International Politics and State Strength 9781685851323

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INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & STATE STRENGTH

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS & STATE STRENGTH

THOMAS J. VOLGY ALISON BAILIN

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2003 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray's Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB © 2003 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Volgy, Thomas J. International politics and state strength / Thomas J. Volgy and Alison Bailin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-58826-141-7 (hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 1-58826-117-4 (pb : alk. paper) 1. International relations. 2. State, The. 3. Sovereignty. I. Bailin, Allison, 1963– II. Title. JZ1316.V65 2003 327.1'01—dc21 2002031838 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 5

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Contents

Preface

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1 Practicing Agnosticism Around Passionate Believers

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2 Who Cares? The Salience and Contours of Global Architecture

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3 The Three Faces of State Strength

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4 Assessing State Strength Among the Major Powers

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5 “Creeping Incrementalism” and “Group Hegemony”: State Strength and the New World Order

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6 Gazing Through the Crystal Ball: The Stability of Today’s Architecture

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7 What If: Another Round of Architectural Enhancements for a New World Order?

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References Index About the Book

153 161 173

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Preface

lthough the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union were celebrated in most quarters, they introduced a substantial amount of gloom and doom in the halls of academe, particularly among those scholars—in comparative politics and international relations—who failed to predict these profoundly salient events of the twentieth century. Failure to predict meant to many that their tools of discovery lacked precision and insight into the processes at work within and between nations. Much gnashing of teeth and public introspection were evident in the scholarly journals and books that followed on the heels of these transforming experiences. In writing this book, we have been motivated by those same events. Yet, we don’t share the gloom and negativity of many of our colleagues. Political science and international relations are “complex sciences.” As such, they build gradually from constant experimentation with and testing of concepts and theories against the rich tide of ongoing historical experience. Failure to us (and especially when such failure is about an extremely low probability event, no matter how grave its consequences) represents additional opportunity to reexamine what is useful in the academic toolshed and to either discard tools no longer valuable or build new tools as well as reapply potentially useful ones in more creative ways. One path to such reexamination and learning from failure is to listen more closely to what policymakers are saying and doing about events. Their words may be confusing, since we may misunderstand the audience to which they are aimed. At times the words are meant to conceal behaviors. Still again, words may be spoken with the best of inten-

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Preface

tions and without deceit only to fall prey to the inability to effectuate policies consistent with spoken desires. Yet, in all of those instances, the articulations of policymakers constitute important political phenomena, worthy of study. The utterance of one such phrase will receive at least a footnote in history, and it has certainly prompted the research program behind this book. When George Bush used the words a new world order, he may have indicated an intention to set as a goal for U.S. foreign policy the shaping of the contours of the post–Cold War international system, or his phrase may have been simply an observation about how much the world would change after 1989. To us, it was a call for academics to investigate the shape of the new world order, its relationship to its antecedents, and the dynamics that may drive such global architectural creation. Here, we add our response to that call. One of us spent several years between 1989 and 1997 working with elites and counterelites in Eastern Europe and in the countries newly emerging from the former Soviet Union. Although this was an exhilarating experience, involvement with the people emerging from the ashes of the Soviet era began to cast a bit of doubt about how new this new world order was. With the exceptions of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, and the Baltic states, much of the encounter with those who sought to govern and to fashion the future looked distinctly familiar. Some of that familiarity was in the faces of people adapting to a world common to us in the West. Some of the familiarity was in the unwillingness to relinquish control regardless of the earthquake around them. Some—both old and new leaders—began to articulate symbols and worldviews that historians would quickly recognize. Many of these encounters were reminiscent not of the unique properties of the twentyfirst century but acted more as reminders of how much the new era was part of what had come before. Thus, a significant part of this book was born from our experiences of trying to help “grow” democracy and state competence in Central Asia, Ukraine, and East-Central Europe. We owe much to the National Democratic Institute, particularly Nelson Ledsky, for making those experiences possible. We owe as well a tremendous debt of gratitude to several scholars. First among them is Susan Strange, whose friendship and scholarship inspired us in equal parts. Susan was daring, she was tremendously creative, and she prided herself on being an academic bomb-thrower in the best sense of the phrase. Her concepts of relational versus structural power, and her movement back and forth between the demise of the state and the potential greatness of U.S. power, stand at the forefront of

Preface

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much of our thinking about state strength and its relationship to the new world order. Her friendship proved to be even more important. We owe much to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita as well. Tom Volgy spent a substantial number of years in scholarly pursuit, trying and failing to challenge Bruce’s approach to international structure and its effects on international politics. Much later, it was Bruce’s encouragement and prodding that led us away from the road of a couple of journal articles toward the book-length effort that this project became. We owe a great deal as well to Terry Hopmann at Brown. Tom Volgy took Terry’s first seminar at the University of Minnesota, an experience that quickly led to a shift from comparative to international politics. Since then, Terry has become a good friend and a very resourceful colleague. In the best Susan Strange tradition (she had a unique dedication to graduate students even after she left the classroom), we need to acknowledge the debt we owe to several graduate students who have become friends and valuable partners in the scholarly enterprise. Larry Imwalle became an invaluable colleague before graduation and coauthored several articles with us on this topic. His methodological and conceptual insights and skills added greatly to the project. Likewise, Stacey Mayhall and Jeff Corntassel enriched our understanding of the enterprise. We are grateful as well to the graduate students of Political Science 596E (Mikhail Beznosov, Greg Dixon, Derrick Frazier, Gail Helt, Rob Ingersoll, Susan Jackson, Charles Rice, and Kelly Ward), students who were willing to plunge into materials we foisted on them; they responded with intelligence and eagerness to help uncover the patterns we were pursuing. Alison Bailin is especially grateful to her graduate committee, William Dixon, Michael Sullivan, and Thomas Volgy. Without their guidance, this collaborative project would not have been possible. Finally, but just as important, was the support of our spouses, Sharon Douglas and David Bellows, who kept putting up with us, reading our words, and listening to our angst. We are immensely grateful for their encouragement and advice.

1 Practicing Agnosticism Around Passionate Believers

tarting in 1989, the international political landscape—as it had been known to at least two generations since the end of World War II— was suddenly turned upside down. Mikhail Gorbachev’s meanderings through glasnost and perestroika erupted into a gigantic explosion as revolutions swept through Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia while East Germany disappeared beneath the rubble of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain separating much of Europe. Within the next two years the Soviet Union ceased to exist and was replaced by countries unfamiliar to observers of the modern international landscape: Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia—a seemingly endless list of new countries with old names. As one of two superpowers imploded and disappeared off the political map, it carried with it the last vestiges of a communist ideology and an international communist political party that claimed to speak for hundreds of millions of human beings. By 1992 the tumult began to subside, and as Gorbachev was being burned in effigy across the four corners of the former Soviet Union, Westerners praised his name and dispensed advice on the free market, privatization, democratic processes, and civic community throughout the range of new, postcommunist republics.1 Scholars and policymakers were immediately confronted with two immense questions. The first was, How did this happen? At least to international relations (IR) scholars (not to mention Soviet area specialists), the inability to predict the end of the Cold War posed a potential crisis of confidence regarding the utility of their theoretical and methodological tools. After all, this was not a minor event in the history of modern international politics. An entire global architecture suddenly

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International Politics and State Strength

came to an end, a major power disappeared overnight, and the basic, bipolar framework guiding the relations of most states in international politics became meaningless. How much confidence could one have in a field’s explanatory tools if such cataclysmic changes went unpredicted?2 The self-flagellation, however, may have been a bit unwarranted. This was certainly a low-probability event: Such structural changes perhaps occur no more than once per century. Even more unlikely, they had not occurred in the previous five centuries without a major, global war. The second question was even more salient: What would follow the demolished Cold War/bipolar architecture, and how would it be built? The answer to this question is critical not only to the scholarly community but to practitioners as well. There was little doubt that there would be new architecture. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the looming threat of Iraqi pressure on the Middle East, President George Bush readily proclaimed the coming of a “new world order” on the heels of the previous era. But the contours of such a new world order and the agents that would be its architects were and continue to be very much in doubt.

Is There a New World Order, and If So,What Is It? It is this new world order that is the focus of this book. The world is now in the second decade following the previous order’s demise. Compare this time to the previous world order construction. In analagous time, we can compare ourselves to the late 1950s, more than a decade after the end of World War II. Surely, we knew then the contours of the world order succeeding the postwar years. By 1958, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had integrated West Germany’s military infrastructure, the first stirrings of the European Union had been launched through the European Coal and Steel Community, the relations between East and West had fully hardened, and U.S. leadership of the global economic infrastructure was clearly in evidence. Today there is still no consensus on what the new world order entails. The absence of consensus seems to exist at both the policymaker level and at the level of international relations literature. Among policymakers, the disagreements are quite clear. U.S. pronouncements focus on creating a new world order, and through statements that emphasize U.S. military and economic might, the implication is one of an order being led—if not primarily constructed—by the United States. Although the word hegemon does not seem to have left

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the lips of U.S. decisionmakers, the implications of U.S. hegemony are nonetheless evident: Secretary of Defense William Cohen stated, “We want to dominate across the full spectrum of conflict, so that if we ever do have to fight, we will win on our terms.”3 U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that the United States is “the world’s only economic superpower [and has] the world’s most flexible and dynamic economy.”4 The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Board declared, “US global economic, technological, military, and diplomatic influence will be unparalleled among nations as well as regional and international organizations in 2015. This power not only will ensure America’s preeminence, but also will cast the United States as a key driver of the international system. . . . US economic actions, even when pursued for domestic goals . . . will have a major global impact because of the tighter integration of global markets by 2015. . . . The United States will remain in the vanguard of the technological revolution from information to biotechnology and beyond. . . . Both allies and adversaries will factor continued US military pre-eminence in their calculations of national security interests and ambitions. . . . Some states— adversaries and allies—will try at times to check what they see as American ‘hegemony.’”5

Meanwhile, the reaction from other quarters attests to fears about and resistance to U.S. hegemony. French, Chinese, and Russian foreign policy makers (not to mention a broad range of third world leaders from Malaysia, Venezuela, Singapore, and Iran) have either publicly denounced U.S. hegemonic intentions or have offered alternative designs for the new global architecture: Chinese officials denounced “America’s global strategy for world hegemony.”6 French policymakers “expressed alarm at American domination in what they call a ‘unilateral world’ and have expressed a determination to stand for a different economic model and a more multilateral world order.”7 At the Group of 7 (G-7) summit of 1997, a French official pointedly asked, “When exactly did the Americans go from leadership to hegemony?”8 A joint Russian-Chinese statement on the need for a multipolar world states, “No country should seek hegemony, practice power politics or monopolize international affairs.”9 The Russian Institute for U.S./Canada Studies proclaimed, “Neither Russia, nor China nor any other country is capable of creat-

