Weak States and Spheres of Great Power Competition

Hanna Samir Kassab

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367505837
• eBook ISBN: 9781000082333
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Public Law
• Index: Law

This book explains the development of the international system's present-day balance of power by exploring three central questions: (1) Under what conditions has the international system order evolved from a unipolar system to the current multipolar system? (2) What are its major states? (3) How do weak powers affect great power competition?

It puts forward the following hypotheses: (1) if China and Russia are expanding their military, political, and economic influence into weaker states globally, then the unipolar American order is unraveling; and (2) if the international system is multipolar, then great power balancing may enhance international security. However, balancing may be made difficult because of weak state aid-seeking behavior. When weak states engage competing great powers, they become spheres of competition. This book delves into these states. Whether in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, East Asia, or Eastern Europe, great powers hope to establish some control over weaker units for security, economic, and at times, prestige purposes.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science and IR, security studies, and IPE, as well as members of the think tank community and policy analysts.

1 Introduction

This book analyzes the evolution of the international system from American unipolarity to the beginning of multipolarity with the inclusion of great power competition for control over weak states. The aim of this book is to document present-day international order. Three central questions follow: (1) Under what conditions has the international system order evolved from a unipolar system to the current multipolar system? (2) Who are the major states? (3) How do weak powers affect great power competition? This book puts forward the following hypotheses: (1) if China and Russia are expanding their military, political, and economic influence into weaker states globally, then the unipolar American order is unraveling; and (2) if the international system is multipolar, then great power balancing may enhance international security. However, balancing will be made difficult because of weak state aid-seeking behavior. When weak states engage competing great powers, they become spheres of competition for these great powers. Weak state behavior may increase global influence for challenger states, and thus alter the structure of the international system. This book then discusses shifts in the international order, the rise of new powers, and their competition for influence for smaller/weaker countries.

Under conditions of survival-seeking behavior, balance of power alignment will maintain state survival within the changing global order. Great powers will guard their autonomy and mutual respect for declared spheres of influence, but this will be made difficult because of weak state behavior. This book argues that the international system is transforming, from unipolar to multipolar. China is setting the foundations to replace the United States as world hegemon by developing relationships with weaker states. Russia does not present such a systemic challenge, but its sizable military presents a threat to the European status quo. Ukraine, the Baltics, and other weaker units may experience increased Russian pressure. Although these changes are nothing to fear, states must prepare for them. Changes will require states to respect certain spheres of influence and to practice disciplined restraint. However, the presence of a great many weak states will significantly complicate matters. Weak states, as they seek aid, invite great powers into their autonomous areas. This competition now forms the international system in transition as global dominance is at stake.

States seeking security and survival within anarchy form the structure of the international system and the balance of power. This book assesses the argument that today’s system is multipolar. The United States is still the most powerful actor by far in terms of the power: military, economic and reputation or soft. Other actors, such as Russia and China, are rising, but their fate as great powers remains unknown given their inherent systemic economic vulnerabilities, that is Russia’s overreliance on oil and gas and China’s uncertain economic and political situation. However, these emerging powers are still challenging the United States.

The following episode provides an interesting account of the described dynamic. In August 2017, China released a statement in relation to the ongoing tension between the United States and North Korea. The statement warned the United States that it would respond militarily to any invasion:

China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten U.S. soil first and the U.S. retaliates, China will stay neutral.… If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.

(Denyer and Erickson 2017, Washington Post)

While the conflict is between the United States and North Korea, China has the most to lose from a pro-west or neutral North Korea (second only to the Kim Dynasty). There are two main reasons. First, China will be made more insecure if there is a war, given ensuing political instability and an expected refugee crisis. Second, China would lose an essential buffer state and gain yet another prospective enemy on its border. This new state, if allied with the United States through a puppet regime, would aim to contain Chinese ambitions even more. If China is indeed a revisionist power, we can expect a rejection of any attempt to contain it. Resistance in the form of the above official statement is expected.

In the above episode, China is defending its interests in terms of power and survival as a revisionist power. The United States is doing the same as a status quo hegemonic power by trying to defend the international system from a perceived belligerent power. North Korea, more so its regime, is also trying to survive in its current political state. In effect, together, we see the traditional example of balance of power. According to Realist theories, the balance of power is a mechanism for great power survival. It is assumed that states are power accumulators/defenders, so conflicts over these resources are to be expected. If states are equally powerful, or, if states do not want to risk war,¹ we can expect states to pursue other options over war. The balance of power is therefore the pathway to international security. However, this book will argue that the influence of weak states greatly complicates great power balancing. Each chapter explores the security behavior of weaker states as they invite competing great powers into their borders.

