The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics

China, the United States, and Geostructural Realism

Øystein Tunsjø

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231546904
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international system has been unipolar, centered on the United States. But the rise of China foreshadows a change in the distribution of power. Øystein Tunsjø shows that the international system is moving toward a U.S.-China standoff, bringing us back to bipolarity—a system in which no third power can challenge the top two.

The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics surveys the new era of superpowers to argue that the combined effects of the narrowing power gap between China and the United States and the widening power gap between China and any third-ranking power portend a new bipolar system that will differ in crucial ways from that of the last century. Tunsjø expands Kenneth N. Waltz's structural-realist theory to examine the new bipolarity within the context of geopolitics, which he calls "geostructural realism." He considers how a new bipolar system will affect balancing and stability in U.S.-China relations, predicting that the new bipolarity will not be as prone to arms races as the previous era's; that the risk of limited war between the two superpowers is likely to be higher in the coming bipolarity, especially since the two powers are primarily rivals at sea rather than on land; and that the superpowers are likely to be preoccupied with rivalry and conflict in East Asia instead of globally. Tunsjø presents a major challenge to how international relations understands superpowers in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: A NEW BIPOLAR SYSTEM

Whether the post–Cold War unipolar international system is sustainable or will morph into multipolarity is currently under debate. In that context, this book sees the United States as a state in relative decline but contends against conventional wisdom and the mainstream view that the international system has returned to bipolarity, not multipolarity, nonpolarity, or sustained unipolarity. An era of unprecedented unipolarity has come to an end as China’s rise has changed the underlying distribution of power in the international system. While China is not equal to the United Sates in power aggregate, it has narrowed the power gap significantly and vaulted into top ranking. Equally important, no other state is strong enough to serve as a competitor to these two. Since the top two states are now much more powerful than any third state, the structure of the international system has changed from unipolarity to bipolarity.

The shift in the contemporary distribution of capabilities in the international system is important because a system of two top-ranking powers (bipolarity) shapes and shoves international politics differently than a system of one (unipolarity) or a system of three or more (multipolarity). Kenneth N. Waltz argued that a bipolar system is more stable than a multipolar system. He further maintained that the international system tends toward balancing and that states’ balancing behavior is different in bipolar and multipolar systems.1 However, no studies have compared states’ balancing behavior or examined the relative stability between two bipolar systems. This book refines Waltz’s structural-realist theory and develops a new geostructural-realist theory. Geostructural realism contends that although it is important whether the international system is bipolar or has some other structure, stability and balancing are heavily affected by geopolitics and by how geography affects the two superpowers and their relationship. These core arguments, that the distribution of capabilities in the international system is now bipolar and that such a polarity shift matters to a few important issues in international politics, namely, balancing and stability, are developed in two steps in the pages that follow.

The first part of the book draws on structural-realist work to define power and uses three criteria to establish that the distribution of capabilities in the international system is indeed bipolar. First, I examine the power gap between the number-one power (the United States) and the number-two power (China) and demonstrate that it has narrowed considerably. While China has not obtained power parity with the United States, the relative increase in China’s combined capabilities places it in the top ranking with the United States, even if only “barely.”2

Second, I scrutinize the power gap between the two top-ranking powers and the third and lower powers and find both that no other states are within reach of the United States and China and that within the foreseeable future no third state will be capable of developing a combined capability comparable to either.3 The power gap between China and the nation next in rank has become so large as to warrant the notion of a new bipolar system.

Third, I compare the distribution of capabilities in the current bipolar system with the distribution at the start of the previous bipolar system. I find that the distribution is roughly similar, which strongly suggests that the contemporary international system is bipolar. Accordingly, the combined effect of the narrowing power gap between China and the United States, the widening power gap between China and the third-ranking power, and the roughly similar bipolar distribution of capabilities between the current international system and the bipolar system in the twentieth century all indicate the return of bipolarity.

The second part of the book builds on structural realism and Waltz’s assumptions that the international system tends toward balance, that top-ranking states’ balancing is different in bipolar and multipolar systems, and that a bipolar system is more stable than a multipolar system. However, this only provides a starting point for analysis. I refine Waltz’s theory by pointing out that contemporary balancing in a new bipolar system is not as strong as structural-realist theory expects. Moreover, neorealist theory says nothing about whether one bipolar system is relatively more stable than another.

I show that the new bipolar system is different in three fundamental ways from the previous bipolar period and the Cold War. First, geopolitics and the importance of the “stopping power of water”4 postpone contemporary strong balancing5 in the new bipolar system concentrated on maritime East Asia. The United States and China are unlikely in the near future to pursue an arms race and the strong balancing characteristic of the U.S.-Soviet pattern of behavior during the early Cold War.

Second, in some respects there will likely be more instability at the new power center in East Asia than there was in Europe during the previous bipolar era.6 While the risk of superpower conflict in the new bipolar era remains low, there is a higher risk of a limited war between the superpowers in the twenty-first century than there was in the twentieth century. Water barriers may prevent a third world war, but the rivalry between the United States and China is mainly at sea, which makes a limited naval war between the superpowers in the first half of this century more likely. Geopolitical factors make superpower rivalry in a bipolar system concentrated on maritime East Asia more prone to conflict than in a bipolar system concentrated on continental Europe, despite contemporary strong economic interdependence, the existence of an international institutional order, limited ideological confrontation, and nuclear second-strike capability.

Third, I argue that China and the United States will be preoccupied with instability, rivalries, and conflict in maritime East Asia, all of which will help subdue global-security confrontations and involvement in proxy wars by the superpowers in other regions. This is different from the relative stability that emerged in Europe and the global rivalry and conflict that developed between the superpowers during the previous bipolar period.

