Great Power Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

For centuries, scholars have noted the international importance of powerful states. Today scholars differentiate international systems according to the number of great powers. Most scholars agree about how great power should be measured and which states are likely to be great powers in the coming decades. Debate centers on why individual great powers rise and fall and on how the rise of new great powers will affect international conflict and cooperation.

The Importance Of Great Powers

According to structural realists, great powers matter for three reasons. First, as Kenneth N. Waltz explains in Theory of International Politics (1979), in the absence of an international sovereign, powerful states “set the scene of action for others as well as for themselves” (p. 72). In other words, as Thucydides noted in his account of the Athenian conquest of Melos in 415 BCE, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (History of the Peloponnesian War, bk. 5). The suffering caused by powerful states can be deliberate or inadvertent. Great powers frequently conquer and coerce weak states. In addition, they often seem like the proverbial bull in a china shop—insensitive to the damage they do.

Second, as Waltz explains, “Great power gives its possessors a big stake in their system and the ability to act for its sake” (1979, 195). Given international anarchy, there is no guarantee that great powers will accept this role or, if they do so, that their approach to collective goods problems will be satisfactory. Power is not the same as control. But powerful states are the actors best situated to address collective goods problems such as “the four ‘p’s’—poverty, population, pollution, and proliferation” (Waltz 1979, 209).

Third, in pursuing their interests and molding the international system to their liking, great powers often threaten other states, which respond by trying to balance their power. Thucydides noted this phenomenon in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), when the Athenian conquest of Melos stoked Sparta’s conflict with Athens. Together, the temptation to use power and the inability to foresee the consequences of its application have led scholars to characterize the actions, interactions, and fates of powerful states as tragic or paradoxical.

Structural realists are not alone in seeing great powers as the main actors on the international stage. For neoliberal scholars such as Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, constraining great powers and helping them solve the security dilemma is essential to global governance. According to hegemonic stability theorists such as Charles Kindleberger, a robust international economic system requires a powerful state willing to establish and enforce economic rules and pay a disproportionate share of the costs.

Polarity And The Rise And Fall Of Great Powers

Because individual great powers have the capability both to wreak havoc and to spearhead collective efforts, international conflict and cooperation are strongly affected by how many great powers exist in a particular era. Scholars distinguish among systems of three or more great powers (multipolarity), two great powers (bipolarity), and one great power (unipolarity). Within each system, individual great powers may rise and fall.

What causes great powers to rise and fall is a matter of debate. Some scholars, such as Amy Chua, argue that states become great powers when they espouse certain political, social, or cultural norms such as tolerance. By contrast, Robert Gilpin, George Modelski, and William R.Thompson argue that certain states initiate waves of technological innovation that crest with military and industrial dominance and then dissipate with emulation. Other scholars, such as Paul Kennedy, argue that great powers fall because they overreach.

Measuring Power And Anticipating The Rise Of New Great Powers

According to Waltz, which states are great powers is more or less self-evident, with states ranked according to “how they score on all of the following items: size of population and territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and competence” (1979, 131). Since the decline of the Soviet Union, the United States has been far ahead of all other states in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), military spending, and worldwide military and diplomatic presence.

Although realists are often described as only or primarily concerned with military power, most realists actually measure power at least partly in terms of economic capability, which can be converted into military, diplomatic, and other capabilities as needed. But even economic power does not tell the whole story. Today the European Union (EU) surpasses the United States in GDP. But the EU does not have the political capability either to speak with one voice or deploy its military under one authority. Similarly, although the Chinese and Indian economies are growing rapidly, the former is more likely to face internal constraints than the latter, due to its aging population.

By reflecting on international history and sifting through the economic, military, political, and other capabilities and attributes of contemporary states, most analysts have come to the conclusion that, over time, the United States will lose its unipolar status. This could occur in one of three ways: through the absolute decline of the United States (the erosion of its economic and military capabilities); through the relative rise of today’s middle powers (their economic growth and commensurate political and military involvement); or through some combination of the two. When and how this will occur are open questions.

According to realists, in the nuclear era, the rise of new great powers is likely to be met with less military resistance than the rise of great powers in the conventional era, when wars related to power transition were common. This is because the declining great power, the United States, is a nuclear state, and all of the middle powers that could rise in the medium term— China, the EU/Germany, India, Japan, and Russia—either have nuclear weapons or could quickly develop them. Thus, like the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war, the old and new great powers are likely to limit their military encounters to proxy wars on the periphery of international politics, that is, in the contested territories of the world.

According to liberals and constructivists, the relations of twenty-first century great powers will be most strongly affected not by polarity or nuclear weapons but by their internal attributes (for example, their democratic or authoritarian institutions) and by the norms and institutions of the emerging international system.

Bibliography:

Adams, Karen Ruth. “Attack and Conquer? International Anarchy and the Offense-Defense-Deterrence Balance.” International Security 28, no. 3 (Winter 2003/2004): 45–83.
Booth, Ken, and Nicholas J.Wheeler. Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Chua, Amy. Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall. New York: Random House, 2009.
Gilpin, Robert. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Ikenberry, G. John. “The Rise of China and the Future of the West.” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 1 (January/February 2008): 23–37.
Kennedy, Paul M. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House, 1987.
Kindleberger, Charles. The World in Depression 1929–1939. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
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Modelski, George, and William R.Thompson. Leading Sectors and World Powers: The Coevolution of Global Economics and Politics. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
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Waltz, Kenneth N. “The Emerging Structure of International Politics.” International Security 18, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 44–79.
Wohlforth, William C. “The Stability of a Unipolar World.” International Security 24, no. 1 (Summer 1999): 5–41.

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