This book’s aim is to describe the current international system to understand the competition over weak states. States seem to be moving away from liberal strategies and complex interdependence mechanisms and embracing conflict. After thirty years of United States hegemony defined by the free movement of goods, finance, and people, major states such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, are seeking their own global hegemony. This book describes the foreign policy strategies of these states in their regions as they seek to protect their interests through the projection of power. The United States is reacting to these movements and is moving away from hegemonic behavior and prioritizing its own survival. Although hegemonies benefit from creating and maintaining the international system, they are also weakened by it in a relative fashion. This is because hegemonies are not only costly, but also encourage free riders who may eventually become emerging great powers, and, ultimately, revisionist hegemonic challengers. Bearing this in mind, any foreign policy grounded in morality will ultimately serve as an undermining force. No longer can hegemonic powers bailout the system and act in moral terms and we may be seeing this in the contemporary Trump administration.

The international system’s balance of power: an overview

The balance of power can help us to understand the changing international order, from unipolar to multipolar. It has been and continues to be the foundation for international stability, trade, monetary exchange, and global human interaction and travel. Without the balance of power providing a check on state power ambition, the globalization experiment could quickly come to an end. The world benefits from the presence of nuclear weapons given the expense of war. The potential for extreme destruction by nuclear weapons, means that their mere presence benefits the world as a deterrent from war. Although a precarious balance, nuclear weapons make war too expensive and diplomacy cheaper and more attractive. States resort to diplomacy to solve differences because there are major difficulties keeping war limited, not exploding onto nuclear fronts. This has not always been the case. World War I was a fatal explosion of conflict stemming from conflict over interest since the last Napoleonic War that birthed the ever-expanding German Empire. Among other options, war remain an expensive yet fruitful option (for the winner at least), and completely disastrous for the loser. This section seeks to highlight a few theoretical innovations derived from the study of the international system’s balance of power. In doing so, we will try to understand the mechanisms by which states seek survival outside of internal balancing, the building of arms in a state. Defining the balance of power is essential to understand the complications emerging from weak state grand strategy. In other words, weak state grand strategy (security behavior) destabilizes the balance of power.

Balance of power

A logical beginning to any scholarship in International Relations and the balance of power would be the work of E. H. Carr. Carr understands world politics to be a struggle between those states that have power and those states without power; the haves and have nots. Most interesting are those circumstances of stagnating status quo powers versus rising powers (Carr 1978, 214). Carr here does not discuss balancing, but diplomacy and appeasement, in an attempt to avoid war; or at least balance those choices: force and appeasement. He writes:

… the defense of the status quo is not a policy which can be lastingly successful … the realist view of peaceful change in an adjustment to the changed relations of power; and since the party which is able to bring most power to bear normally emerges successful from operations of peaceful change, we shall do our best to make ourselves as powerful as we can.

(Ibid., 222)

Carr understands that power is necessary to protect interests and position. Within the perpetual struggle to maximize power is the inherent need to protect it. Therefore, peaceful change is better than war according to Carr. In other words, “… peaceful change can only be achieved through a compromise between the utopian conception of a common feeling of right and the realist conception of a mechanical adjustment to a changed equilibrium of forces” (ibid., 223).

From the same Classical Realist perspective, Hans Morgenthau defines the balance of power as:

The aspiration for power on the part of several nations, each trying either to maintain or overthrow the status quo, leads of necessity, to a configuration that is called the balance of power and to policies that aim at preserving it.

(Morgenthau 1985, 187)

According to Morgenthau, the power of one state must be checked against the power of another to maintain stability. Through diplomacy, states can create alliances to combat or curb imperialist practices of a third state. Alliances are the “most important manifestation of the balance of power” (ibid., 1). Through defeat, one state could be potentially annexed to its victor, increasing its power and influence relative to other states. The balance of power tries to: “maintain the stability of the system without destroying the multiplicity of elements composing it” (ibid.). In this way, a variety of independent states can exist, protecting and representing the interest of diverse peoples. As a result, the practice “… signifies stability within a system composed of a number of autonomous forces” (ibid., 188). Gärtner builds on Morgenthau’s definition of alliances saying these are:

… formal associations of states bound by the mutual commitment to use military force against non-member states to defend member states’ integrity. Alliances call for the commitment of all participating states to take effective and coercive measures the use of military force, against an aggressor.

(Gärtner 2001, 2)

In an environment of anarchy, power is an essential force that protects a state’s right to exist independent of foreign forces, prevents the rise of global empires, and prevents war between states.