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International Politics and State Strength

ing a symmetrical threat to the United States. And so the Americans are seeking ways of getting a free hand so as to gain even greater superiority in the military sphere.”10

These statements indicate a desire to fashion a new, multipolar order and, at least by implication, suggest that such an order is still possible, since the new world order has yet to arise. Among the scholarly international relations community, there is also little consensus on whether the new world order has arisen and what it may be. A small group has argued that the new world order has already emerged. Some of these scholars have called it the “unipolar moment” (Krauthammer, 1990–1991; Wohlforth, 1999) and see in U.S. strength either a temporary phenomenon or, more cautiously, a shortterm opportunity to fashion the contours of international politics. Others (e.g., Ikenberry, 2001) can see more clearly the emerging contours of a “constitutional” world order shaped by both strong democratic states and continuity from and elaboration on previous practices. Some (e.g., Friedman, 1999; Gray, 1999) have suggested that the new world order is indeed here, is driven by processes of globalization, and is producing something entirely new in global relationships. A second and larger group of scholars is far too cautious to fix the contours of a new world order in the present, warning us that it is still too early to tell the near future, but engages in forecasts for the longer term. Included in this group are those (e.g., Mearsheimer, 1990; Waltz, 1993) who warn us that the future is likely to look much like the past in forms of polarized relations between satisfied and dissatisfied states and in the reemergence of rivalries between great powers. One variation on this school of thought (e.g., Huntington, 1996) projects a new world order of sharply defined cultures (and states representing those cultures) in major conflict over basic human values and the ends to which global resources should be placed. The end result could be a new bipolarity between the West and the Islamic/Sinic cultures. In a similarly pessimistic vein, Immanuel Wallerstein (1995) forecasts a global system of crisis induced by uneven development and bipolar conflict, not on cultural lines but on the basis of a possible Japan-U.S.-China coalition against Europe-Russia (Modelski and Thompson, 1999). Paul Kennedy (1993) predicts, as well, rising conflict promoted by technological change and uneven development, leading to possible chaos in the system. A more centrist forecast is offered by George Modelski and William Thompson (1999); they see the evolution of democratic community as a trend that may be able to address problems of global organ-

Practicing Agnosticism

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ization. Most positive is Francis Fukuyama (1992), who sees a longterm future of liberal democratic peace driven by technological change and “self-esteem” (Modelski and Thompson, 1999). If we are fortunate enough in three or four decades to survive global warming; the growing inequities between and within nations; technological innovations surrounding biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons; and ethnonational hostilities along with a host of future rivalries and conflicts, readers will judge readily enough if decisionmakers and scholars were accurate in their assessments of how the international system evolved after the Cold War. Such hindsight, however, is a luxury not available to those living in the present. Foreign policy makers need to pursue their objectives now, and in a manner sensitive to what they can and cannot accomplish in a world constrained by systemic structure. Academics know well that context matters,11 and they cannot ply the tools of their trade without a clearer understanding of whether a new world order is emerging and what its contours are likely to be.

Clearing the Confusion We write this book in the belief that systemic structure does matter and issues about world order are extremely important in understanding the ebb and flow of international politics. We will argue that there are two major reasons the evolution of the new world order continues to look so problematic. The first concerns the issue of state strength. The world orders of the past 500 years have been constructed by very strong states. Scholars (at least from the neorealist school) have assumed that it is the distribution of strength among states that is the key ingredient determining the formation of a new world order. In so doing, they have assumed that strong states will always have sufficient strength to fashion a new world order, although at times—witness the unwillingness of the United States after World War I—they may not wish to do so. We argue that the assumption of sufficient strength is unwarranted and is due to some conceptual fuzziness over different concepts of strength. We suggest instead that whether states have the type of strength needed for global architectural construction is an empirical question, and sufficient economic or military strength should not be assumed. Then, we will demonstrate that in the context of post–Cold War international politics, the strength needed for architectural construction is indeed missing in those entities most likely to engage in building a new world order.

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International Politics and State Strength

Second, we will suggest that the unique manner in which the old order ended—unexpectedly, and without war—has provided a rare opportunity for architectural construction (or at least the propping up of wobbling architecture from the previous era) despite the absence of sufficient state strength. A new order usually arises from the ashes of a major war and typically occurs as dissatisfied states challenge status quo powers (see, e.g., Organski, 1968; Gilpin, 1981; Modelski, 1978; Modelski and Modelski, 1988; Modelski and Thompson, 1988; Thompson, 1988; Rasler and Thompson, 1994; Tammen et al., 2000). Although each of these systemic theories—power transition, hegemonic changes, and long cycles—measures power differently, they all find a correlation between the changing distribution of relative capabilities and systemic upheaval.12 Some scholars acknowledge that power transitions may be accomplished peacefully but note that there is no historical precedent for such an occurrence (Gilpin, 1981; Modelski, 1987; Modelski and Thompson, 1988). We propose that the end of the Cold War is such an occurrence. We then develop a model to explain the peaceful power transition and restructuring of the international system. The outcome, however, is not likely to be typical of new world order construction. Typically, new architecture is not built from scratch but rebuilt from the skeletal remains of global wars. The end of the Cold War was unpredictable in large part because although significant aspects of its architecture collapsed without war, much of the “old order” was left standing. Thus, architects in the post–Cold War world have the enviable position of inheriting architecture that was designed for another era and may or may not be useful in the new one. Still, renovation with incremental adjustments takes far less effort and resources than building anew. Sometimes these adjustments may be so incremental that it is difficult to notice their changing shape. This incremental change may help to explain why identifying the new world order and its contours is so problematic. There may be a third reason as well for the contention in the field over the nature of the new world order. It is a major understatement to suggest that the field of international relations is fragmented and in major conflict over alternative theoretical perspectives. Different schools explain different facets of international relations and see different types of state strength and different types of order in the system. Our approach seeks to synthesize and extend at least two of the approaches—neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism—in order to generate a more comprehensive view of the emerging world order.

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Where We Stand Within the Field’s Debates How does our work generate a more comprehensive view and tie into the literature on international politics, especially among the major controversies between contending frameworks of analysis? Both realists and neorealists (Schweller and Priess, 1997) believe that structural arrangements matter a great deal in international politics. The manner in which systemwide capabilities are organized (around polarities) and rules and norms are created and sustained has important implications for interstate behavior, and as well for patterns of systemic conflict, cooperation, stability, and change. As long as neorealists believe that the primary principle of international political relations is anarchy (e.g., Herz, 1950; Waltz, 1979), these structural arrangements will continue to provide sufficient predictability for actors to act as if there is a minimum amount of order and certainty in the system. At the same time, even neorealists will reluctantly admit that structural arrangements for dealing with anarchy in international politics do not provide a comprehensive explanation for all types of international phenomena. Their salience quite likely will vary with a number of considerations involved with the ebb and flow of relations between international actors (e.g., see Lamborn, 1997), and their importance is likely to be modified, diminished, or enhanced by considerations advanced by neoliberal institutionalists, multilateralists, postmodern feminists, linkage theorists, constructivists, and issue-oriented theorists. None of these approaches to international scholarship are incompatible with the perspectives of structural theorists. Although the debates among these contending schools of thought in the study of international politics have been harsh, loud, and at times quite undiplomatic, we agree with Lamborn (1997) that rather than being in conflict, these schools often address different facets of international relations with respect to the strategic interactions among actors participating in international politics. Thus, the importance of anarchy and the resulting security dilemma for states “may vary all the way from being a central preoccupation of policy makers to a residual background condition” (Lamborn, 1997:207). We conclude as well from these debates that even the issue of architectural construction and the development (and perhaps the demise as well) of global structural arrangements—as important as they are to neorealists—cannot be solely explained from a neorealist perspective. It requires quite a neorealist contortion or two to try to account for the absence of U.S. global leadership between World War I and World War

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II or to provide a quality neorealist explanation for the systemic structure that evolved between those two wars. It requires even more contortion to continue to minimize the role of multilateral institutions in the twentieth century, or to ignore the extent to which world orders can be creatively constructed and seem to be rebuilt anew in ways both similar to and different from previous orders, suggesting constructivist explanations (and giving hope that humankind actually learns from itself).13 We find it absolutely impossible to successfully pursue the task before us by choosing only one school of thought. Instead, we set out to beg, borrow, steal, and integrate as much as possible from contending perspectives while still trying to make our arguments and theoretical framework relatively parsimonious. We start with the neorealist premise that structural considerations matter in critical ways for certain very important phenomena in international relations. Although structural considerations may not provide a comprehensive explanation to account directly for the behavior of international actors, those actors and actions are “strongly affected by the constraints and incentives provided by the international environment. When the international system changes, so will incentive and behavior” (Keohane, 1984:26). In these terms, we are part of the neorealist school. Nor are we alone: Foreign policy makers seem to believe as well in the crucial importance of global architecture (e.g., Bush, 1992; Lake, 1993). We are still marching with the neorealist school when we ask questions about the nature of state strength (akin to the distribution of power capabilities in the system) and changes to state strength in international politics. We believe that our approach to state strength provides key answers to the puzzle of architectural construction, but we begin to depart from the neorealists when we unfold state strength into its components, including domestic factors. We find it impossible to assess the strength of major powers in the international system without asking questions about both the endogeneous constraints operating on state strength and the exogenous context of systemic constraints (other than those normally associated with major powers) operating on state strength. Our operationalization of state strength—and especially its domestic dimension—relies heavily on scholars (e.g., Evangelista, 1997; Risse-Kappen, 1991) who have stressed the importance of domestic structure as a critical intervening variable in the analysis of international politics. We move even further from neorealists when we think of the enormous changes that took place in the twentieth century with respect to the range of actors and institutions operating in the international sys-

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tem. The number of state members of the system has grown fourfold over the past two centuries and doubled between 1959 and 1992 (see Figure 1.1).14 These new states now make claims to Westphalian principles of sovereignty. The number of nonstate actors has grown even faster with resources often more substantial than those held by many states. At some level, the existence of these actors is not profoundly new. One can compare the proliferation of global narcotics traffickers and organized international crime syndicates to the existence of organized pirateering centuries ago and, more recently, the Mafia in the early part of the twentieth century. Nor are multinational corporations new to the international landscape. Neither are thousands of nongovernmental actors such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, or Physicians Without Borders. What is new is the sheer proliferation of such actors and the resources they bring with them to the international system. Just as dramatic has been the growth of both regional and global multilateral institutions. These may have numbered in the dozens a century ago; today, they are in the thousands. The efforts of nonstate actors to organize themselves (and to help organize international relations) through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are nothing less than spectacular (see Figure 1.2). Nongovernmental organizations alone increased more than fivefold between 1950 and 1995.

