Unipolarity, status competition, and great power war

World Politics

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 28-57

  Wohlforth, William C ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPETITION (ECONOMICS); POLITICAL POWER; WAR;

EID: 67650809682     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0043887109000021     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. Ronald L. lammen, Jacek Kugler, Douglas Lemke, Carole Alsharabati, Brian Efird, Allan C. Stam III, A. F. K. Organski Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century (New York: Chatham House, 2000), 9.
2. The increased importance of explaining dissatisfaction in a variety of theoretical literatures is noted and documented in Jason W. Davidson, "The Roots of Revisionism: Fascist Italy, 1922-29," Security Studies 11 (Summer 2002).
3. Robert Jervis, "Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 2001," American Political Science Review 91 (March 2002), 11.
4. For theory and evidence from two contrasting perspectives, see R. Ned. Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
5. and Barry O'Neill, Honor, Symbols and War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).
6. Harsanyi, Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and Scientific Explanation (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1976), 204.
7. For reviews, see Stephen Peter Rosen, War and Human Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005);
8. Robert H. Frank, Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest fir Status (New York: Oxford. University Press, 1985);
9. idem.,
10. Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess (New York: Free Press, 1999);
11. idem.,
12. "Positional. Externalities Cause Large and Preventable Welfare Losses," American Economic Review 95 (May 2005);
13. Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Pantheon, 1994);
14. and C. Loch, M. Yaziji, and C. Langen, "The Fight for the Alpha Position: Channeling Status Competition in Organizations," European Management Journal 19 (February 2001).
15. For example, E. Hopkins and T. Kornienko, "Running to Keep in the Same Place: Consumer Choice as a Game of Status," American Economic Review 94 (September 2004).
16. F. Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
17. Schweller, "Realism, and the Present Great-Power System.: Growth and Positional Conflict over Scarce Resources," in Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael. Mastanduno, eds., Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 29.
18. Martin Shubik, "Games of Status," Behavioral Science 16 (1971). As Frank (fn. 5, 2005) stresses, positionality does not mean that zero-sum competitions are inevitable-it merely means that there is a large element of social comparison in the utility derived from a good.
19. This is reflected in power transition and most other hegemonic war theories, as well as in the bargaining literature on war. See, for example, Jacek Kugler and Douglas Lemke, "The Power Transition Research Program.: Assessing Theoretical, and Empirical Analysis," and Karen Rasier and William R. Thompson, "Global War and the Political Economy of Structural Change," both in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000);
20. and Robert Powell, "Bargaining Theory and International Conflict," Annual Review of Political Science 5 (2002).
21. 11R. Ned. Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), chap. 3, esp. 99-104.
22. Lebow (fn. 3), chaps 7-9;
23. Daniel. S. Markey, "The Prestige Motive in International. Relations" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2000);
24. and David Sylvan, Corinne Graff, and Elisabetta Pugliese, "Status and Prestige in International Relations" (Manuscript, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, 1998).
25. For general, reviews, see Jeremy Black, ed., The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987);
26. Evan Luard, War in International Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986);
27. and Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1995).
28. Kennedy, "The First World War and the International Power System," in Stephen Miller, ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
29. Ivo N. Lambi, The Navy and German Weltpolitik, 1862-1914 (Winchester, Mass.: Allen and Unwin, 1984).
30. Keir A. Lieber, "The New History of World War I and What It Means for International Relations Theory," International Security 32 (Fall 2007);
31. Lebow (fn. 3), chap 7.
32. J. M. DiCicco and J. S. Levy, "Power Shifts and Problem Shifts? Journal of Conflict Resolution 43 (December 1999), 690.
33. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 198, 186. There is a similar discussion in Tammen et al. (fn. 1), 9-10.
34. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49 (Summer 1995). Needless to say, many scholars do not accept the bargaining literature's construal of the puzzle of war.
35. See, for example, Jonathan Kirshner, "Rationalist Explanations for War?" Security Studies 10 (Autumn 2000).
36. Fearon (fn. 18)., 390.
37. Dan Reiter, "Exploring the Bargaining Model of War," Perspectives on Politics 1 (March 2003).
38. See, for example, Stacie Goddard, "Uncommon Ground: Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy," International Organization 60 (Winter 2006).
39. Robert Powell, "War as a Commitment Problem," International Organization 60 (Winter 2006).
40. As Powell (fn. 22) notes regarding these two basic explanations, "Ultimately one may have to judge which mechanisms seem to provide a more compelling account of a set of cases. These judgments will have to await a better understanding of commitment problems" (p. 194).
