Competition vs. legitimation: grand strategies of rising powers
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Competition vs. legitimation: grand strategies of rising powers Ziyuan Wang1 Received: 21 June 2020 / Accepted: 5 July 2020 © The Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS), Peking University 2020
Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers, by David M. Edelstein, Cornell University Press, 2020, 220 pages, $22.95 (Paperback) Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts, by Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, Cornell University Press, 2018, 276 pages, $45.00 (Hardcover) When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order, by Stacie E. Goddard, Cornell University Press, 2018, 264 pages, $45.00 (Hardcover) With the current hegemon—the United States—being inclined to disengage from many of its international commitments and focusing instead on geopolitical competitions, the fate of world order has become a pressing concern for policymakers and scholars. The three works under review consider the grand strategies of rising powers, which could play a pivotal role in reshaping world order. The authors share the assumption that great powers undergoing significant growth in material power will seek greater ambitions abroad. From this standpoint, they seek to explain rising states’ strategies, dominant powers’ responses, and patterns of strategic interactions amid power transitions. Rising Titans, Falling Giants is concerned with the strategic choices of rising powers (risers) with regard to declining powers (decliners). When Right Makes Might highlights the strategies used by rising powers to legitimize their claims and how those strategies temper the resistance of status quo defenders. Over the Horizon pays close attention to the strategic interactions between rising powers and dominant states. By and large, all three authors view power transition as a situation riddled with perils and challenges. That being said, the authors adopt differing perspectives on how a rising power seeks to maximize its benefits in the uncertain situation of power transition. Joshua Shifrinson proceeds from the assumption that under the anarchical conditions of * Ziyuan Wang [email protected] 1
Institute of International Relations, China Foreign Affairs University, Beijing, China
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China International Strategy Review
international politics, states with vast material capabilities—great powers—are prone to zero-sum competitions. In view of this, he vividly terms his theory on whether rising states prey upon or support declining powers as “predation theory”. The theory aims to address when a rising power is anxious to revise the status quo at a declining power’s expense when the former seeks support from the latter to bolster its geopolitical influences, and the level of effort rising powers devote to pursuing either competitive or cooperative strategies. The key independent variable Shifrinson identifies is the declining state’s strategic value to the riser, which is a function of four factors: (1) the polarity of the international system (whether there are
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