Figure 1.1

State Membership in the International System, 1816–1999

200 200 180 180

Number of Countries

Number of Countries

160 160 140 140 120 120 100 100 80 80 60 60 40 40 20 20 00 1816 1828

1840

1852

1864

1876

Source: Gleditsch and Ward, 1999, 2001.

1888

1900

1912

1924

1936

1948

1960

1972

1984

1996

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International Politics and State Strength

Number of Nongovernmental Organizations, 1950–1995

6000 6,000

5000 5,000

4000 4,000

3000 3,000

2000 2,000

1000 1,000

0 1950 1950

1955 1955

1960 1960

1965 1965

1970 1970

1975 1975

1980 1980

1985 1985

1990 1990

1995 1995

Source: Yearbook of International Organizations, Brussels: Union of International Associations, 2000.

The growth of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) in the system has been nearly as dramatic. The number of such institutions between 1909 and 1986 grew tenfold to reach over 300 (Weber, 1997). Managing—or even navigating through—the international system is scarcely possible by ignoring such changes. The sheer weight of multilateral institutions ranging from the European Union through the World Trade Organization (WTO) suggests to us that we cannot ignore the work of institutionalist scholars in our conceptualization of global architectural development and maintenance. Between states and the multilateral institutions through which some of their work is conducted, there is by far much more than the reflection of state power. Institutional endurance, and nonautomatic institutional choices, add a critical dimension to understanding world order (Weber, 1997). It is possible to mix institutionalist explanations with neorealist explanations of world order development, and we do so in our account of the new world order, relying on both schools to generate a clearer understanding of global architectural outlines at the start of the twentyfirst century. The order we propose seeks to integrate ideas from those who have critiqued, refined, and reinterpreted hegemonic stability theory (e.g., Snidal, 1995; Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, 1996:198–199). Perhaps we even have a foot in the constructivist school when we recognize that structural creation and its maintenance are not automatic.

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We recognize that certain “power distributions” have not yielded obvious architectural outcomes (e.g., after World War I). In addition, we share Modelski’s view (1990) that the history of modern global architectural arrangements suggests substantial learning, experimentation, and innovation in the construction of global order, akin to the arguments of constructivists (e.g., Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, 1996; Wendt, 1992). This is especially so when we seek to account for the aftermath of the unique way in which the world order collapsed in 1989, probably forcing “community self-interpretation and selfdefinition in response to changing context” (Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, 1996:213). Furthermore, we recognize the crucial importance of ideological framing in response to large and direct security threats as we pursue three scenarios pertaining to international terrorism in Chapter 7. Thus, starting as sometime neorealist parishioners, we hope to finish as practicing agnostics in a world of passionate believers of competing theoretical frameworks.

Where We May Fit into the Literature We are aware as well that the literature has offered at least five different views of what is meant by world order. The first is a somewhat monochromatic descriptive statement of resource distributions in response to the security dilemma. Literature focusing on concepts such as bipolarity, multipolarity, balance of power, and so on provides a description of the distribution of military capabilities in the international system and uses such distributions as the driving principle for analyzing the world order based primarily on a security dimension. A second meaning of world order has typically focused on a loose web of ground rules regarding the primary economic and militarypolitical relationships between states. These ground rules may often be related to underlying resource distributions among major powers in the system and arise through adjustments to previous orders or changes in the environment of international politics. A third meaning of world order focuses on a comprehensive set of regimes that are believed to regulate most forms of conduct in a large variety of issue areas. Typically, scholars may work on one regime at a time, but the cumulative effect of this perspective is to see world order as a very thick web of regimes impacting both states and nonstate actors. A fourth meaning of world order can be construed in terms of a

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conceptual framework guiding the thinking of foreign policy makers about their roles in, and the consequences of their behaviors for, international politics. “Seeing” the world in terms of the bipolar clash between the forces of anti-Christ and the forces of Christianity, as may have been the conceptual framework of John Foster Dulles during the early days of the Cold War, or the “balance of power” conceptual view of Henry Kissinger during the 1970s (including the decision to play the China “card”) is suggestive of the importance of such conceptual frameworks. A fifth meaning of world order may be that of an ideology. In this sense, world order becomes a view of the international system shared by all those holding the ideology, and to some extent it helps to guide not only their approaches to the international system but also their common understandings of which others are likely to be friends and allies. In this sense, a world order based on democratic and democratizing polities practicing principles of free market economics domestically and free trade internationally may be one recent manifestation of such an ideology. Russian, Chinese, and French appeals for a multipolar world sound more like ideological pronouncements and tests of faith (and rejections of U.S. ideological thinking about democratic regimes and free trade agendas as building blocks for global stability) than descriptions of actual global architecture. These five meanings of world order do not constitute an exhaustive list; neither are they mutually exclusive. For instance, the unidimensional meaning of the first view can be and often is integrated into the remaining four. Likewise, the general ground rules of the second meaning can create significant road maps for the thicker web of regimes contained in the third meaning. For our purposes, we will concentrate in this effort on the second meaning of world order, focusing on the broad ground rules for establishing security and economic relationships between states.

How We Organize This Book The organization of the book proceeds through the following stages: Chapter 2 is developed to offer an outline of what we mean by world order and global architectural construction. We identify what we consider to be the foundation of world order and its basic building blocks. We then illustrate our framework with a discussion of three world orders over the past two centuries. This chapter becomes an important

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road map by which we can look at the world order following the collapse of the status quo in 1989. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to exploring what to us is the key to understanding the present dilemmas facing states in constructing architecture: the nature of state strength and what has happened to it since the 1950s. Chapter 3 is used to disaggregate the concept of state strength. Since state strength is a necessary component of global architectural construction, we explore three dimensions of strength (relational, structural, and domestic), seek operational measures of each, and offer a test of validity for the methods used to empirically gauge state strength in the international system. Chapter 4 applies the ideas from the previous chapter to the empirical world of major powers since the 1950s. Focusing on the United States, China, Soviet Union/Russia, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK, we explore the extent to which state strength—on all three dimensions—has diminished or increased over time. Chapter 5 presents our view of the post–Cold War order. We examine how the Western building blocks and mechanisms—inherited from the previous era—are being adjusted incrementally to create post–Cold War architecture. We then explore the new face of architectural construction, keeping in mind that there was no global war forcing preparation for a new world order and no single state exhibits the necessary external strength to construct global architecture. Chapter 6 examines the stability of today’s architecture. It explores the range of potentially destabilizing threats to world order, including disproportionate state strength, partial integration, and the need for new mechanisms that may not be amenable to incremental adjustments to existing ones. Chapter 7 concludes with a look at the challenge of addressing global terrorism in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Using our framework, we focus on three alternative scenarios that provide differing levels of security threats and require different responses. From a minimalist response to a worst-case scenario, each alternative presents substantially different conclusions regarding the future of the new world order.

Notes 1. Just how startling a development all this was is underlined by the fact that neither side expected an end to the Cold War or had made provisions for it. At a

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conference of NATO and “newly free” European countries held in Tucson, Arizona, in 1992, a frustrated Czech official spoke up after hearing about alternative scenarios to deal with the coming year: “I don’t get you Americans,” he said. “You people actually fought a Cold War for nearly a half century and never expected to win it? What kind of craziness is that?” 2. When one of us raised this issue at the joint conference of North American and Japanese international relations scholars in Makuhari (Japan) in 1996, a senior Japanese scholar informed the audience that his book did indeed predict the end of the Cold War. The book, evidently, was not widely disseminated. 3. Quoted in New York Times, April 29, 1997:A1. 4. Quoted in New York Times, June 20, 1997:A1. 5. Quoted in “Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future with Nongovernment Experts,” a publication by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under the director of Central Intelligence and prepared under the direction of the National Intelligence Council, December 2000 (cia.gov/cia/publications/ globaltrends2015/index.html#link2). 6. Quoted in New York Times, May 18, 1997:A1. 7. New York Times, June 15, 1997:A1. 8. Quoted in New York Times, June 21, 1997:A6. 9. Quoted in New York Times, April 24, 1997:A3. 10. Translated and sent to the authors by Professor Sergei Rogov, director, Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of USA and Canada Studies, May 8, 2001. 11. For the importance of systemic context, see, for example, Goertz, 1994. 12. For a more in-depth discussion and analysis of these theories, see Levy, 1991, Chapter 7. 13. Neorealists actually don’t ignore multilateral institutions but tend to place them closer to the margins of international politics. For an excellent summary of the literature on realist, neoliberal, and constructivist approaches to regimes and institutions, see Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, 1996. 14. We are indebted to Professors Michael Ward and Kristian Gleditsch for making their data on state system membership available for this project. See Gleditsch and Ward, 1999, 2001.