41. This is implicit in both power transition and most other hegemonic war theories, as well as in the bargaining literature.
42. For extensive reviews, see sources in fn. 5, especially Frank. (2005). On status as an end in itself,
43. see, for example, K. Fliessbach, B. Weber, P. Trautner, T. Dohmen, U. Sunde, C. E. Elger, A. Falk, "Social Comparison Affects Reward-Related Brain Activity in the Human Ventral Striatum," Science 318 (November 23, 2007). Relevant here are findings from the empirical literature inspired by relative deprivation theory.
44. See M. Olson, C. P. Herman, and M. P. Zannan, eds., Relative Deprivation and Social Comparison (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986);
45. and the discussion in Rupert Brown, "Social Identity Theory: Past Achievements, Current Problems and Future Challenges," European Journal of Social Psychology 30 (November 2000), 748-50.
46. Jonathan Mercer, "Anarchy and Identity," Internationa/ Organization 49 (Spring 1995);
47. Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, "Identity as a Variable," Perspectives on Politics 4 (December 2006).
48. Henri Tajfel, Human Group and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 251.
49. For a review, see Brown (fn. 25).
50. The original tripartite division of strategies is discussed in Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, "An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict," in William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel, eds., The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (Monterey, Calif: Brooks/Cole, 1979);
51. on recent research, concerning this choice, see Brown (fn. 25);
52. Leonie Huddy, "From Social to Political Identity: A Critical Examination of Social Identity Theory," Political Psychology 22 (March 2001);
53. and Jacques E. C. Hymans, "Applying Social Identity Theory to the Study of International Politics: A Caution and an Agenda" (Paper presented at the convention of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, March. 24-27, 2002).
54. Hymans (fn.28), 11
55. For SIT-based findings related to the "similar but upward" comparison bias, see Rupert Brown and Gabi Haeger, "Compared to What? Comparison Choice in an Inter-nation Context," European Journal of Social Psychology 29 (February 1999), 31-42, esp. 39.
56. Hymans (fn. 28).
57. Weber, "Class, Status, Party," in R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset, eds., Class, Status and Power, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1966);
58. Thorsten Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Theory of Institutions, rev. ed. (1899; New York: New American Library, 1953 ).
59. See, for example, Hopkins and Kornienko (fn. 6);
60. B. Cooper, C. Garcia-Pefialosa, and P. Funk, "Status Effects and Negative Utility Growth," Economic Journal'111 (July 2001);
61. K. A. Brekke, R. B. Howarth, and K. Nyborg, "Status-seeking and Material Affluence: Evaluating the Hirsch Hypothesis," Ecological Economics 45 (June 2003).
62. Evan Luard, Types of International Society (New York: Free Press, 1976).
63. See M. B. Brewer and R. J. Brown, "Intergroup Relations," in D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, and G. Lindzey, eds., Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 2:554-94. These core propositions are supported throughout the theoretical and empirical literatures in sociology and psychology.
64. See, for example, R. V. Gould, Collision of Wills: How Ambiguity about Social Rank Breeds Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); and, for general discussions,
65. Joseph Berger and Morris Zelditch, Jr., eds., Status, Power, and Legitimacy: Strategies and Theories (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1998).
66. The basic idea comes from G. E. Lenski, "Status Crystallization: A Non-Vertical Dimension of Social Status," American Sociological Review 19 (August 1954).
67. Johan Gaining applied it to interpersonal and intergroup conflict; Gaining, "A Structural Theory of Aggression," Journal of Peace Research 1, no. 2 (1964).
68. This core prediction mirrors the standard rendition of balance of power theory, except the causal mechanism driving it centers on threats to self-identity rather than on physical security. Original theoretical works on the balance of power were clear that the theory was about status as well as security. See the discussion in Michael Sheehan, Balance of Power: History and Theory (London: Routledge, 1996), chap. 2.
69. Exemplars of the last wave of status-war research include Maurice A. East, "Status Discrepancy and Violence in the International. System: An Empirical Analysis," in J. N. Rosenau, V. Davis, and M. A. East, eds., The Analysis of International Politics: Essays in Honor of Harold and Margaret Sprout (New York: Free Press, 1972);
70. Michael D. Wallace, War and Rank among Nations (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973);
71. and Manus I. Midlarsky, On War: Political Violence in the International System (New York: Free Press, 1975).
72. D. S. Geller, "Explaining War: Empirical Patterns and Theoretical Mechanisms," in M. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies II (Anne Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 437.
