This book proposes a theoretical framework examining the interaction of weak state and great power grand strategy within an international system of anarchy. Grand strategies are overall survival strategies of states. All states have grand strategies as all states seek or function to survive as independent political units. The survival threats to great powers and weak states are fundamentally different. Great powers pursue prestige against other great powers seeking the same. In a zero-sum world, this means undermining the otherâs power, position, and prestige. On the other hand, weaker states suffer from systemic vulnerabilities given their stark underdevelopment. Weak states trade whatever political power they have to a great power for aid or other types of economic assistance. This locks weak states into dependency and underdevelopment. If enough weak states support a particular great power, then that great power will become more powerful and prestigious over time relative to competitors. This forms world-systemsâ dependency networks based on trading political support for aid. Creating dependency networks described by the World-systems Approach is an essential transaction of systemic practice. Systemic practice is any activity that influences the distribution of capabilities and vulnerabilities across states. Orthodox balance of power theory, which only discusses bandwagoning, leaves out this systemically important behavior.
Within the anarchy of the international system, certain behavior considered evil domestically, like murder and exploitation, is prevalent. States with the capability to kill do so to protect themselves from others and this is acceptable. Western corporations may not be able to pay Western people US$2 for a 12-hour workday, but they can in developing countries. Great powers commit evil to enrich themselves. This serves their interests in terms of power and prestige. For instance, we observe a number of interventions by great powers, all of which have been murderous, for the sake of acquiring power, influence, and prestige. Some examples include interventions by the United States, the Soviet Union (now Russia), and China in the affairs of weaker states. We also observe the importance of trade agreements and the phenomenon of economic aid given to weaker countries by great powers. The research questions then follow: why do great powers interfere in the affairs of weaker states? Why do great powers set out to dominate and exploit weaker states economically? In other words, why are weak states so important to great powers? What do they gain from intervention as well as production and trade agreements? Moreover, why does realism ignore these developments, none of which are new but have existed in force since the time of Thucydides? Finally, how can we circumvent the perceived inevitable decline into systemic war?
If we agree that great powers act in their interests, then there must be some benefit. For realists to say states âshould notâ intervene in the affairs of weaker states is normative and idealist. Why then do great powers fight over these weaker units? Why are the United States and Russia at odds over Ukraine, Syria, and declared spheres of influence and buffer zones? Hegemonic struggle is not simply over the construction of a system or the altering of its rules (Gilpin 1988). It is also not limited to besting a rival for the position of most powerful but also over winning leadership. The actors who must follow international rules within the system are a vital part of hegemonic competition. Weak states are important to great powers seeking systems manufacture. While it is advantageous to great powers to do so (as they benefit from the system they construct) systems financing is an expensive endeavor and may lead to overstretch. However, if one great power pursues relations with weaker states and increases in power and influence, it forces all great powers to compete for weak states support. Great powers benefit from weak state political support, resource control, and geopolitical domination relative to other great powers engaging in isolation or irresponsible, aggressive behavior. In fact, given anarchy, great powers and those who lead them must become serial killers and psychopaths who murder for survival, paranoia, prestige, and even pleasure. Such interaction of powers great and weak result in patterns of behavior illustrating the competitive and evil nature among world-systems and the potential outbreak of systemic war. This book hopes to attack these questions by developing a new theoretical framework to explain these patterns as well as submit a framework to pursue multinational healing in an effort to avoid conflict.
To explain state survival behaviors, we must synthesize Structural Realism with Cognitive theory (to understand great power motivation) as well as World-systems Approach (to understand role of weak states). When great powers buy weak states, we are seeing the formulation of economic dependencies, core-periphery subjugation, for great power prestige. Great powers take advantage of the weaker stateâs need to survive given underdevelopment. Predatory, psychopathic behavior in this form allows great powers this control. World-systems Approach holds great explanatory power in this regard. If great powers trade aid for power, then weak states become part of a new international sub-structure. I conceptualize this sub-structure neoempire. Unlike a state, a neoempire is a collection of states that unify under one great power. Unlike empires of old, weak states can still exercise some autonomy, specifically overlapping core-periphery world-systems relationships, with other competing great powers. There is still some flexibility to engage other great powers unlike bandwagoning. I call this behavior playing the field. Competition continues in this regard.1 Weak states do benefit by engaging in this parasitic behavior but they also become dependent in the process, never quite escaping weakness and underdevelopment.
Neoempire denotes domination by underscoring political/military elements as well as overall psychopathic behavior. Competing world-systems of dependency forms the Structural Realist international system due to the wealth and power gained from exploitation of weaker states. Studying great powers as states is outdated and obsolete. In the case of this book, the existing competitive international system (independent variable) contains dependency networks (intervening variable) constructed by great powers to explain prestige-seeking behavior (dependent variable).