2 Who Cares? The Salience and Contours of Global Architecture

he anarchy assumption (e.g., Waltz, 1979) is both widely accepted and often used as a point of departure (e.g., Ikenberry, 2001) for much of theorizing about international politics. Typically, it is the point of departure, since we know that cooperation (albeit at times grudgingly) characterizes international relations at least as much as conflict. Under conditions of pure anarchy, violence would be omnipresent and highly lethal. Without observed ground rules of behavior for members of the international system, life would be both cruel and so unpredictable as to make purposeful activity and investment in international relations prohibitive. Whereas conflict and lethal violence exist and have existed throughout modern international politics, states and other entities have managed to pursue a very broad variety of goals and interests with a fair amount of success by predicting the course of their affairs and the behavior of allies and adversaries. At times they were able to do so because they held coercive capabilities strong enough to deter certain forms of behavior, but the predictability of international life was greatly enhanced by more than simple coercive capability. The pursuit of complex objectives in international politics, in the absence of central authority and in the midst of potential anarchy, is possible in part because of the creation of some type of world order. If this is so, then how is global order constructed and maintained given the anarchical nature of international relations? How do we identify the organization of global architecture we call order? What are its basic components, and how are they transformed into internationally agreed-upon rules and norms of state (and nonstate) behavior?1 This

T

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chapter formulates an approach to examining global architecture and identifies its foundation and basic building blocks. It then illustrates this approach by applying it to three world orders. The creation of a new world order typically begins with destruction—a major war or systemic upheaval.2 Newly powerful states, the victors, emerge from the ashes and rearrange the structure of international politics. The victors use their preponderance of power to advance their own economic and security agendas complete with rules and norms of behavior. They command allegiance from other states, especially secondary powers that may challenge the new order. This process generally involves integrating countries into economic and security systems, thus making states dependent on these systems for their wellbeing. The integration process ensures that participation, or at least compliance, is more beneficial than defection. Satisfaction and stability may be achieved through various safeguards. These may include economic and military aid to help individual countries overcome difficulties, or they may manifest in institutions to facilitate transnational cooperation. Global architects must also develop crisis-management mechanisms to mitigate or avert disruptions or challenges to the order. These may involve economic resources and their occasional infusion to overcome problems such as debt crises, or the availability and use of substantial military capabilities to thwart aggression. Global architecture is thus constructed and maintained. How long such arrangements last may well depend on a number of factors, including changes in the power capabilities of key actors, the effectiveness of architectural arrangements, the willingness to use crisis mechanisms, and changes in satisfaction with the status quo. In the modern international system no global architecture has endured for much more than a century, and the most likely outcome of any architectural arrangement is that it will be replaced by another. This brief summary of what world orders look like suggests a number of building blocks of global architecture, including state strength, a security regime, an economic infrastructure, an integration process, and crisis management. These basic building blocks should be found in one form or another in every world order. It is their manifestations and mechanisms that distinguish one order from another. Manifestations refer to the type of building block, for instance, a centrally directed nonmarket economy versus a liberal economic order. Each manifestation requires different mechanisms. These may include treaties, institutions, and informal agreements. These tools facilitate consensus building regarding appropriate rules and norms of behavior. The WTO, for

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example, is one mechanism that perpetuates a liberal trade regime. It establishes rules, incentives, and sanctions with which to govern interstate trade. Global architecture provides a blueprint for world order. Its building blocks are designed not only to construct that order but also to thwart challenges to the order. There are three particularly noteworthy threats to order: global crises, lack of coherent sets of rules and norms, and dissatisfaction with the order. Global crises refer to potential systemic disruptions such as aggressive use of power, stock market crashes, or economic protectionism. A lack of coherent rules lessens the predictability of international relations and intensifies anarchy. A combination of substantial dissatisfaction with the status quo, along with significant state strength, may incite states or other entities to challenge or undermine the world order. Accordingly, each building block should be accompanied by mechanisms to constrain power (or constrain states, other entities, or events from destroying or undermining the prevailing order), mitigate global economic problems, routinize international state behavior, integrate countries into the order, and ensure prosperity or satisfaction (at least for those most likely to, or capable of, challenging the prevailing order). The manifestations of the building blocks and their mechanisms provide regularity in international relations. They offer reasonable assurance that states will interact predictably and peaceably, that is, in compliance with the rules and norms prescribed by economic and security regimes. The integration process should guarantee that compliance is more beneficial than defection, and crisis management should contain potential threats to order. Our conception of world order builds on the work of such noted scholars as Kenneth Waltz (1979), Robert Gilpin (1981), Robert Keohane (1984), John Ruggie (1993), Alexander Wendt (1992), and G. John Ikenberry (2001). We are especially indebted to Ikenberry’s (2001) model of order, yet we differ from his approach in a fundamental way. Whereas he focuses on the leading states’ institutional strategies of order building, we emphasize state strength and other building blocks— including institutional strategies—necessary to construct and maintain world order. We present institutional mechanisms in addition to state strength as tools to help implement security and economic regimes, an integration process, and crisis management. In giving roughly equal weight to state strength and institutional mechanisms, our work, unlike Ikenberry’s, straddles the fence between realism and liberalism. The basic building blocks provide us with a basis for comparison of world orders. They are indicators of comparable concepts across time

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and space. This chapter examines three world orders: the postNapoleonic, post–World War I, and post–World War II periods.3 Table 2.1 summarizes the basic building blocks and their manifestations and mechanisms for each order. These aspects of global architecture will be compared and contrasted in terms of how they contribute to world order. More specifically, we wish to demonstrate how they constrain power, mitigate global economic problems, routinize state behavior, and ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs of compliance in each of the three world orders.

Building Blocks and World Orders The most important building block is state strength or the distribution of resource capabilities across states. State strength forms the foundation of any world order. It influences the type and effectiveness of security and economic regimes, the integration process, and crisis management. No wonder, then, that much of the international relations literature emphasizes the importance of power capabilities in achieving a stable order. Morton Kaplan’s (1957) classic treatment of alternative international systems is based almost exclusively on power distributions and the “appropriate” rules flowing from such distributions. Similarly, the discussion of power distributions fuels the argument over whether a bipolar (e.g., Waltz, 1979) or multipolar power arrangement (e.g., Deutch and Singer, 1964; Kegley and Raymond, 1994) results in a more stable global order. Long-cycle theorists (e.g., Modelski, 1978, 1987; Thompson, 1988) also focus on power capabilities. They propose a highly complex set of dynamics undergirding the rise and subsequent fall of global leadership, but ultimately the world order resulting from such leadership stems from preponderant power capabilities and the subsequent security and economic infrastructures imposed by the global leader. Thus, state strength determines which actors may have the ability to engage in global architectural construction and maintenance, and as well the type of order that can be built successfully.4 It involves military and economic resource capabilities and, at the aggregate, their distribution across the international system. Such distributions of power specify the shape of the world order much like the strength and configuration of a concrete foundation prepares the site for either a skyscraper or a ranch-style house. The most common configurations include hegemonic preponder-

Post–World War II

Post–World War I

Crisis management

Integration process

Security regime Economic agenda

Power structure

Integration process Crisis management

Security regime Economic agenda

Power structure

Bipolar with the United States and Soviet Union as hegemons of their respective blocs Institutional security regimes for each bloc Liberal economic order Centrally directed nonmarket economic order Interdependency, multilateral institutionalism Germany is integrated, Soviets contained U.S. military preponderance, economic hegemony

The United States, the strongest of the major powers, rejects its predominant role Collective security German reparations, laissez-faire, communism Germany is not integrated Multilateral institutionalism

Concert of Europe Liberal economic order Great powers bound together France is granted great-power status Balance of political power, economic hegemony

Security regime Economic agenda Integration process Crisis management

European multipolar led by Great Britain

Manifestations

Power structure

Building Blocks

Mechanisms

U.S. preponderance of military strength with Soviet global challenge Counterbalancing, nuclear deterrence, NATO, Warsaw Pact U.S. hegemony, Bretton Woods system, GATT/WTO Soviet hegemony, COMECON Military and economic incentives/threats, negotiations, joint management Boundaries and rules of engagement between the two blocs, hegemonic capabilities, economic and security regime

League of Nations

League of Nations No government intervention or regimes to facilitate economic cooperation and coordination

Congress of Vienna, balance of power in Europe/British global preponderance System of alliances, multilateral agreements Britain performed hegemonic functions Informal negotiations, consensus, joint management Conferences, negotiations, consensus, hegemonic capabilities

Basic Building Blocks, Manifestations, and Mechanisms of Three World Orders

Post-Napoleonic

Order

Table 2.1

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ance or bipolar or multipolar power relationships. A hegemonic structure emerges when one state possesses a preponderance of global strength. In bipolar and multipolar power systems, two or more states emerge from the war with roughly equal power capabilities. In all three systems, the strongest states can use their resource capabilities to organize relations among states. Consequently, power distributions are highly salient in defining the terms or character of the postwar settlement. States may be bound as well to the most powerful through institutions and less formal regimes. In this case, states reap benefits only if they comply with the rules and norms of the organizations. These are the mechanisms that constrain the use of power, routinize state behavior, and ensure satisfaction. Alternative power configurations such as hegemonic, bipolar, or multipolar power structures need not be mutually exclusive. A hegemon may be present within a bipolar or a multipolar power structure. The United States and the Soviet Union, for instance, acted as hegemons in their respective blocs. Likewise, hegemonic global leaders have coexisted with regional and global bipolar military arrangements (e.g., Thompson, 1988; Volgy and Imwalle, 1995). Holding a certain amount of strength is a necessary condition, but it does not guarantee global architectural construction. After World War I, for example, the United States was clearly the strongest state in international politics, yet it chose an isolationist foreign policy and as a consequence, the post–World War I order was built upon a weak foundation that greatly contributed to its demise. The post–World War II order, by contrast, was built upon a strong and clearly observable foundation. As Kennedy and Hitchcock (2000:8) contend, the Cold War division into two rival blocs “offered a recognized structure that over time—perhaps by 1955, certainly by 1963—had settled into a code of conduct for the two sides that neither was eager to challenge.” The economic and military strength of the victorious powers greatly influenced the security regimes and economic agendas in both blocs. In addition, state strength significantly affected the integration process and the competition to entice states to join one of the two blocs. Although state strength, or the power foundation, influences security and economic regimes, integration processes, and crisis management, it is different from the other building blocks in its measurement and scope. The power configuration is a systemic concept of how capabilities are distributed on a global basis. It is analogous to viewing earth from space; it simply pinpoints the concentration of state strength in relation to other countries. It identifies which state actors have the