73. Ibid..
74. See the reviews presented, in Kugler and Lemke (fn. 10);
75. DiCiccio and Levy (fn. 16);
76. and Reiter (fn.20).
77. Wohlforth, Richard Little, Stuart Kaufman, David Kang, Charles Jones, Victoria Tin-Bor Hui, Arthur Eckstein, Daniel Deudney, and William Brenner, "Testing Balance of Power in World History," European Journal of International Relations 13 (June 2007);
78. Kaufman, Little, and Wohlforth, eds., The Balance of Power in World History (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007).
79. David C. Kang, "Stability and Hierarchy in East Asian Internationa Relations, 1300-1900 CE," in Kaufman, Little, and Wohlforth (fn. 41).
80. Kaufman and Wohlforth, "Balancing and Balancing Failure in Biblical Times: Assyria and the Ancient Middle Eastern System, 900-600 BCE," in Kaufman, Little, and Wohlforth (fn. 41); Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook, Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000);
81. Mario Liverani, Prestige and Interest: International Relations in the Near East, ca. 1600-1100 B.c. (Padovo: Sargon, 1990).
82. As John Gerring notes, "Case studies enjoy a natural advantage in research of an exploratory nature"; Gerring, Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 39. Precisely these qualities may also limit their general inferential utility.
83. GDP estimates are from both Angus Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy, 1820-1991 (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and. Development, 1995);
84. and Paul Bairoch, "International. Industrialization Levels from 1759 to 1980," Journal of European Economic History 11 (Spring 1982);
85. iron-steel from National Material Capabilities dataset v. 3.02, at http://www.correlatesofwar.org. The construction of these data is discussed in J. David Singer, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey, "Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820-1965," in
86. Bruce Russett, ed., Peace, War, and Numbers (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972).
87. Baumgart, The Crimean War, 1853-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),16.
88. Ample documentary evidence for this is presented in David M. Goldfrank, The Origins of the Crimean War (London: Longmans, 1994);
89. and William E. Echard, Napoleon III and the Concert of Europe (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), chap. 2.
90. Echard (fn. 47), chaps. 1-2. For notes by the tsar explicating his reasoning,
91. see A. M. Zaionchkovskiy, Vostochnaia Voina [The Eastern War], 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1908-13), vol. 1, Prilozheniia, 357-58.
92. V. N. Vinogradov, "Nikolai I v'krimskoi lovushke,'" Novaia i Noveishaia Isotiriia 34 (1992).
93. On the earlier literature, see Brison D. Gooch, "A Century of Historiography on the Origins of the Crimean War," American Historical Review 62 (October 1956);
94. and Gooch, ed., The Origins of the Crimean War (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1969);
95. for the later literature, invaluable guides are Goldfrank (fn. 47); David Wetzel, The Crimean War: A Diplomatic History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985);
96. and Norman Rich, Why the Crimean War? A Cautionary Tale (Hanover and London: University Press of America, 1985).
97. Sylvan, Graff, and Pugliese (fn. 12) make a powerful case for this point, citing relevant documents.
98. 52Tsar Nicholas, quoted in Rich (fn. 50), 47.
99. Though he expected Britain to acquiesce, he asserted that its refusal to do so "would not stop me. I shall march along my own path, as Russia's dignity demands." Quoted in Goldfrank (fn. 47), 170.
100. Goldfrank (fn. 47), 8-10, chap. 2.
101. And a lot to gain. See the documents collected in Hermann Wentler, Zerstörung der Großmacht Rußland? Die britischen Kriegsziele im Krimkrieg [The Destruction of Russia as a Great Power? British War Aims in the Crimean War] (Göttigen and Zürich: Vandenhoek and Rupprecht, 1993).
102. There is, however, strong evidence for the salience of imperfect information.
103. Russia was forced to accept clauses on the deployment of its navy on the Back Sea that had the effect of reducing its status to a level comparable to Turkey's. See Winfried Baumgart, The Peace Of Paris, 1856: Studies In War, Diplomacy, and Peacemaking (Oxford : Clio Press, 1981).
104. A majority of scholars writing during the later cold war era assumed that security imperatives worked for cooperation; and hence that competitive behavior had to be explained by other factors. See, for example, Stephen M. Walt, "The Case for Finite Containment: Analyzing U.S. Grand. Strategy," International Security 12 (Summer 1989);
105. and Barry Posen and Stephen Van Evera, "Defense Policy of the Reagan Administration: Departure from Containment," in Steven Miller, ed., Conventional Forces and American Defense Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). In addition, many analysts view the later cold war as a weak two-power concert, threatened intermittently by ideology and domestic impulses.
