This book’s main purpose is to highlight changes and trends in international politics, specifically the transformation of the structure of the international system and the ensuing competition between great powers. It argues that the increase in geopolitical, economic, nationalist, and resource competition between three great powers, the United States, China, and Russia, reflects changes in the international system’s distribution of power. This competition is a systemic one and is occurring alongside globalization thereby interfering with the smooth functioning of the global free market system. Due to changes in the power distribution across states, revisionist great powers are seeking to transform the behaviors, rules, and norms that defined the international system since the end of the Cold War. The American-led unipolar order is therefore transforming into a multipolar one.
Why are today’s great powers becoming increasingly belligerent despite the absolute gains of increased levels of economic interconnectedness? The situation is reminiscent of the pre-World War I world: irrespective of deep financial ties between Germany and Great Britain, these two great powers remained antagonistic culminating in war (Waltz 1999). Today, China relies on the United States for research and development, finance, purchasing power, and foodstuffs from the United States (Croft and Makino 2007; Lee 2020). China is dependent on others for oil. The United States relies on China for manufacturing and cheap labor, purchasing power in particular bonds (due to perpetual deficit) and, due to its rising middle class, purchasing power in services (Ibid). Interestingly, China and the United States are locked in conflict over the status of Taiwan and the South China Sea (He 2021; Taylor 2020). This interdependence is seen elsewhere between the European Union (EU), a supranational state under the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense umbrella, is dependent on Russia for oil and gas while Russia needs European investment (Belyi 2015). This interdependence is interesting as it occurs under the current tension over Ukraine and Crimea. The United States remains determined to defend the status quo in Europe and Russia is determined to undermine it. This book thus highlights a major contradiction: that mutually dependent, interconnected states still operate within the anarchical structure of the international system (Waltz 2010). This means states’ sole purpose is to remain secure to survive, relying on their own power to accomplish this goal. Anarchy forces states to resort to increased military presence to protect their political and economic interests (Waltz 2010; Zakaria 1998). This produces a balance of power. However, power balancing may also promote conflict if interests were to clash. Old nationalist rivalries may emerge leading to geopolitical showdowns, economic institutional competition, and resource wars. Hence, states continue to defend their interests, primarily in their pursuit of consolidating power by struggling to create the rules that structure the international economic system (Waltz 2010). Globalization is not simply the product of economic forces, nor is it a static economic reality defining the 21st century. It is a product of hegemonic state power and the defense of global interests of major powers like the United States (Kwon 2012). These interests are based on preferences toward economic efficiency. However, these rules were established and defended by American power after the fall of the Soviet Union under what was referred to as American unipolarity (Layne 2006; 2012). States might use their power to mitigate market disruptions or similarly punish those that have broken agreed-upon norms of international conduct.
Research Hypothesis
This book explores great power competition in the contemporary international system. It tries to understand how the system became multipolar as well as highlight some arenas of competition (resource, military, economic, nationalist, and geopolitical). What is interesting is regardless of the level of threat, these competing states are still dependent on one another for trade, finance, and resources. Yet, the competition and conflict between these two sets of states (status quo and revisionist) has grown significantly.
The United States has been locked in a trade war with China since the Trump administration; President Biden seems to be continuing it (Miller 2021). Further, the United States has been leading an effort to balance against China in the South China Sea (Taylor 2020). The QUAD alliance with Australia, India, and Japan is resisting China’s ambitions in the South China Sea and against Taiwan (He 2021). Further still, there have been calls in the United States to cease all economic relations with China, to “decouple” and enter into a Cold War with China (García-Herrero and Tan 2020; Kim et al 2020). The United States also sees Russia as a major threat to Eastern Europe and NATO since the 2014 war with Ukraine over Crimea (Menon and Rumer 2015). The invasion caused alarm in Europe but may have been driven by NATO and EU expansion into historically important spheres of Russian influence (Mearsheimer 2014). The EU is now China’s most important trading partner and they recently struck a major investment deal with China (BBC News, February 17, 2021). All this while China is violating the rights of Uyghurs (Curtis 2021). This seems a major puzzle especially since the EU is supposed to protect and project human rights (Ruys 2021). What is interesting is the neoliberal logic that somehow trade with another country would create interdependence and then authoritarian states would eventually become less authoritarian (Gamso 2021).
