the transformation of the international order, and the violent or peaceful means through which such transformations occur. I argue that applications of power transition theory to the rise of China are compromised by the failure to recognize both the theoretical limitations of power transition theory and the contextual differences between a potential Sino-American transition and past power transitions. I give particular attention to the theory’s focus on a single international hierarchy and its lack of a conceptual apparatus to deal with global-regional interactions, which are important because China is more likely to pose a threat to U.S. interests in East and Southeast Asia than to U.S. global interests, at least for many decades. I summarize power transition theory, identify logical problems in the theory and empirical problems in its application to systemic transitions of the past, and address the relevance of the theory for analyzing the rise of China and its impact on the emerging international order of the twenty-first century.

Power Transition Theory: A Summary

Although one can find elements of power transition theory throughout the long tradition of international relations theory in the West, it was Organski and then Gilpin who first constructed systematic theories of power transitions.² Gilpin’s initial treatment was in many respects theoretically richer than Organski’s, but it was not followed by subsequent theoretical and empirical development, while Organski and subsequent generations of students went on to refine the theory, extend it to new empirical domains, and analyze its policy implications.³ Now, a half-century after Organski’s initial conception, power transition theory remains a thriving research program, its relevance enhanced by the end of the bipolar Cold War paradigm, the emergence of American hegemony, and the rise of China.

Organski developed power transition theory to correct for the deficiencies he saw in balance of power theory, as systematized by Hans Morgenthau and others.⁴ Organski rejected balance of power assumptions that equilibrium is the natural condition of the international system; that a parity of power promotes peace while a preponderance of power promotes war; and that concentrations of power generate counterbalancing coalitions and occasional counterhegemonic wars to restore equilibrium. He also argued that balance of power theory’s conception of power was excessively static, narrowly focused on military power and on the role of alliances in aggregating power against external threats, neglectful of the internal sources of national power, and insensitive to the importance of differential rates of growth among states.

Unlike balance of power theory’s assumptions that hegemonies rarely if ever form in international politics, Organski posits a hierarchical international system, with a single dominant power at the apex of the system and a handful of other great powers and larger numbers of middle and smaller powers. Organski and his colleagues emphasize that while the dominant power controls the largest proportion of resources in the system, it is not a hegemon because it lacks the coercive power to control the behaviors of all other actors. Dominant states can use their power, however, to create a set of global political and economic structures and to promote norms of behavior that enhance the stability of the system while at the same time advancing their own security and other interests.⁵

The system evolves with the rise and fall of states, their uneven growth rates driven primarily by changes in population, economic productivity, and the state’s political capacity to extract resources from society. Organski and his colleagues measure productivity in terms of GDP/capita. Their aggregate measure of power is the product of GDP and political capacity.⁶ If a great power increases in strength to the point that it acquires at least 80 percent of the power of the dominant state, it is defined as a challenger to the dominant state and to that state’s ability to control the international system.

The threat posed by a challenger is a function of the extent of its dissatisfaction with the existing international system. The dominant power, which plays a disproportionate role in setting up the system, is by definition a satisfied power. Most of the other great powers, and many middle and smaller states, benefit from the existing system and are satisfied states. They support the dominant state, ally with it,⁷ and help reinforce the international order that it created.⁸ One or two of the other great powers, along with many weaker states, may not share this satisfaction with the existing international system. They come to believe that the existing system, and the institutions and rules associated with it, provide a distribution of benefits that is unfair and that does not reflect their own power and expectations. Such states prefer to replace the existing system and its leadership. While most dissatisfied states lack the resources to ever pose serious threats to the dominant power and its system, the emergence of a dissatisfied great power might pose such a threat if it continues to grow in power.

A key proposition of power transition theory is that war is most likely when a dissatisfied challenger increases in strength and begins to overtake the dominant power.⁹ The probability of war is quite low before the challenger achieves parity, and it drops off sharply after the challenger has overtaken the dominant state and established itself as the new dominant power.