106. See, for example, Roger E. Kanet and Edward A. Kolodziej, eds., The Cold War as Cooperation (London: Macmillan, 1991); and Allen Lynch, The Cold War Is Over-.Again (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992).
107. See Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire (Chapel. Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), chaps. 2-5;
108. and William. C. Wohlforth, Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions in the Cold War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press 1993), chaps. 3-5.
109. Zubok (fn. 59), chaps. 7-8; Wohlforth (fn. 59), chap. 7. Memoirs that attest to the importance of "equality and equal, security" include Alexander Alexandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do GorbachevaVosponimaniia [From Kollontai to Gorbachev: Memoirs] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1994);
110. G. M. Kornienko, Kholodnaia voina-svideltel'svto ee uchastnika [The Cold War-A Participant's Testimony] (Moscow: Mezhdundarodnye otnosheniia, 1994);
111. Georgy Arbatov, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Times Books, 1993);
112. and Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence (New York: Random. House, 1995).
113. Most responsible for this finding are the Carter-Brezhnev Project, sponsored by the Center for Foreign Policy Development, at the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, Brown University; the National Security Archive; and the Cold War International History Project, which declassified scores of important documents and organized a series of critical oral history conferences. A key publication of the project is Odd Arne Westad, ed., The Fall'of 'Détente: Soviet-American Relations in the Carter Years (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997).
114. Westad's summary of the new evidence on the Horn conflict is typical: "The main foreign policy aim for Soviet involvement in Africa was to score a series of inexpensive victories in what was perceived as a global contest with Washington for influence and positions in the Third World." "Moscow and the Angolan Crisis, 1974-76:
115. A New Pattern of Intervention," Cold War International. History Project [CWIHP] Bulletin 8-9 (Winter 1996-97), 21.
116. Zubok (fn. 59), 249.
117. Ibid., chap. 7, esp. 252.
118. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 148.
119. Ibid., annex 1, p. 2.
120. Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America's Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1983), 101.
121. The best example is Brezhnev's "condominium, ploy" in the Yom Kippur War of 1972. Compare the Soviet and American views as reflected in Viktor Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin during the Yom Kippur War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), chaps. 5-7;
122. and Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 299. For the similar logic behind U.S. rejection of "condominium, offers" concerning Angola,
123. see Brzezinski (fn. 64), 180-81.
124. See, for example, Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington D.C: Brookings Institution, 2003).
125. Quote from Office of the Secretary of Defense/Net Assessment Summer Study, August 1, 2001, "Strategies for Maintaining U.S. Predominance," discussed in Niall Ferguson, "This Vietnam Generation of Americans Has Not Learnt the Lessons of History," Daily Telegraph, March 10, 2004, 19; on the 1991 Defense Guidance Planning document,
126. see Barton Gellman, "Keeping the U.S. First: Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower," Washington Post, March 11,1991, Al.
127. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl Press, "The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy," International Security 30 (Spring 2006).
128. See, for example, Andrei P. Tsygankov, Russia's Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, );
129. Peter Hays Gries, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004);
130. C. Raja Mohan, Impossible Allies: Nuclear India United States and the Global Order (New Delhi: India Research Press, 2006);
131. William. C. Wohlforth, "The Transatlantic Dimension," in Roland Danreuther, ed., European Union Foreign and Security Policy: Towards a Neighbourhood Strategy (London: Routledge, 2004);
132. and Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007).
133. See Leif-Eric Easley, "Multilateralism., not Multipolarity: China's Changing Foreign Policy and Trilateral Cooperation in Asia," International Herald Tribune, March 29, 2008; the article reports on research conducted on official Foreign Ministry sources.
134. Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China's Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2005).
135. "China Eyes the Hegemon," Orbis 49 (Summer 2005), 406.
136. See, for example, Goldstein (fn. 73).
137. Johnston,"Is China a Status Quo Power? "International'Security27 (Spring2003);
138. David C. Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
139. Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, "Shortcut to Greatness: The New Thinking and the Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy," International Organization 57 (Winter 2003).
140. Ibid., 95, 96.
141. Andrew Bennett, "Trust Bursting Out All Over: The Soviet Side of German Unification," in Wohlforth, ed., Cold War Endgame (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
142. See Andrei P. Tsygankov, "Vladimir Putin's Vision of Russia as a Normal Great Power," Post-Soviet Affairs 21 (April-June 2005).
143. Kugler and Lemke (fn. 10), 131.