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power capabilities to construct and maintain global architecture. The other building blocks—security regime, economic infrastructure, integration process, and crisis management—address the issues of how great powers cooperate to constrain the excessive use of force, mitigate economic problems, and reach mutual expectations and satisfaction with the order. A security regime is a cooperative arrangement constructed to manage the power struggle among sovereign states, especially great powers. Security in international relations is often considered a zero sum game; an increase in one state’s security lessens the security of others. Global architecture must address this security dilemma if it is to contribute to world order. A security regime’s success depends on the presence of two components. First, the great powers must want to establish such a regime (Jervis, 1982:360). The great powers are the most likely to use force and challenge the order. They therefore must be reasonably satisfied with the status quo to cooperate and implement a security regime. Second, a security regime is only as powerful as the state strength that underlies it. The regime must exhibit or be able to quickly call up the necessary resource capabilities to deter or contain threats to the order and to respond to security crises. Similar to the security regime, state strength plays an essential role in constructing an economic infrastructure. If creation of a new world order begins with destruction, the first task of a new economic agenda is to overcome the war’s economic devastation. The preeminent power usually finances a good part of the war effort and provides aid and investment for decades after the war. The hegemon assumes this responsibility to secure a favorable postwar order. Ikenberry (2001:115) contends, for example, that “the central role of Britain in bankrolling the [Napoleonic] war meant that it could tie loans and aid to agreement on postwar arrangements.” The United States played a similar role in World War II and its postwar order. To a lesser extent, the United States also aided its European allies during and after World War I in part to lock European states into the League of Nations. Great powers must also agree on an economic infrastructure in order to create successful monetary and trade regimes. This willingness to agree usually means that they benefit from such an order. If the great powers are dissatisfied, they may challenge the order. Achieving satisfaction involves the facilitation of trade and investment flows and the provision of safeguards, such as aid to help countries overcome difficulties. Bilateral agreements and multilateral institutions may also function as safeguards as well as mechanisms to promote trade. Countries must

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comply with the regimes’ rules and norms in order to reap the benefits. Monetary and trade regimes not only constrain state behavior but also reduce information and transaction costs (Keohane, 1984; Martin and Simmons, 1998; Ikenberry, 1998). They develop mutual expectations for economic foreign policy. Each generation of global architects needs the major players to at least acquiesce to the new order. This integration process is a necessary condition to prevent challenges and maintain stability.5 A number of mechanisms, ranging from coercion to voluntary agreement, may achieve integration. In the case of coercion, the hegemon or group of great powers uses its resource capabilities to induce others to comply with the rules and norms of the order. In the case of agreement, consensus is reached through negotiation. Usually a combination of mechanisms is used to integrate countries into the order. The combination determines how well power will be restrained and the degree of legitimacy bestowed on the order. Legitimacy implies acceptance and satisfaction with the basic orientation or operation of the system (see Kissinger, 1957:1; Ikenberry, 1996:9, and 2001:52). The question of concern is how to constrain power and construct a legitimate and satisfactory global order. The integration process builds a consensus on acceptable ideologies and mechanisms.6 It unites great powers. This process usually begins during the war when the future victors unite against a common enemy. Alliances are known to restrain and control their members (see Osgood, 1968; Schroeder, 1976). Ikenberry (2001:98) argues, for example, that in the settlement of 1815, the alliance itself was one of the main mechanisms to restrain power. The U.S.–Soviet Union relationship after World War II appears to be the exception, since the alliance was not continued after the war. However, mutual expectations of control did characterize U.S.-Soviet rules of engagement. Established norms of behavior governed this relationship and the post–world war order. For the most part, the victors are accustomed to consultation, negotiation, and consensus building based on their alliance during the war. This communication process becomes part of the postwar order. It is often institutionalized, as exemplified by the Congress of Vienna system, the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system, NATO, the Warsaw Pact, COMECON, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/WTO. These institutions install a sense of shared expectations that established rules and norms will govern interstate interaction. These institutions provide a forum for discussion and negotiation. They enable participants—or at least the major players—to have a say

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in global governance. The function of joint management mechanisms is to constrain power, develop mutually acceptable rules and norms, and guarantee that the great powers are satisfied with the organization and operation of the order. It stands to reason that if the key players participate in the construction and maintenance of global architecture, they will not only be satisfied but will also help perpetuate the order. The system’s rules and norms will then be perceived as legitimate and binding. In addition to integrating major actors into security, economic, and other regimes, crisis management is essential to maintain world order. It is an integral part of security and economic infrastructures. A security regime, for instance, is only successful if it can quickly call up military capabilities. The League of Nations failed to install such crisismanagement mechanisms and thus was unable to contain German aggression in a timely manner. Alternative mechanisms through independent or coordinated action through the strongest of states (the United States) were not available. Crisis management usually requires substantial resource capabilities to overcome economic difficulties and thwart aggression. The Cold War is a case in point. Although the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to divide the world into two separate spheres, the United States expended considerable resources to contain the other bloc while the Soviet Union expended an ever greater portion of its resources to maintain the integrity of its own sphere. This intricate balance of relationships was the manifestation of post–World War II crisis management. Resource capabilities and codes of conduct were the mechanisms that maintained stability or averted crises. In short, a combination of resource capabilities and institutional mechanisms are usually implemented to mitigate global crises. In sum, the building blocks compose the architecture of world orders. State strength undergirds security and economic infrastructures. It provides the resource capabilities necessary to constrain power, respond to crises, facilitate cooperative international transactions, and mitigate economic problems. The integration process ensures that the great powers will be satisfied with the organization of the world order. As we will see further on, it is the manifestations and mechanisms of the building blocks that distinguish each order.

The Post-Napoleonic Order Four great powers emerged victoriously from the Napoleonic Wars— Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria. The great powers would

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have to agree on a security regime to establish peace. They would also have to reach a consensus on an economic infrastructure and finance the undertaking. Three of the four powers, however, were economically devastated by the war. Only Britain had the resources to provide an international means of payment, investment capital, and open markets. Only Britain had—through its navy—a truly global set of military as well as economic capabilities. Part of the dilemma facing the victorious great powers was to design a system that would create security, promote prosperity, and yet constrain Britain’s power so that it could peacefully coexist with other major players.7 The distribution of relative state strength among the great powers after the Napoleonic Wars attests to a power foundation that was multifaceted. On the one hand, Britain enjoyed virtual hegemonic capabilities in two crucial areas. First, it held overwhelming economic capabilities. Its share of great-power economic capabilities ranged from about 50 percent in 1820 to as high as 69 percent in 1850, and as late as 1885, it still held well over 50 percent of great-power economic capabilities (Spiezio, 1990:175). Its global reach and naval military capabilities were similarly formidable. Its share of great-power naval expenditures in 1820 was roughly 61 percent, and its share was still well over half of the group’s share in 1855 (Modelski and Thompson, 1988:80–81).8 Yet although its global economic and military reach was formidable, its military capabilities in dealing with land armies in Europe were quite modest. Despite its enormous naval capabilities, its overall share of total great-power military capabilities—including its naval commitments— was less than 20 percent in 1820 at the height of its military prowess (Spiezio, 1990:175). Thus after 1815, Britain held hegemonic economic and naval capabilities but far less than predominant capabilities for land-based military activity in Europe. European security interests were twofold. First, Europe’s leaders wanted to manage great-power conflict and unite against an exogenous threat—Napoleon’s imperial ambitions (Ruggie, 1993). Second, European leaders needed stability to thwart a domestic threat—the revolutionary wars that challenged dynastic rule (Ruggie, 1993). As Ikenberry (1996:11) notes, the great European powers “were themselves in the midst of protracted struggles to define the terms of domestic authority. Although they were governed by ancien régime elites, their societies were modernizing. Therefore, the negotiators sought to establish an order that would contain the upsurge of commercial and democratic society.” The great powers wanted to form a security regime in

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order to quell these international and domestic threats, which may have undermined the status quo or systemic stability. The great powers constructed order by being bound together through informal regimes. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the four leading powers entered into a “cooperative” relationship rather than normal “power politics” (see Kissinger, 1964; Jervis, 1982, 1985; Elrod, 1976; Ruggie, 1993). These countries formed a European security concert instead of competing for power positions and exploiting one another’s weaknesses. The Concert of Europe was achieved through a system of alliances intended to thwart the excessive use of force by any one state. Informal negotiations and consensus produced collective action. The Concert, in essence, governed the security realm in Europe; it not only constrained the use of power but also resulted in mutual great-power expectations. The economic infrastructure, like the security regime, was a reflection of state strength and historical realities. Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the preeminent economic power. It had bankrolled the war against Napoleon and provided loans and aid to overcome the wars’ destruction. Britain’s naval supremacy and leading economic technology during the nineteenth century enabled it to exercise a pervasive influence over the international political economy. British hegemony provided the public good of stability or order. It supplied, for instance, a much-needed global banking and financial system to facilitate international economic interaction. Britain transformed international economic relations from interactions based on the control and possession of colonies to an open, interdependent world economy based on the flow of trade and capital. Although Britain bore the cost of economic leadership, it also reaped the rewards of developing cooperative monetary and trade regimes. Britain benefited from the supply of cheap food, raw materials, and markets in the periphery. As Gilpin (1981:137) states, “Through the migration of labor and the export of capital to developing lands (the United States, Canada, Australia, and so forth) Britain could acquire cheap imports and also develop a market for her growing industrial exports. She could sell her textiles, invest her capital, and purchase necessities nearly wherever she pleased.” In short, Britain created a world economy based on free trade, the free flow of capital, and a unified international monetary system. Rules and norms of behavior governed economic transactions, and the great powers benefited from the liberal order.

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Integration was the key to a peaceful order. It was achieved through hegemonic restraint, great-power accord, and the restoration of the great-power status of the vanquished, namely, France. Britain appeased the other leading powers by exercising restraint and agreeing to comply with the same rules and norms as its allies. Britain integrated itself into the order as a price for the integration of the other powers. In essence, Britain exchanged relatively unfettered power for compliance with its economic agenda. The Congress of Vienna institutionalized great-power relations. It provided the major players with joint management of the European order even though Britain acted as the economic hegemon at the global level. Meanwhile, Concert of Europe members held peacetime conferences. They consulted and negotiated with one another to build consensus and jointly manage disputes, problems, or changes in the order. This joint-management mechanism was spelled out in the Quadruple Alliance signed by the great powers in 1815. France was also included in joint management. It was restored to its position of great-power equality and was admitted to the Concert in 1818. This integration action served to thwart France’s potential power to challenge the order. Crisis-management mechanisms also helped constrain power and promote satisfaction. The great powers agreed to act in concert to thwart any challenges to the order. Negotiations, consensus, and conferences were the main political crisis-management mechanisms. British hegemony was responsible for mitigating economic crises. In this case, hegemony was a manifestation of crisis management as well as that of a power structure. Britain provided resources to help other countries overcome economic difficulties and achieve prosperous trade relations. Longevity and stability characterized the post-Napoleonic order. The Concert of Europe gradually eroded as Napoleon’s threat diminished and the revolutions of 1848 significantly changed the political situation (Ruggie, 1993:19).9 Eventually Otto von Bismarck’s Germany undermined the structure through a series of secret treaties and alliances, which culminated in World War I. Germany’s actions were made possible—in part—by large-scale changes that had occurred in the global order’s foundation. By 1900, Britain’s economic preponderance had virtually disappeared as its share of great-power economic capabilities fell to 20 percent, equaling its share of great-power military capabilities (Spiezio, 1990:175). Even its formidable predominance in global naval power capabilities had slipped by 1900 to about one-third of the great powers’ capabilities (Modelski and Thompson, 1988:81).

