Fateful Transitions
An age-old question—how to manage the rise of new powers—looms large for the United States, Europe, and much of Asia. Although the nature of the emerging international order remains unclear, the geopolitics of the twenty-first century has earlier parallels. Since the late 1800s, the world’s major democracies have repeatedly navigated the ascendance of other nations. The choices made by democratic leaders during these fateful transitions have profoundly shaped the course of history. On the positive side, these decisions paved the way for the Anglo-American rapprochement; on the negative side, the path taken culminated in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. This track record of limited success should give today’s leaders pause as they confront a world increasingly defined by fateful transitions.
As other powers rise, democratic nations have pursued a range of strategies. Sometimes they have appeased, sometimes they have integrated the rising state into international institutions, sometimes they have built up military capabilities and alliances, and sometimes they have contained the ascendant state. On occasion, they have even switched approaches midway through a new power’s emergence. This book explains the strategic choices that democratic leaders make as they navigate power shifts. It argues that an ascendant state’s form of government decisively frames transitions of power: democracies can rise and reassure while autocracies cannot. As a result, the strategies adopted by democratic leaders differ depending on the regime type of the rising power.
Domestic institutions shape external perceptions of a nation’s rise. On multiple levels, democratic government functions as a source of reassurance. Democracy clarifies intentions: decentralized decision-making and a free press guarantee that information about a state’s ambitions cannot remain secret for long. In addition, checks and balances coupled with internal transparency create opportunities for outsiders to shape a rising power’s trajectory. Other states can locate and freely engage with multiple domestic actors who all have a hand in the foreign policy of the ascendant state. Thus, democratic government mitigates the mistrust a new power’s rise would otherwise generate.
Autocracy has the opposite effect. By policing the media and confining foreign policy decisions to a select few, authoritarian government creates a veil of secrecy that obscures a rising power’s intentions. Moreover, in a centralized and opaque political system, opportunities to shape strategic behavior are slim. Enforced secrecy prevents external powers from identifying and subsequently exploiting rifts within the government. And outsiders have few domestic groups to engage because autocratic rule cannot tolerate independent centers of influence. Consequently, autocracy amplifies the concerns accompanying a powerful state’s emergence.
Regime type sets the boundaries for how democratic leaders formulate strategy. A democracy tends to accommodate when an ascendant state upholds rule of law and provides for domestic transparency. In an environment defined by relative trust and adequate information, a democracy can safely appease the ascendant state to remove points of conflict before integrating it into international institutions. By contrast, a democracy is likely to favor a different approach at the outset of an autocracy’s rise. Integration remains attractive as a tool for restraining and potentially reshaping an autocracy as it becomes more powerful. However, the existing climate of uncertainty and mistrust tends to compel a democracy to pair integration with hedging: developing military capabilities and alliances as a geopolitical insurance. This two-pronged approach is inherently fragile. If over time integration clearly fails to moderate a rising autocracy’s external behavior, a democracy will shift to containment.
The argument connecting power transitions, regime type, and strategy finds affirmation in a series of historical junctures beginning with the eclipse of Pax Britannica. At the turn of the twentieth century, Great Britain entered a period of relative decline as the United States and Germany burst onto the global scene. Although both of these emerging giants challenged Great Britain on diverse fronts, its strategies toward each sharply differed. Confident in American goodwill and perceiving significant opportunities to shape the United States into a pillar of the global order it had established, London appeased Washington, systematically eliminating all sources of tension with the rising power of the Western Hemisphere. Autocratic Germany, however, elicited a different British response. Wary of Berlin’s intentions and skeptical of London’s capacity to influence German foreign policy through internal lobbying, British leaders initially opted for integration and hedging. But when international institutions proved unable to limit German bellicosity, they transitioned to containment.
The British approach toward Germany’s resurgence under Nazi rule followed a similar course. German autocracy initially masked Adolf Hitler’s true intentions. Unsure whether they were dealing with the megalomaniacal Hitler of Mein Kampf or a reformed and responsible statesman, British leaders attempted to integrate Germany into a new European order while simultaneously ramping up military spending as a precaution. Once the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia demonstrated that no post-Versailles Treaty settlement could moderate German behavior, London pivoted to containment, declaring war when Hitler’s armies invaded Poland.
The onset of the Cold War similarly underscores how a rising nation’s domestic government frames power transitions. The Second World War catapulted the Soviet Union into a dominant position on the Eurasian landmass. Uncertainty rooted in the Soviet Union’s opaque political system compelled the United States to hedge against its ally while holding out hope that Moscow would join the new postwar order. However, Moscow’s temporary occupation of northern Iran, bullying of Turkey, and blockading of Berlin led Washington to conclude that integration had failed to restrain the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the United States moved toward a strategy of containing its erstwhile ally.
The ascendancy of China, which started in the mid-1990s and has accelerated since 2000, demonstrates that regime type continues to shape external perceptions of a nation’s rise. Censorship and state secrecy have cast a pall of uncertainty over China’s long-term ambitions, ensuring that the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and recent episodes of assertiveness in the South and East China Seas provoke growing concern in Washington and Tokyo. Concentration of power at the apex of the Communist Party and the related absence of societal checks and balances deprive the United States and Japan of opportunities to shape China’s strategic behavior by engaging with a range of domestic actors. Thus, both democratic powers have moved to integrate China into the global order while simultaneously fielding new military capabilities and reinforcing strategic ties with each other and with additional countries in Asia. Despite changes of administration in both Washington and Tokyo, neither has deviated from this two-pronged approach.
Fateful transitions past and present point to multiple insights for contemporary policymakers.
First, the leadership in Beijing has wrongly bet that alleviating mistrust abroad will not require political reform at home. Integration into the global economy and rhetorical commitments to “peaceful development” and a “harmonious world” have failed to quell mounting concerns about China’s future course. These concerns are inextricably linked to China’s system of one-party rule, which magnifies anxieties that, in the best of circumstances, would attend the emergence of a new superpower. The absence of domestic political reform is now becoming a strategic liability as nations wary about China’s ascendance take steps that amount to quasi encirclement. Moreover, widespread mistrust threatens to ultimately constrict China’s ability to take a leadership role in the international community, depriving the country of the fruits of its rise.
Second, American leaders should recognize that integration, though essential, is no substitute for more actively promoting democratic reforms inside China. Encouraging gradual political liberalization is the only way to short-circuit the cycle of mistrust, reaction, and counter-reaction that increasingly defines relations between Washington and Beijing. Because China’s leadership would regard a U.S. push for overnight elections as a deeply hostile act, Washington should press for political reforms that do not inherently threaten the Chinese Communist Party.