Anarchy produces struggles for power as great powers seek security (Mearsheimer 2001; Waltz 2010). Power generates the drive to create international systems. International systems produce interactions that serve the interests of great powers (Hoffmann 1961). These interactions then shape international political and economic outcomes in the interests of the powers that create the system (Gilpin 1981; Keohane 1984). The United States and the EU want to protect the status quo and may not surrender or appease these rising powers. Weak, more fragile states are at the base of this competition as they position themselves hoping to gain material benefit to assist economic development (Kassab 2015; 2018). The United States and China (and to some extent Russia and the EU) are engaged into serious geopolitical and economic confrontation which suggest changes in the international order. The central question arises: why has state competition increased?
This intensified state competition is reflected in geopolitics, influence over weak and fragile states, nationalist sentiment, and resources.
State conflict is a major signpost that tells us the world is no longer unipolar; it is a multipolar order. Thus, the independent variable is the international system while the dependent variable is state behavior. These variables must be understood using the lens of structural realism defined by Kenneth Waltz and discussions of systemic change by Robert Gilpin. These will be discussed in detail in the next few paragraphs.
Theoretical Framework: Structural Realism and Change
Structural realism is a theory that describes state behavior, specifically a state’s drive to survive in a system defined by anarchy (Waltz 2010). This particular theory has been massively influential, inspiring not only a wide array of theoretical perspectives which build upon it but also critiques. It is one that looks beyond the state at the primary driving force of state behavior. Structural realism sees the structure, anarchy and the distribution of power, as the cause of state behavior. The structure forces states to behave in similar ways to achieve security, which is maintaining sovereignty and autonomy through military power. Neoliberal institutionalism argues that states can overcome anarchy through regimes (Keohane 1984). Constructivism has a more nuanced outlook: anarchy is what states make of it. States can interact as friends or enemies based on perceptions (Wendt 1992). These perceptions drive state behavior as it determines who states can trust. The baseline of all these theories is survival within the anarchical state system.
According to structural realism, state behavior is determined by a state’s need to survive as an independent political unit within the anarchical international system (Waltz 2010). As will be discussed, the United States is no longer the world’s hegemon meaning that the power tying the world together may be currently undergoing a behavioral change. The dynamic we saw in the Trump administration is part of the “After Hegemony” thesis that argues that cooperation is not always harmonious (Keohane 1984). As the United States declines, it can no longer finance or back the economic system (Ikenberry 2011). It must prioritize its security over its hegemonic duties. This means like-minded states must cooperate to ensure smooth transition. State competition described by the realist dynamic is undermining this process and globalization is being impacted.
It was once thought that globalization would change the world by bringing competing states together. Many authors in the 1990s heralded the change as the death of the state or the nation-state. Keith Suter wrote, “The process of globalization, which is now the most important factor in world politics, is undermining traditional order and leading to world disorder” (2003, 1). Suter defines globalization by which the forces of globalization destroy the nation-state; the creation, in this case, betrays its creator. Wars of nationalism driven by conflicts over state territorial interests were fought in the past to become this distinct political entity. Globalization melds these identities together through increased interaction. Another author from the Marxist perspective adopts a similar perspective: “a state that acts strictly according to the rules dictated by neo-liberal ideology and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) does in fact become impotent” (Kagarlitsky 2000, 14). However, these developments happened alongside the state. The state’s primary interest is to survive as an independent entity (Waltz 2010). This means they seek (or act) to remain independent using power to achieve that security goal. Power is still a necessary attribute of attaining security, and as a result, several arenas of competition remain such as geopolitical, economic, nationalist, and resource competition. With regard to resource competition, we are already seeing states like China and Russia hording or withholding important elements (oil, gas, rare earths, and water) necessary for state survival as well as increased arms expenditure and military investment. Global governance that encourages accountability and transparency is needed to ensure no party is cheating by depreciating currency, dumping, etc. Any attempt at providing governance over these areas will become increasingly difficult because of multipolarity.
This book will argue that globalization is a product of American state interests. The Bretton Woods system in the post-World War II period was a political attempt to balance against the Soviet Union’s own economic system: socialism. It was hoped that if more states joined the Bretton Woods institutions, the more wealth and development would be generated. This is understood as “network externalities” (Bothwell et al. 2016; Oatley 2010, 220). The added stab...
