Military Strategy of Great Powers

Managing Power Asymmetry and Structural Change in the 21st Century

Håkan Edström, Jacob Westberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000438673
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book explores the military strategies of the five system-determining great powers during the twenty-first century.

The book's point of departure is that analyses of countries' defence strategies should acknowledge that states come in various shapes and sizes and that their strategic choices are affected by their perceptions of their position in the international system and by power asymmetries between more and less resourceful states. This creates a diversity in strategies that is often overlooked in theoretically oriented analyses. The book examines how five major powers – the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France and Russia – have adjusted their strategies to improve or maintain their relative position and to manage power asymmetries during the twenty-first century. It also develops and applies an analytical framework for exploring and categorising the strategies pursued by the five major powers which combines elements of structural realism with research on power transition theory and status competition. The concluding chapter addresses questions related to stability and change in the present international system.

This book will be of interest to students of strategic studies, foreign policy, and International Relations.

1 The diversity of great powers’ strategies

DOI: 10.4324/9781003157113-1

Contrary to mainstream research informed by structural realism, this book is based on the claim that analyses of defence strategies should acknowledge that states come in different shapes and sizes and that their perceived interests and choices of strategic means and ways are affected by power asymmetries between more and less resourceful states. In earlier studies, we have explored the strategic adjustments during the past two decades by both small states and middle powers (see Edström et al. 2019; Edström and Westberg 2020a; 2020b). In this book, we turn our attention to how a more resourceful category of states, the ‘system determining states’ – the superpowers and great powers – have adjusted their strategies to manage the power asymmetries in the international system of the twenty-first century.¹ For reasons presented in Chapter 2, we argue that the present international system consists of one superpower – the United States (US), one emergent potential superpower – China and three great powers – the United Kingdom (UK), France and Russia. All five states are included in this study.

The collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR) left the US as the world’s sole superpower. According to one contemporary observer, Charles Krauthammer, the emerging post-Cold War order was a ‘unipolar moment’. However, according to Krauthammer, this did not mean that the US was now free to ‘come home’ and focus on other issues than power competition and wars. Instead, it continuously had to provide international leadership in the struggle against new emerging strategic threats related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the rise of several so-called ‘Weapon States’, exemplified by Iraq, Libya and North Korea (Krauthammer 1990). Prominent researchers using the theoretical prism of structural realism argued that this unipolar moment would be brief and replaced by a bi- or multipolar order with competing great powers (Mearsheimer 1990; Layne 1993; Waltz 1993). At the end of the first decade of the post-Cold War era, William Wohlforth (1999) instead argued that the unipolar order could be both durable and peaceful if the US continued to pursue its policy of preponderance and international engagements. The debate on the stability of the present unipolar system and the US’s ‘best strategy’ has continued during the first decades of the twenty-first century without resulting in any consensus among scholars.²

The lack of consensus in the debate on the unipolar moment is not surprising – the study of international politics and strategy has always been characterised by diverging views within and between competing theoretical perspectives. However, a consequence of the continued focus on the stability of the unipolar system and the US’s strategies is that questions related to other major powers’ responses to unipolarity have received less attention. Moreover, even when strategies of ‘secondary great powers’ have been addressed, the arguments are generally based on the behaviour of states in previous bi- or multipolar systems or theoretical assumptions, rather than the actual strategies and behaviour of great powers in the present unipolar system. Furthermore, analyses of great powers usually treat these states as a single category of states, neglecting differences in relative power, status and position in the present system.

In contrast, we do not expect that changes in the distribution of power among the most resourceful states in the international system will provide the major powers with identical structural incentives and opportunities. Instead, differences related to the distribution of power and relative positional rank will provide the major powers with different strategic opportunities and priorities. We see three main reasons for this. First, a system with only one superpower makes it necessary to separate the strategies of the unipolar power from the strategies of the other system-determining states. The unique position of an established unipolar power means that it can only improve its relative position by trying to achieve hegemony, a move that, if successful, would threaten all other states’ autonomy and change the non-hierarchical nature of the international system. In maintaining its position as the sole superpower, the unipolar power, therefore, has incentives and options that are unique for its position as the sole superpower, which separates it from the other system-determining states. Moreover, the analysis of the strategies of the ‘second-ranked’ great powers, must take the strategies of the first ranked states into account.