It is the combination of parity, overtaking, and dissatisfaction that leads to war, though power transition theorists have been inconsistent regarding the precise relationship among these key causal variables. In the most recent statement of the theory, it appears that dissatisfaction and parity each approximate a necessary condition for war between the dominant state and the challenger.¹⁰ The overtaking of the dominant state by a satisfied challenger will not lead to war (the U.S. overtaking Britain in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, for example),¹¹ and a dissatisfied state will not go to war until it reaches approximate parity with the dominant state.¹²

The importance of satisfaction, for theory as well as for policy, is illustrated by a comparison between the Anglo-American transition at the end of the nineteenth century and the Anglo-German transition a decade or so later. Each involved overtaking and parity, but the first transition was peaceful and the second was not. The key difference—from the perspective of power transition theory—is that the United States shared British political and economic institutions, liberal democratic culture, and the British vision of the desirable political, economic, and legal international order. The U.S. was a satisfied state and believed that its interests could be served by a change in the hierarchy within that system rather than a replacement of that system with a new order. British leaders understood what kind of order the United States was likely to construct when it ultimately achieved a dominant position, and they were willing to accept a somewhat diminished role within that order. In the Anglo-German transition, however, Germany was politically, economically, and culturally different than Britain, and had a different conception of the desirable international order. Thus Germany was a dissatisfied state. British leaders understood this, and consequently they were willing to make fewer compromises and to accept greater risks of war rather than accept a peaceful transition to a different international order in which British interests would be poorly served.¹³

Another important theme in power transition theory is that once the demographic, economic, and political conditions for power transitions are in place, neither outside actors nor external shocks can significantly affect the process of transition. In addition, war has only a temporary impact on long-term growth rates.¹⁴ Societies recover relatively quickly from war, usually within a generation, a pattern that Organski and Kugler describe as the Phoenix factor. War has an impact on the probability of future war, however, by increasing the dissatisfaction of the defeated state.¹⁵

The near irreversibility of transitions reflects power transition theory’s conception of power. Given a certain population, political capacity, and state of technology, growth is basically endogenous, and in the long term market economies with an efficient distribution of resources tend to follow similar growth trajectories, one reflected by an S-shaped curve. Growth starts off slowly, accelerates rapidly during a period of technological change, and eventually settles into a pattern of more modest but sustained growth. Societies with higher political capacity grow more rapidly than states with lower political capacity (above a certain GDP/capita), but the differences in GDP/capita diminish once economies reach a level of sustained growth.

The central variable is population, which provides a resource pool that can be utilized for a variety of purposes, including economic development and the development of military capabilities. As Tammen et al. argue, population is the sine qua non for great power status, and the size of populations ultimately determines the power potential of a nation. When societies with similar populations are at different stages of their growth trajectories, one will be dominant. When two countries with similar political capacities reach similar stages of growth, the one with a substantially larger population will dominate. The most dangerous situation, in terms of the likelihood of a major war, is one in which a dominant state has already achieved a position of stable but modest growth and is being overtaken by a rapidly growing, dissatisfied country with a substantially larger population.¹⁶

A key assumption here is that of the three key components of national power, population is the least subject to rapid change, either naturally or through governmental manipulation. While governments can intervene economically to enhance productivity and politically to enhance political capacity, it is harder for them to affect population growth rates, particularly in the short term. Consequently, societies with high populations will eventually overtake states with smaller populations, and that there is nothing that the smaller country can to do avoid this outcome. Thus, population has a critical impact on power in the long term; economic growth has a large impact in the medium term; and political capacity has its greatest impact in the short term.

Power transition theory provides a straightforward explanation for the long great power peace after World War II: the United States has been the dominant power, no other state has come close to parity, and consequently there has been no great power war, or even a substantial threat of one. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons have played a significant role in maintaining peace among the leading powers in the system, power transition theory argues that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is not a remedy for conflict. . . . Overtakings, dissatisfaction, and nuclear weapons do not mix without serious consequences.¹⁷

For power transition theory, the centrality of population, combined with endogenous growth theory and the hypothesis of convergence, has enormous implications for the Sino-American relationship. The substantial American advantage in economic productivity, defined in terms of GNP/capita, is only temporary, as is the current American dominance in the international system, given the fact that China’s population is four times larger than that of the United States. The question, according to power transition theory, is not whether China will eventually overtake the United States, since that is practically inevitable once China completes its modernization and moves up its growth trajectory,¹⁸ but rather when and with what consequences. Power transition theorists equivocate in their discussion of the timing of the transition, but not about the conditions determining whether the transition will be peaceful or warlike.

Power transition theorists argue that two of the three conditions for war (parity and overtaking) will be present in the U.S.-China relationship, and that the presence of nuclear weapons or other technologies will play a minor role at best in avoiding a catastrophic war. The key variable is the extent of China’s satisfaction with or grievances against an international order that the United States did much to shape and still has the power to influence. The primary determinants of Chinese satisfaction will be institutional similarity, economic interdependence, and American strategy. The more China adopts liberal democratic institutions, the greater its economic interdependence with the United States and other states in the global economy, and the more the United States acts to minimize Chinese grievances, the greater China’s degree of satisfaction with the system.¹⁹ As Tammen et al. argue, The reconciliation of preferences, the attainment of satisfaction within the international order, is the remedy.²⁰