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The Post–World War I Order The apparent failure of the post-Napoleonic global architecture gave rise to a search for a different type of foundation based more on developing multilateral institutional mechanisms to facilitate international cooperation. The victors in World War I negotiated the terms of peace and postwar settlement just as the Concert of Europe members concluded the Napoleonic Wars and specified the character of the new order. Yet, much had changed regarding the foundation on which the new world order would be built. The United States emerged from World War I with a preponderance of global capabilities. After the end of the war, the global naval reach of the United States, measured in naval expenditures, more than doubled that of Britain’s prior to the war (Modelski and Thompson, 1988:82), and the size of the U.S. economy was more than four times that of Britain’s (Thompson, 1988: 254). No wonder, then, that President Woodrow Wilson took the lead in advancing far-reaching global governance proposals. The League of Nations was the institutional expression of multilateral idealism. Wilson, however, was unable to generate domestic support. The United States did not participate in the League or assume the responsibility of a hegemon, choosing instead an isolationist foreign policy. Although Britain and France ratified the League Covenant, they were not pleased with the final draft. The French considered the League a toothless organization (Sharp, 1991:62), and Britain wanted to return to the nineteenth-century balance-of-power system (Ikenberry, 1996:12). With U.S. withdrawal, the post–World War I settlement lacked a strong power foundation. Germany, as the vanquished nation, had an economic capacity at least the size of Britain’s, and its leading-sector indicators registered higher after World War I (Thompson, 1988:140) than those of any of the “victorious” powers still tinkering with an architecture after U.S. withdrawal. France, laying claim to architectural leadership with Britain, exhibited an economy smaller than either England’s or the vanquished Germany’s. With U.S. withdrawal, the power vacuum in which the “victors” found themselves was reflected in the post–World War I security and economic regimes. The post–World War I security arrangement started as an attempt at multilateral institutionalism, or collective security. In a balance-ofpower system, states still pursue egoistic security interests. Peace is attained through checks and balances. By contrast, a collective-security regime consists of a coalition of “peace-loving” nations united to

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defend a community of states against any threat to international peace (Miller, 1992:9) resulting from conflicts between members to the agreement. The League of Nations may have been intended by some as such a peacekeeping mechanism, but it lacked a military arm—and a means to constrain power. The United States, as the most powerful country, could have compensated for the League’s lack of teeth, but the United States rejected membership. There were no reliable mechanisms to constrain the excessive use of force. Similarly, the post–World War I settlement lacked an economic agenda or a set of shared economic ideas. The United States did not assume the British role as economic hegemon after World War I, although the United States reaped the war’s economic benefits. Britain no longer possessed the resource capabilities to continue its role as the world stabilizer. The great powers, namely Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, faced huge budget deficits, debts, and trade imbalances after World War I. The United States failed to restore or replace Britain’s global monetary and trade system. It chose an isolationist and protectionist policy, which in turn decreased the international trade necessary to sustain borrowing (Ikenberry, 1996:15). The United States was committed to laissez-faire and rejected governmental intervention, coordination, and guarantees. There were no mechanisms to carry out a new economic order. Instead, the burden of paying for the war’s enormous destruction was dependent upon German reparations. Ironically, the economic suppression of Germany fueled Nazi propaganda. As Carole Fink (2000:32) states, “Those magic German billions bandied about, which would restore devastated lives and lands and fuel prosperity and security, but were unconnected to the problems of transfer or to the economic impact on the receiver countries, gave the Germans a fine propaganda weapon.” Germany was never integrated into the post–War War I settlement; nor did the victors act to sufficiently contain it. The logic underlying integration argues that if a country is part of the system and benefits from its participation, it will be less likely to challenge the order. Germany after World War I is a case in point. Germany was relegated to an inferior and subordinate role after 1919; at the same time, the great powers participating in architectural construction lacked the resources to sufficiently contain Germany. Certainly the loss of great-power status marked by political and economic humiliation affected the German psyche. Germany had nothing to lose from defecting from the order and had the resources to bring about its defection.

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The Post–World War II Order The failed multilateral institutional mechanisms developed after World War I were not completely abandoned after World War II and were in fact revamped through the creation of the United Nations. At the same time, the power foundations of the new world order changed dramatically. Germany, France, and Japan were virtually destroyed. England was substantially weakened. The Soviet Union suffered overwhelming casualties from the war. The United States alone emerged with enormous economic and military capabilities. Its proportional share of leading-sector indicators among the great powers registered at around two-thirds of the group total in 1950 (Thompson, 1988:140). Its share of global naval capabilities in 1950 was nearly 100 percent and never dropped below 62 percent during the Cold War era (Modelski and Thompson, 1988:91–92). Yet, with its Soviet wartime ally vying for postwar leadership, holding substantial territory in Europe, and boasting of a large army and eventually atomic weapons, the United States found that its strength was moderated by this immediate challenger, substantially weaker but nevertheless potentially destructive in both the European and Asian regions. Such a power foundation accommodated both a global leadership role for the United States and a bipolar structure for containment of, and eventual accommodation with, the Soviet Union. Much of the international system came to be divided into two, albeit unequal, spheres, each with its own security and economic infrastructure, integration process, and institutional mechanisms, some of which overlapped and some of which perpetuated and organized the separation of states in conflict. The UN Charter, in contrast to the League of Nations Covenant, did establish a mechanism that involved collective military action. Articles 42 and 43 granted the Security Council the power to determine if a military response was warranted and the ability to call up the members’ armed forces (Kupchan and Kupchan, 1991:122). However, the veto power of the Security Council’s permanent members rendered the UN powerless over the most serious disputes—those between great powers and their allies. Ironically, it may have been the Cold War that maintained peace. The leader of each pole felt threatened by the other and placed great importance on intrapole stability, much as the Concert powers feared Napoleonic imperialism and revolutionary wars. NATO bound Western European states to the United States; the Warsaw Pact served the same

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purpose for Eastern European states and the Soviet Union. Both security regimes provided a common command and military doctrine and common strategic and tactical plans. The balance between the two poles, backed by nuclear deterrence, constrained the use of power and prevented the competition for influence in the third world from escalating into a full-scale great-power war. Institutionalizing intrapole security relations routinized state behavior. As evidenced in the Concert of Europe and the Cold War, security regimes appear to be most successful when external and internal threats unite great powers. They incite cooperation and the implementation of mechanisms such as alliance pacts or intrabloc policy coordination. In contrast to its role after World War I, the United States in the last half of the twentieth century assumed the responsibility of supporting the world market economy. It encouraged free trade, supplied investment capital, and furnished the international currency. In effect, the United States provided the public goods necessary for a liberal economic order. This change in economic agenda was a reaction not only to the failure of the post–World War I settlement but also to the disastrous economic nationalism characteristic of the 1930s. The United States was committed to facilitating economic openness. This openness involved implementing tariff reductions and other mutually reciprocal trade and investment rules. Standardizing economic behavior ensured peaceful transactions. Safeguards, consisting of aid and loans to be distributed bilaterally or by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, reinforced peaceful and predictable international interactions. The United States integrated its allies and potential allies (constituting the large majority of countries) into its liberal economic order through regimes and institutions. The Bretton Woods agreements of 1944 embodied this multilateral liberalism. These agreements provided a far-reaching blueprint for the postwar economic order. This system lowered barriers to the flow of goods, services, and financial resources in the world market economy. The main trading partners of the United States achieved economic self-sufficiency, in contrast to Soviet client states, which became even more dependent on Soviet assistance during the Cold War. The Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation (COMECON) functioned as the main mechanism for governing economic relations among the nonmarket economies of the Soviet bloc. COMECON was charged with centrally directing production, investment, and consumption plans of the Soviet Union and members. The Soviet Union subsidized trade

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with client states by granting them low-cost export credits, charging them less than the world market price for some exports, and paying them more than the world market price for some imports. The Soviet Union used its power and influence to hold its hegemonic bloc together. Each sphere had its own integration process. The United States repeated the British hegemonic experience after World War II. It and its allied great powers would act within the limits of multilateral institutions. They would comply with the rules and norms specified by the institutional agreements. The UN, the Bretton Woods system, GATT/WTO, and NATO would bind the United States to its European and Asian partners. As with British hegemony in the nineteenth century, the United States offered to constrain its use of power or to use it to help its allies in exchange for institutional agreements. Marshall Plan aid, for example, reassured Europeans of the U.S. commitment to them (e.g, see Ikenberry, 2001:Chapter 6). Mutually agreed upon rules and institutions resulted in a more durable and satisfactory order. The Soviet Union also used incentives and threats as well as institutional mechanisms to integrate countries into its bloc. Like the United States, it provided economic and military aid to numerous countries. Perhaps the greatest differences between the U.S. and Soviet integration processes were that the Western allies became far more prosperous and participated much more extensively in military and economic institutions and their decisionmaking processes than their Eastern bloc counterparts. Success and ownership usually enhance the perception of the order’s legitimacy. This helps explain why the post–World War II Western institutions and regimes have endured. Multilateral institutionalized communication has evolved into authoritative mechanisms to govern specific issue areas. GATT and its more formal successor, the WTO, specify the principles and rules governing trade. NATO has played a significant role in mitigating military crises. The IMF and World Bank serve as economic crisis-management mechanisms by aiding countries experiencing economic difficulties. A containment rather than an integration process better characterizes U.S.-Soviet relations after World War II. However, the United States and the Soviet Union recognized the bipolar structure as legitimate. Although each superpower tried to gain advantage through an arms race and indirectly through third parties, each also acknowledged the precarious balance between the two poles as an “unwritten” accord. This was not joint management by any stretch, but the superpowers did negotiate arms-reduction treaties and other international agreements. The superpowers shared mutual expectations of behavior after 1962.

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With the exception of the earliest period of the Cold War, neither seriously challenged the order.10 Instead, each agreed to coexist in a bipolar structure.