The competition between neoempires is the new standard for studying hegemonic stability and instability, war, and peace. Hegemony usually leads to overextension as beneficiaries seek to alter the rules to further their own power. Studying changes in world politics is an ever-changing endeavor that relies on context. It must be events-driven. Trying to understand the world as it alters from one form to the next requires theory building. A combination of psychoanalysis to understand motivation and cognitive conditions, Structural Realism to understand the role of power, and World-systems Approach to understand the route to power, may be the correct course of action for this time. Ultimately, this book seeks to contribute to the field of International Relations specifically theories of state behavior and grand strategy. Theories must explain events rather than force facts to fit theories. This book hopes to provide a frame of reference for contemporary hegemonic competition and the importance of weak states in anarchy. The ultimate goal would be to highlight the role of the economy in our capitalist world order combined with the need to expand power and control to defend prestige. I also end with a warning: given the capitalist need to expand, hegemonic war becomes inevitable. As ruling parties and elites seek to maintain control, they become slaves to economic production and growth. When hegemonies hit ceilings, gross expansionary measures, including war, may be taken. There may be an opportunity to stop this if the masses step in to return priorities to sustainable economic development. However, this may require the masses to seek out one another through dialogue to prevent elites from manipulating ancient nationalist tension. Forgiveness and reconciliation amid citizens might very well circumvent Thucydides trap.
Theoretical Framework: Research Design and Hypothesis Testing
Overview
The book hopes to contribute to the field of International Relations. The main theories focus solely on great power behavior, their grand strategies, and their ability to shape the international system. Weak states find themselves relegated to the sidelines even as they shape great power behavior and grand strategy. Scholars do so because they study them in isolation rather than systemically. Studying a weak state by itself, one understands that survival is not certain given a serious lack of autonomy and sovereignty. These units seem helpless in the face of threat both state and non-state, violent and non-violent. I agree. However, when we look at their interaction across world-systems, one gets a different sense altogether: weak states tend to wheel and deal without the constraints of bandwagoning. Of course, some states, given their proximity and importance to the security of great powers, must bandwagon. Regardless, other states, if deemed unimportant, demonstrate a degree of unfettered autonomy that would make middle powers and great powers jealous (Kassab 2015).
Weak states have proved important to great powers. What else explains the constant interventionist policy by the United States, Soviet Union, and China in the past? The United States through the Monroe Doctrine made it a point to protect its sphere of interest, the states of Latin America, from the grasp of other powers. The Soviet Union used much weaker states of Eastern Europe as a buffer and intervened in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan adventure helped bring down the empire. After the failed American war in Vietnam, China also tried a failed intervention in Vietnam. The United Nationâs Responsibility to Protect (R2P) exists because greater powers have an interest in safeguarding liberal global political structures and mechanisms. To add to this, a number of international regimes and institutions led by the United States since 1945 have existed solely to float a global economy by assisting weak states in their development agenda. China and other nations of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa) are now building their own banks and institutions, world-systems, to counter the United Statesâ influence in regards to developing countries or weak states. Such patterns of behavior fit across the global board. While such involvement is incredibly expensive, the competitive nature of the anarchical international system forces great powers to engage in these capability-draining activities. If great powers do not, then others will fill that void gaining prestige.
Enough anomalies exist to warrant a separate theoretical explanation. For our understanding to truly blossom, I posit a move away from a great power specific lens to a total and grander systemic vision. For this to occur, we must incorporate the seemingly unbridgeable. We must begin to see great powers as not just a singular construct but part of a wider political unit that exists alongside weaker states. Considering the transactions that occur, borrowing from World-systems Approach, we may be able to understand further the forces that shape the international systemâs balance of power. The argument then follows: the state as the center of study of international relations has become increasingly irrelevant over the past seven decades. At one point, it was fine for a state to rely solely on internal mechanisms for economic growth. Once growth hits a ceiling, states must reach outward to ensure continued economic expansion. Anarchy adds another variable: military power and competition. If one great power begins to expand outward, then other great powers must follow suite to keep up with power symmetry. Economic growth was never low politics. Wealth from economic relations can potentially translate quickly to military power. Here follows the contradiction of Hegemonic Stability Theory: powers rise within a manufactured system only to overthrow it. Seeking hegemony is like digging oneâs own grave. This dimension then follows: economic expansion forces other states seeking survival to expand. This was the reason for war discussed by Vladimir Lenin. Economic relations between great powers and weaker units of the world-system result in power acquisition for great powers. Hence, systemically, weak states are important to great powers to increase wealth and thus power and control.
Theoretical Framework
This book hopes to accomplish several tasks. First, it offers up a description of grand strategy today given the interaction of great powers and weak states and their diverse motivations of prestige and survival. Here, I am bold enough to assume the motivation of these actors. Their interaction forms an international system given diverse grand strategies. Great powers want to survive as great powers and seek prestige to be accepted and treated as great powers. Prestige is a âstateâs reputation for having power, especially military powerâand statusâthat is, a stateâs recognized position within the international hierarchyâ (Taliaferro 2006, 40). This is not a rational determination but a cognitive, psychoanalytical, and irrational one. These prestige-seeking units have international interests that eventually undercut other great powers leading to balancing behavior and eventual (or potential) conflict because, in the minds of these great powers, they deserve it more than others do. This explains why great powers act as psychopaths, killing, exploiting, and interfering in the affairs of weak powers. Their behavior makes little sense except at the systemic level as a part of systemic practice. Prestige-seeking behavior then, in standard structural realist language, is zero-sum; it means that great powers compete for prestige.
On the other end of the power spectrum, weak states are systemically vulnerable states in need of aid and resources to survive the fluctuations of the international system (Kassab 2015). Weak states are vulnerable to economic, political, and environmental and health disasters that come suddenly. They also lack the resilience to deal with such shock due to lack of capability. As a result, prospect for long-term survival is inherently questionable. Lack of resources necessitates behavior that defies usual bandwagoning and can only be thought of within a new standard of behavior I call âplaying the fi...