In sum, the new bipolar system in the twenty-first century is unlikely to evolve into another cold war. This book develops a new geostructural-realist theory in order for the first time to compare states’ patterns of behavior in two bipolar systems. I contend that “geography trumps structure.”7 Although polarity is important, the way in which the new bipolar system shapes international politics is heavily affected by geopolitical factors.

THE BIPOLARITY THESIS AND ITS CRITICS

Most books and current polarity debates in IR journals do not address the issue of bipolarity. There is a debate between “unipolarists” and “multipolarists,” but the polarity debate is relatively limited to academic conferences and the existing literature.8 No other studies in the fields of IR and security have examined in detail U.S.-China relations, the most important bilateral relationship of our time, on the basis of a bipolarity perspective.9 This book argues against the scholarly community.

Critics of arguments for bipolarity emphasize that China does not possess the attributes of a superpower. Much of the critique of the bipolarity thesis points out that China lacks enough power to compete on a quasi-equal basis with the United States. It lacks global power-projection capabilities, has few allies, and has not obtained regional hegemony. Others scholars question whether China even has a reliable nuclear second-strike capability and argue that China’s innovative and technological skills remain inadequate for superpower status. In short, many observers still contend that the international system remains unipolar and that it is too early to tell if it will transition to bipolarity.

I deal with such criticism throughout the book, especially in chapter 2. It is sufficient to note here that a response to such counterarguments requires definitional clarification and a comparative historical perspective. Drawing on structural-realist theory, I define polarity—unipolarity (one superpower), bipolarity (two superpowers), or multipolarity (three or more great powers)—according to the distribution of capabilities in the international system. We can examine states’ possession of various capabilities, whether nuclear weapons, aircraft-carrier battle groups, technological sophistication, soft power, economic strength, diplomatic skills, and so on, when considering states’ aggregated power. These are the attributes of states in the international system. However, the distribution of capabilities across states is not an attribute of states. The distribution of capabilities is rather “a system-wide concept.”10

From a structural-realist theoretical perspective it is not the characteristics of the states that define a superpower or determine the polarity of the international system. What matters in determining whether a state is a pole (a superpower) in a bipolar international structure is its relative standing compared to other states and how power is distributed in the international system. Whether a state is a regional hegemon, has global power-projection capabilities, possesses nuclear second-strike capability, or has formed a number of alliances does not define or determine superpower status or polarity. That is, international political structure is defined by counting the number of top-ranking states, not by examining the qualities and the nature of the interaction among states.11

The concept of superpower has been and continues to be a controversial issue. William T. R. Fox coined the term, but his usage is different from that of Hans J. Morgenthau.12 This book draws on Morgenthau in order to distinguish superpowers in a bipolar system from great powers in a multipolar system. The Soviet Union and the United States were much more powerful relative to any other state in the international system in the post–World War II period and much more powerful relative to the great powers of the past. Thus, Morgenthau labeled these two great powers as superpowers. Similarly, the United States and China are superpowers today because they are much more powerful relative to any other states in the international system and relatively much more powerful than the great powers of past multipolar systems. They are not more powerful than the great powers of the past because they have more advanced weapons but because they are the only two top-ranking powers according to the contemporary distribution of capabilities.

A bipolar system, as Waltz pointed out, is “a system in which no third power is able to challenge the top two.”13 As Barry R. Posen writes, the “Soviet Union was only barely in the US league for most of the Cold War in terms of economic capacity but we think of the era as a bipolar order, in part because the gap between the Soviet Union and the third ranking power in the immediate aftermath of World War Two and for much of the Cold War was so great.”14 Since no other countries are able to match China’s aggregate power, two states, the United States and China, are now much more powerful than the rest. The contemporary power distribution in the international system has become bipolar.

Simultaneously, China is not as powerful as the United States, and it is far from dominating or ruling the world. But China does not need to overtake the United States before the international system can be considered bipolar. The Soviet Union was never as powerful as the United States during the previous bipolar period, but it was still regarded as a superpower and a pole in a new bipolar system. The United States was a regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere; the Soviet Union never dominated Europe in a similar way. The United States possessed global power-projection capability throughout the previous bipolar era; the Soviet Union had not acquired global power-projection capability at the start of the previous bipolar era—for example, it deployed its first aircraft carrier only in the late 1970s. The Soviet Union lacked nuclear capability at the origins of the previous bipolar system; the United States had already acquired such capability. Despite the asymmetric power relation between the United States and the Soviet Union, most scholars and policy makers considered the Soviet Union a superpower and a pole in the previous bipolar system because the United States and the Soviet Union were much more powerful relative to all other states. The distribution of capabilities in the post–World War II period had become bipolar. Similarly, despite the fact that China has not obtained power parity with the United States, the contemporary distribution of capabilities in the international system has now returned to bipolarity.

I now proceed with a more thorough exposition of how this book challenges conventional views on polarity and U.S.-China rivalry in the twenty-first century, how it refines Waltz’s structural-realist theory, and how it develops a new geostructural-realist theory of international politics.

THE POLARITY DEBATE

There is broad consensus in the field of international relations that whether the international system is multipolar, bipolar, or unipolar, the international system affects state behavior and conditions the possibility of peace and stability. Determining polarity is important because it allows for predictions and enhances explanations and understanding. While most IR scholars acknowledge that polarity matters, there has been no consensus among academics or within policy-making circles about the polarity of the post–Cold War era.15 Basing their assumptions on balance-of-power theory, some realists argued in the 1990s that “multipola...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: A New Bipolar System
• Part I: Past and Present Polarity
• Part II: Systemic Effects: Patterns of Behavior and Stability
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index