Conclusion Each order evolved from the previous one. Each built upon the successes and failures of the past. This process is reflected in the building blocks, their manifestations and mechanisms. The main function of the building blocks is to constrain the excessive use of power, establish rules and norms of state behavior, and construct a global architecture that satisfies the great powers—those most likely to challenge the order. Four mechanisms in particular seem to successfully achieve these objectives: counterbalancing coalitions, multilateral agreements, economic hegemony, and integration of the vanquished into the order.11 All four mechanisms were missing in the post–World War I settlement, but they were used in the post-Napoleonic and post–World War II orders to maintain peace. The Concert of Europe members shared common incentives to cooperate in constructing an order that could stand against threats of imperialism and revolutionary wars. They formed a system of checks and balances codified in a series of treaties or multilateral agreements. The great powers reached a consensus through informal conferences. They consulted and negotiated with one another to build consensus and jointly manage disputes. British hegemony helped the great powers overcome the economic destruction of the Napoleonic Wars and achieve prosperity. Britain provided an international means of payment; relatively large, open markets; and foreign investment. The great powers, including France, benefited from participating in these cooperative arrangements. In short, the strongest states shared mutual expectations of great-power behavior in security and economic domains and were satisfied with the order. The post–World War I settlement was much more ambitious but lacked clearly defined roles for the most powerful countries and mechanisms to implement an inclusive security and economic infrastructure. Clearly, the great powers willing to build world order could not agree on the nature of an acceptable architecture and lacked the strength to impose their will even if they had come to some agreement. Thus, the security regime was ineffective because it was unable to call up the necessary military might to contain aggression. Likewise, the absence of

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applied economic strength undermined the war recovery effort and the ability to construct an economic order. There was little economic integration, and the most powerful country refused to join the security regime while a major dissatisfied state was able to redevelop to challenge the status quo. The post–World War II order rectified these problems. The strongest of states—the United States—accepted its global leadership role. Hegemonic strength came to coexist with military bipolarity and a thick web of multilateral institutions. The Western hegemonic order was eventually transformed into a multilateral security and liberal economic system. Institutions such as NATO, IMF, the World Bank, and GATT/WTO guaranteed mutual expectations of state behavior. Through multilateral negotiations, these institutions specify rules and standards of conduct to govern specific issue areas ranging from control of the seas to control of airspace. The twentieth-century institutions and agreements were far more universal in membership and far-reaching in scope than those of the nineteenth century. The post–World War II Western order succeeded as well because those constructing its contours avoided the mistakes of the previous era: the failure to integrate (or contain) those most likely to challenge the status quo and the refusal of the strongest to perform a major role in architectural construction and maintenance. The building blocks—state strength, a security regime, an economic agenda, an integration process, and crisis management—define each postwar settlement. They provide us with a basis for comparison. In the chapters that follow, we use these building blocs, starting with the issue of state strength, to examine the contours of the post–Cold War world order.

Notes 1. Our concept of world order is similar to both Gilpin’s (1981) and Ikenberry’s (2001). Gilpin sees “systemic order” as the basic rules and principles determining the broad relationships between actors in the system. Likewise, Ikenberry defines “political order” as the governing arrangements between states, including “its fundamental rules, principles, and institutions” (Ikenberry, 2001:23). 2. See Gilpin, 1981, pp. 41–44, for a discussion of systemic change; also, Katzenstein, 1989. 3. These three orders were chosen because each exemplifies the use of state strength, security and economic infrastructures, integration processes, and crisis management to construct and maintain global architecture. The building blocks provide a basis for comparison, and their manifestations clearly distinguish each order.

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4. For example, regardless of wishful thinking in the 1990s, the creation of a multipolar global architecture is critically based on whether there is a rough balance in strength between three or more poles in international politics. 5. It seems counterintuitive to think of the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II as being integrated into one order unless we consider the relative strength of the two superpowers. The Soviet Union posed a military challenge to the United States with its nuclear capabilities and large armed forces, whereas the United States held hegemonic economic capabilities in the system and was able to build a global economic order while containing any Soviet challenge to that order. In fact, the two countries agreed to such an order, including a different economic system for COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation) states, complete with a code of conduct, and neither seriously challenged this coexistence. Integration seems more applicable when considered as a U.S. and Soviet Union strategy to entice potential allies to join each sphere of influence. 6. See Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, 1996; and Ikenberry, 2001:98–116, for an extensive discussion on institutional binding mechanisms. 7. See Ikenberry, 2001, for an extensive discussion on joint management and restraining power, or what he calls “strategic restraint.” 8. Likewise, its proportional share of global power warships was at least half of the combined total for the great powers throughout this period. 9. The operation of the Concert is usually dated from the Congress of Vienna (1815) to the Crimean War (1854), although some suggest that it existed in an attenuated form from 1822 to World War I; see Jervis, 1982, 1985. 10. Here, we are referring to the period up to 1962, including the Berlin crises, the Korean War, the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban missile crisis. 11. Regarding the last mechanism, integration of the vanquished into the order, also successful is the creation of substantial containment mechanisms for those who were not fully vanquished or may have been part of the victorious alliance but nevertheless contested the direction in which the new world order was progressing.

3 The Three Faces of State Strength

n this chapter we are primarily concerned with the concept and measurement of state strength. State strength is crucial for understanding which actors (if any) are capable of global architectural construction. Many writers from realist, neorealist, and long-cycle schools typically assume that strength is crucial to architectural construction and in fact use relative strength—observed as the distribution of state capabilities across major states in the international system—as a shorthand measure of the existing global architecture that fashions much of international politics and the relations between states. For example, a bipolar system is in existence when the vast majority of global military and economic capabilities are held by two states (e.g., Rapkin, Thompson, and Christopherson, 1979). Kaplan’s (1957) classic work on alternative architectural arrangements is based, first and foremost, on the distribution of such capabilities. Waltz (1979) uses such distributions as the second most important principle driving international politics. We depart from this view of state strength in a number of critical ways. First, we disagree with the constancy assumption. Whereas neorealists see the totality of state strength as relatively constant, we assume that the level of state strength—even in its aggregate—in the international system varies across time and systemic conditions. This is a crucial distinction. According to neorealist assumptions, some states will get weaker and others stronger, but there will always be sufficient strength in the modern system for global architectural construction and maintenance of the system. We argue instead that the availability of sufficient strength is an empirical issue and cannot be assumed. In fact, it is possible that all major states—at least those capable of participating

I

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in the creation of global architecture—are getting stronger or weaker. If they are all getting weaker, it is possible that global architectural construction and maintenance becomes highly problematic compared to those periods in the history of international politics when states were stronger.1 Second, we disagree over the assumption of mechanistic process. Neorealists seem to assume a rather automatic process by which capabilities translate into global and regional leadership, and therefore the effort to construct or challenge global architectural arrangements becomes a given once a certain amount of state strength has been attained. Although this is clearly not the case with the global cycle approach practiced by Modelski and Thompson (e.g., 1988), most scholars working at the systemic level of analysis tend to assume a rather mechanistic process by which resources and strength are translated into action. 2 This assumption is made because of the anarchy assumption regarding the nature of international politics. Once it is assumed that the normal state of the system is anarchy, it becomes rational for very strong states to structure the system toward a stable pattern of relationships favoring a status quo consistent with their interests. Our perspective is once more different. Historical evidence suggests that there is no automatic process that creates global architecture building activity from state strength (e.g., Keohane, 1984:35). One obvious example of erroneously equating strength with leadership has been amply demonstrated by the United States. By 1885 that country had surpassed Britain (then the world’s strongest state and its reigning global leader) in world manufacturing output, and by the turn of the twentieth century it consumed more energy than did the combined six of the seven other major powers (Zakaria, 1998:46). By 1920, its global reach in terms of sea power (a longitudinal measure of global hegemonic strength) substantially exceeded that of Great Britain (Modelski and Thompson, 1988:124). By most measures, the United States held exceptional global strength at the turn into the twentieth century; yet it wasn’t willing or able to translate such strength into global leadership until nearly a half-century later. Determining the strength of states is but a first step in assessing whether states are capable and likely to engage in architectural construction. Myriad other factors are likely to come into play, and none of them is automatically triggered by a sufficiently high threshold of strength. Some of the key ingredients needed by policymakers for engaging in global architecture construction—besides “sufficient

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strength”—include desire, will, and competence (with competence including not only political competence but also the ability to develop, in an ideological sense, a comprehensive global framework). Each of these ingredients may require equal amounts of scholarly attention. Our orientation may appear to be similar to that of structural realists in regard to the mechanistic assumption only because we treat the issue of state strength as a necessary condition. Although we recognize the multitude of factors involved with the ability to engage in global architectural construction, our focus here rests solely on the dimension of state strength. We are fully aware that global architectural construction, even with the realization of this condition, may not occur. However, in the absence of sufficient state strength, it is unlikely that it will occur, and it is a useless enterprise to explore desire, will, and competence when there is insufficient state strength.3 We focus on the sufficiency of state strength and do not explore issues involving will, desire, and competence. This exploration is not carried out because we will demonstrate later that the condition of sufficient state strength in the post–Cold War international system is lacking for each of the individual great powers, including the United States. Under such circumstances, searching for will, desire, and competence is not fruitful. Third, we depart from the views of neorealists over the unidimensional assumption regarding state strength. Clearly, neorealists recognize the vast complexity of systemic capabilities and power in the system and do so especially when it comes to measuring the distribution of capabilities across states. When they are conceptualizing state strength, however, their orientation to capabilities or power tends to be unidimensional and is often utilized in the same manner irrespective of whether they are dealing with the topic of architecture construction or the more routine relations between states in the system.4 This unidimensional assumption, we believe, is not warranted, at least not under present circumstances. Consider again the case of the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The United States brings to the international stage economic and military state strength second to none in international politics. Even the Gulf War fought against Iraq, which had the fourth largest standing army in the world, yielded no U.S. casualties except from “friendly fire.” Yet . . . something is amiss. By the 1980s scholars were already broadcasting the decline of U.S. hegemony. Today, mixed with the belief that there is a unipolar moment for the United States, there is considerable suspicion that U.S. state strength is significantly weaker than it looks when it

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comes to exercising global leadership. As we will show, a multidimensional approach to state strength can uncover both the strength and weakness of the “unipolar moment.”