Second, if we are correct in describing the present international system as a 1+1+3 system, China holds a second unique position as an emerging potential superpower, which also gives it structural incentives that are different from all other powers when it comes to improving or maintaining its relative position. Third, we will also argue that there are important differences between the three great powers, France, Russia and the UK, relating to their position in the system and their general views regarding the present liberal international order. Using a distinction between status quo (or satisfied) and revisionist (or dissatisfied) powers, we argue that states are also affected by how they appreciate their present position in the system and how they relate to the status quo.

How a specific state perceives its relative position is likely to be influenced by this state’s position in the previous system. For Russia, even a recognised position as a great power within the present unipolar system represents a loss in rank as compared to its superpower position in the bipolar system of the Cold War era. This makes Russia a potential revisionist power, likely to practice unilateral or collective counter-balancing strategies towards the sole remaining superpower. For China, its present position is higher regarded in comparison to previous positions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its economic development has benefitted from the liberal economic order created by the US. However, China may still have greater ambitions, and its attitude towards the present system may change. France and the UK, on the other hand, had lost their status as first ranked states during the first part of the twentieth century and belonged to the winning side in the Cold War. Arguably, these two states can be assumed generally supportive of the liberal post-Cold War order that emerged after the implosion of the USSR, acting as status quo powers in relation to the system and bandwagoning with the US. However, if the sole superpower were to pursue unilateral strategies that are perceived to threaten their vital interests, France and the UK might instead turn to balance strategies, and then practice various forms of hard and soft balancing in cooperation with other states.

Studying the strategies of ‘the big five’, we focus on two interconnected levels of strategy, which may, at an aggregated level, be referred to as ‘defence strategy’. Defence strategy is defined as an interconnected set of ideas on how politically defined strategic ends should be achieved through a combination of alignment strategies and suitable strategic ways of developing and employing military means. Alignment strategies refer to different ways of interacting on a political level with other states and organisations to promote the state’s interests relating to security, influence or status. This aspect of strategy is a part of states’ external efforts to promote their perceived interest. Examples of alignment strategies are the balance of power, bandwagoning, isolation and hedging. Military strategy concerns the creation, direction and use of military force. This aspect of strategy focuses on states’ internal efforts to promote their interest by developing and using their military resources. Diplomatic and economic strategies, which do not concern questions related to military power, are not included in this definition of defence strategy.

Systematic comparative empirical studies on major powers’ strategic adjustments in the international system in the post-Cold War era are very rare.³ With this study, we aim to contribute to research in two main ways. First, we intervene in the debate on the stability of the present unipolar system by offering an analytical framework and an empirical approach for exploring and categorising the actual strategies for security, influence and status pursued by the major powers in the international system of the twenty-first century. In doing so, we are also able to present a more detailed analysis of how the strategies of the five system-determining states interact and affect the stability of the system, as well as the possibility of systematic change. Second, explaining why states pursue different strategies, we complement the parsimonious analytical framework of structural realism and Balance of Power Theory (BPT) with insights from research on status competition and Power Transition Theory (PTT). Thereby, we offer a new comprehensive theoretical approach for analysing how asymmetric power relations, status and different priorities regarding basic aims such as security, influence strategic choices of major powers. More specifically, four main questions will be addressed:

1. How have the defence strategies of the US developed during the twenty-first century and do US strategic choices correspond to expectations drawn from BPT and PTT?
2. How have China and Russia adjusted their defence strategies in response to the strategies of the US and changes in the distribution of power in the international system during the twenty-first century? To what extent do the strategic choices of these two potentially revisionist ‘secondary major powers’ correspond to the expectations drawn from BPT and PTT?
3. How have the UK and France adjusted their defence strategies in response to the strategies of the US and changes in the distribution of power in the international system during the twenty-first century? To what extent do the strategic choices of these two potentially status quo oriented ‘secondary major powers’ correspond to the expectations drawn from BPT and PTT?
4. How do the strategic choices among the five system-determining states interact and affect stability and change in the international system?

In the next two chapters, we present a framework for analysing the alignment and military strategies of great powers in unipolar systems. In the following three empirical chapters, we systematically map and analyse the strategies these states have pursued during the twenty-first century using the method of structured focused comparison based on our definition of military strategy. The first empirical chapter focuses on the alignment and military strategies of the sole superpower. Here, we will present an overview of the strategies pursued by the three different US administrations during the twenty-first century. The second chapter focuses on China and Russia, two potentially revisionist great powers, which are more likely than the other two great powers to perceive the present unipolar order as a threat to their great power ambitions and autonomy. The third chapter focuses on the strategies of France and the UK, two leading Western...