Moving from Classical Realism to Structural Realism, Kenneth Waltz in Theory of International Politics agrees with Morgenthau’s conception of the balance of power as a force that guarantees global security. According to Waltz, sovereignty and autonomy as essential to states bent on protecting their independence, its ability to

… decide[s] for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems … States develop their own strategies, chart their own course, make their own decisions about how to meet whatever needs they experience and whatever desires they develop.

(Waltz 2010, 96)

Balancing or bandwagoning with a powerful state is a form of external balancing which enhances survival for that state. Balancing is usually a strategy chosen by stronger powers, whereas bandwagoning conversely is for the weak. Regardless, the strategy of choice boils down to the state’s need to survive given the threat of a growing power. In a system that forces states to help themselves (self-help), the balance of power brings assurances of increased security to states facing threats to survival. Such an arrangement allows for stability in a system defined by confrontation, conflict, and anarchy.

Walt builds on previous work, looking at alliances created through responses to threats (Walt 1985). Like Waltz, Walt illustrates that balancing is done by great powers to curb the expansion of other great powers. The reason the United States sided with China in the 1970s was to balance against the Soviet Union, which was more powerful than China at the time. For example, in the 1970s the United States sided with China to check the power of an expanding Soviet Union (ibid., 6). Bandwagoning is alliance behavior usually reserved for the weaker states. Walt lists several factors that may influence a state’s decision to balance or bandwagon. These include aggregate power, proximity, offensive capability, and offensive intentions (ibid., 9–13).

Randall Schweller, in his article “Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing,” describes non-balancing behavior such as buck-passing, appeasement, engagement, distancing, hiding, and bandwagoning as a form of great power behavior. These behaviors may also be known as underbalancing during times of systemic instability, that is, when revisionist powers are seeking to overturn the system. Specifically, underbalancing may occur when

… the state does not balance or does so inefficiently in response to a dangerous and unappeasable aggressor, and the state’s efforts are essential to deter or defeat it. In this case, the underbalancing state brings about a war that could have been avoided or makes the war more costly than it otherwise would have been.

(Schweller 2004, 168)

The article goes on expands to explain the domestic factors that result in underbalancing, a dangerous strategy for all states involved. This book will argue the danger of underbalancing as a force which may bring war if states do not pursue the correct strategies.

John J. Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics also discusses a variety of strategies states use, not only to survive, but to dominate as regional hegemons. This book on Offensive Realism takes the notion of the zero-sum game of international politics to a new level. Mearsheimer claims that:

status quo powers are rarely found in world politics, because the international system creates powerful incentives for states to look for those opportunities to gain power at the expense of rivals, and to take advantage of those situations when benefits outweigh the costs.

(Mearsheimer 2001, 21)

All states are thus revisionist. Given this, it can be assumed that all states are revisionist by nature. Such a system is in constant flux as balance is rarely achieved.

This book builds on contemporary balance of power research. For instance, Brooks and Wohlforth (2016) and O’Hanlon (2019), admit multipolarity but they recommend that the United States not retreat from world order. The United States still possesses many levers of military, economic and soft power. They warn retrenchment would hurt power projection. The authors Both Brooks and Wohlforth (2016) and O’Hanlon (2019) recommend that the United States remain globally engaged as a way to protect interests and position. Richard Haass in his book “A World in Disarray” (2017), provides an excellent overview of this transition, recommending multilateral bargaining as the United States can no longer support the international system. This leads to the arguments made by Thomas Wright (2017). He argues that the world order is actually regional orders supported by the United States. The rise of China and Russia is directly challenging American influence in these regional orders. However, the United States, as the founder of the liberal ideas that support the various regional orders, still plays an important role in protecting American influence and interests. Like Haass and Wright, Henry Kissinger (2014) explores the evolution of world order, emphasizing not only critical material understandings of power but ideational as well. He argues that the balance of power undergirds world order.

This book also discusses state strategies within the balance of power. Crawford (2011) recommends driving a wedge between alliances to preserve domination, especially weaker partners. Selective accommodation through bribery may help split potential external balancing efforts. On the other hand, Izumikawa (2018) recommends binding, bribing members of one’s alliance “to maintain or enhance an ally’s loyalty to their alliance” (110). Binding may ensure that weak states’ behavior reflects the great power sponsor. This book will illustrate this further, as weak states tend to break balance of power expectations. Effort must be put into maintaining...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• PART I: Great powers and the balance of power
• PART II: Weaker states and non-state actors: spheres of great power competition
• Bibliography
• Index