The early stages of the power transition research program focused on the international system as a whole and on the relationship between the dominant power and rising challengers. In an important recent development, Douglas Lemke has extended the theory to regional systems, each with its own set of dominant powers, middle powers, and lesser powers, and each operating according to the same set of power dynamics that characterize the global system. Each of these regional hierarchies is nested within the global hierarchy. Lemke found that the same conditions of overtaking, parity, and dissatisfaction can account for variations in war in regional systems, particularly in the Middle East and Far East, and also in Latin America and Africa.²¹

Limitations of Power Transition Theory

With power transition theory, Organski provided an important alternative to balance of power as a theory of power dynamics in the international system. Subsequent extensions and refinements of the theory by Kugler, his students, and their associates have been a major intellectual contribution to the literature on international relations theory and international conflict in particular. Of the various international relations theories, power transition theory is probably the most widely used by scholars seeking to better understand the likely dynamics and consequences of the rise of China in the contemporary global system. The theory’s emphasis on the importance of the satisfaction/dissatisfaction variable in explaining whether international change is accomplished peacefully or with bloodshed seems quite plausible, and its policy implications provide a useful corrective to the hardline rhetoric by some American analysts.

Still, some aspects of the theory are misleading, and in other respects the theory does not provide a complete or fully accurate picture of the dynamics of the rise and fall of states. This is not the place for a thorough critique of power transition theory.²² It would be useful, however, to examine more thoroughly those aspects of the theory that are particularly relevant for analyzing the likely course of Sino-American relations over the decades to come. We begin with the theory’s conception of power, and in particular its emphasis on population as the sine qua non of national power capabilities. Next we argue that the theory’s emphasis on a single international hierarchy for great power relations is theoretically restrictive and historically inaccurate, and that an explanation of the rise and fall of great powers in the past needs to recognize multiple hierarchies—not only the global system, but also the European regional system, which has been neglected in existing treatments of regional hierarchies. We then turn to power transition theory’s view of the causes of war. We note its neglect of preventive logic as a possible mechanism leading from narrowing power differentials to war, as well as its downplaying of the possible deterrent effects of nuclear weapons on the outbreak of war. We question the argument that past great power wars have been driven primarily by competition for power and dominance in the global system, and argue instead that regional issues have played a critical role.

Power

Power transition theory posits that national power is a function of population, economic productivity, and the political capacity to extract resources from society and transform them into national power. Thus in most applications of the theory national power = population * GDP/capita * political capacity). One problem with the emphasis on population and GDP is that while GDP captures quantitative changes in the growth of the economy as a whole, it does not fully capture qualitative changes in the form of technological innovations that generate new leading economic sectors and trigger paradigmatic shifts in economic production.²³

Consider the last couple of centuries.²⁴ The first phase of the Industrial Revolution took place in Britain and emphasized textiles and iron production, while a second phase focused on the development of steam power and railroads. Leadership in the Industrial Revolution then shifted to the American and German economies and was based on steel production, chemicals, and electrification. Subsequently, new leading sectors involved automobiles, jet engines, and semiconductors, followed by the Information Revolution, with developments in computers and biotechnology. These shifting leading sectors roughly correspond with shifts in power in the international system.

In emphasizing the importance of industrialization in generating bursts of economic productivity for different states at different times, Organski and his colleagues acknowledge the role of technological innovation, but they do not give it sufficient prominence in their model. In addition, power transition theorists’ empirical focus on the last two centuries of the industrial era is too limiting. We can easily extend the theory back in time to earlier historical eras and incorporate preindustrial technological changes that have driven economic development. Relative economic productivity and growth grow out of comparative advantages of leading economic sectors. A more direct emphasis on leading sectors provides a more complete causal mechanism to explain growth trajectories, and a better early-warning indicator of significant shifts in those trajectories, than does power transition theory’s treatment of economic productivity.

New leading sectors, and the technological innovations upon which they are based, are generally difficult to predict, so that the extrapolation of current economic trends into the future is highly problematic. In the 1980s, when many were predicting a shift in economic power from the United States to Japan, the Information Revolution enhanced American economic dominance in a substantial way. This suggests that power transition theory’s prediction that rates of growth continue to level off in mature economies may not always be accurate, given the possibility of new innovations and the emergence of new leading sectors that propel growth. The relative strengths of the American and Chinese economies in the future, and thus the point of a future power transition, are likely to be affected by the location of new technological innovations and the strategies that states decide to adopt as well as by the expected path of current growth trajectories.²⁵

Although we lack a theory of the origins of technological innovation, many have argued that liberal democratic states—with their political openness and unrestricted