Are States Getting Stronger or Weaker? Our concern is with the assessment of state strength among the major powers in international politics. We are interested in state strength as a critical, necessary condition for constructing and maintaining global architecture. Likewise, we are interested in the major powers because they are the ones most likely to create and to help maintain such architecture. Immediately, we are confronted with conflicting views across the scholarship on international and comparative politics regarding how much state strength exists in the present international system. Students of international relations nearly uniformly view the strength of states as declining. Some have taken a position that virtually dismisses the continued authority of states: “Today it seems that the heads of governments may be the last to recognize that they and their ministers have lost the authority over national societies and economies that they used to have. . . . Where states were once masters of markets, now it is the markets which, on many crucial issues, are the masters over the governments of states” (Strange, 1996:1,2). Other IR scholars are not as harsh as Susan Strange, but few of them see the state as keeping its traditional strength as it withers before the onslaught of domestic constituencies (Lamborn, 1997; Rosenau, 1995), growing multilateral mechanisms that penetrate deep within the political and social structures of countries (Caporaso, 1997; Keohane, 1995), and a set of international and domestic dynamics that function to accelerate processes of globalization that in turn create transformations so radical that they force states to actually bargain away their own sovereignty (Holm and Sorensen, 1995). Most IR scholars point to two trends that are sapping the strength of modern states. One is endogeneous: In democratic states, domestic politics are persistently intruding upon foreign policies (e.g., see Skidmore and Hudson, 1993), especially since the consensus over an international communist threat has disappeared. As the number of democracies has increased and as democratization has continued even in more established democracies, such weakening in foreign policy should be evident across scores of states. The second trend is exogeneous: Strong multi-

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lateral institutional arrangements both globally and regionally (and especially in Europe), global markets with substantial independence from state control, and large numbers of international actors increasingly outside the scope of state control conspire to weaken the ability of states to direct their own destinies domestically and externally. Forecasting declining state capabilities is not unique to assessments of the state in international politics. As early as 1942, John Herz—a well-considered and insightful observer of international politics— warned his readers of the decreasing autonomy of states, stemming from “the growing, and now worldwide, interconnection of economic and other relationships in the industrial age and the ensuing interdependence of states” (Herz, 1942:1039). Herz then predicted the demise of states (Herz, 1957), only to issue a declaration of reconsideration eleven years later, indicating how difficult is the enterprise of questioning state strength and autonomy in the modern era: “There are [now] indicators pointing in another direction: not to ‘universalism’ but to retrenchment; not to interdependence but to a new self-sufficiency; toward area not losing its impact but regaining it; in short trends to a ‘new territoriality’” (Herz, 1968:12). What is different today is the overwhelming cacophony of voices echoing the decline of state strength in the current era. Yet, even this near uniformity in assessment on the part of IR scholars is strongly challenged by a few in the field and by many scholars of comparative politics. Not all IR scholars see uniformly declining state strength (e.g., Nye, 1990; Nau, 1990; Weiss, 1998), and there seems to be some evidence on the side of the minority. At least the United States looks like it has been accelerating in strength since the end of the Cold War, and to such an extent that some have come to call the present period the “unipolar” moment in international politics. In military terms, the United States is stronger today than at any other time since the early 1960s (Volgy and Imwalle, 1995). Its economy is the most productive in the world, and its economic capabilities account for nearly 40 percent of the share of great-power economic capabilities. It holds a preeminent position in research and development with 40 percent of global spending, and in the biotechnology field it controls more than 95 percent of the world’s gene-related patents (Mytelka, 2000). Whereas other states may be weakening, a focus on the United States suggests that at least one state is getting stronger. Many comparative politics scholars contest strongly the theme of weakened state strength. They note that systematic historical comparison of the capabilities of the strongest of states shows that state strength

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has accelerated greatly over the past two centuries. For example, Ted Gurr illustrates that in “four West European countries for which timeseries data are available, the budgeted expenditures of the central government increased from an average of 6.4 percent of GNP in 1875 to 11.2 percent in 1925 and 44.1 percent in 1982” (Gurr, 1990:74). Furthermore, he finds that the “directiveness” of states, along with their political continuity, has increased markedly, a finding consistent with other literature focusing on the strength of the state in fashioning political processes and public policies (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol, 1986; Chodak, 1989; Weiss, 1998). Which view is more accurate? If the majority of IR scholars are correct, it is plausible that the traditional path to global architectural construction through the strength of major powers becomes highly problematic. If, however, comparative politics scholars are correct, perhaps we should accept the idea that there is sufficient strength among key actors to fashion stable governance mechanisms now that the Cold War has ended. If the minority position among IR scholars is correct, then perhaps much of the fate of global architecture lies in the hands of the United States.

Three Faces of State Strength We suspect that these divergent views of state strength exist because each of the three groups is viewing strength with different lenses and focusing on but a single dimension of state strength. We depart from their analyses by presenting a multidimensional perspective on state strength and suggest that all three dimensions are highly salient for the type of strength needed to engage in global architectural construction. We owe a substantial intellectual debt to Susan Strange (1989), who suggested more than a decade ago that state strength has a multidimensional character. She argued that state strength is essentially two different concepts: relational strength and structural strength.5 Relational strength refers to the capabilities of a state vis-à-vis other actors in the system, capabilities with which a state can seek to control the behavior of other states (Strange, 1989:165). In this sense, relational strength is the concept many scholars use to gauge the ebb and flow of much that goes on in international politics. Concepts of balance versus preponderance of power, used in the literature to help predict whether nations will go to war, rely on relational approaches to state strength. This type of strength is far from irrelevant for architectural con-

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struction. In fact, relational strength is at the heart of most studies focusing on global leadership, including power transition theory (e.g., Doran, 1989) and long-cycle theory (e.g., Modelski and Thompson, 1988), and is a key concept in the arsenal of structural neorealists (e.g., Kaplan, 1957; Waltz, 1979). In order to be a leader in developing global architecture, a state should possess a sufficient amount of relational strength to deter or minimize challenges from other great powers to its leadership. Equally important, relational strength is assumed to be critical for maintaining the system once systemic norms and rules have been established (e.g., Gill and Law, 1989). Strange’s contribution comes through warning us that relational strength alone is insufficient for global leadership without substantial structural strength. Structural strength refers to the capability of a state to create essential rules, norms, and modes of operation for various dimensions of the international system. A global leader/hegemon enjoys “structural [strength] through the capacity to determine the terms on which those needs are satisfied and to whom they are made available” (Strange, 1989:165–166). Her warning through the reference to structural strength is clear. At a minimum, developing new global architecture requires the articulation of goals, rules, and norms of conduct for various facets of international relations (e.g., security, economics). Articulation, of course, cannot be enough. Taking on the mantle of successful leadership requires as well the ability to create widespread compliance with rules and norms on the part of most relevant international actors. Compliance can be created through a large variety of means, including through ideological commonalties, inducements, sanctions, and coalition formations; through both institutional and noninstitutional settings (Keohane and Nye, 1989); and by example.6 The strength needed for developing broad global consent to new architectural arrangements is more than the aggregate outcome of bilateral bargains (affected by the strength of the bargainers) between major powers. Leadership for such architectural creation requires extensive resources, and resources not only relative to other great powers but also for interactions with a host of other critical actors in international politics. Those actors include not only other states but thousands of salient interstate nongovernmental and governmental entities that are actively pursuing objectives that have potentially broad economic and security implications for global governance (Boli and Thomas, 1997; Ferguson and Mansbach, 1999; Keohane and Nye, 1989; Rosenau, 1997). Structural strength provides a state with the ability to write or rewrite the rules of the game, an ability made possible

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by the cumulative total of asymmetrical relationships (Cohen, 2000:99) it holds with all the pertinent actors in its global environment.7 Although Strange does not argue for it directly, her approach suggests yet a third dimension of strength necessary for architectural construction: extensive domestic strength. Architectural creation involves a long-term commitment to fashioning global rules and to generating compliance with such rules. Without substantial domestic strength, it is unlikely that states can make such long-term commitments or maintain the complex web of asymmetrical relationships required for structural strength. 8 Thus, included in the idea of structural strength is the assumption that external resources are buttressed by extensive domestic capabilities.9 By domestic strength, we are referring to three different notions. First, the state has available to it substantial resources (its extractive capability from its economy) that can be transferred to foreign activities. Second, such resources are not being severely constrained by domestic needs and priorities. Third, those who command the apparatus of the central government are politically strong enough to effectuate transfers to foreign activities if such transfers become necessary. Thus, our concept of domestic strength moves beyond an assessment of resource extraction by the state to a more comprehensive perspective based on a combination of resources, societal stresses and demands, and political strength. We believe that the question of sufficient strength for architectural construction is really one of asking whether the strongest of states in international politics have sufficient relational, structural, and domestic strength to pursue such construction in the post–Cold War world. Viewed in this light, the three conflicting answers, noted previously, to the question of declining state strength seem to reflect differences based on scholarship that addresses different facets of the strength issue. Those (comparative scholars primarily) who see state strength as increasing are primarily addressing the domestic dimension of state strength. Those who see U.S. strength growing are viewing strength with relational lenses. Finally, those who see state strength as uniformly in decline are approaching the concept of strength from a structural perspective and noting the range of obstacles posed to state activity from, primarily, forces exogenous to the state. Regardless of their perspectives, are these scholars correct? In order to answer that question, we next move to an operationalization of the three dimensions of state strength.

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Measuring State Strength Our task here is to find a suitable measurement strategy with which to assess state strength along relational, structural, and domestic dimensions.10 We will then apply this strategy to those major powers that are typically considered both interested in having an impact on and possibly strong enough to have an impact on global architectural construction in the present international system. These states include the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China, and Japan.11 Of the three dimensions, relational strength is perhaps the easiest one to measure. The concept refers to two aspects of strength. One is the ready availability of a state’s economic and military capabilities for external use. Consistent with the relative-gains concerns of neorealists, the second aspect of strength places those capabilities in the context of similar capabilities available to other powers potentially seeking to challenge systemic norms or global leadership. The relative strength concept has a rich history of operationalization in the literature. Whereas there is a discrepancy between global reach measures (e.g., Modelski and Thompson, 1988) and more simple capability measures, most attempts at empirically observing the relative strength of states first identify a subset of states seen as great powers and then create a “share” measure of some combination of economic and military capabilities. We opt here for a measure previously used elsewhere (e.g., Spiezio, 1990; Volgy and Imwalle, 1995) with substantial validity. We create a subset of great powers, identified previously as the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China, and Japan. Then, we assess the size of each state’s economy and military spending annually. Next, we calculate each state’s share of the aggregate value of military and economic capabilities, as follows: (GDP/GroupGDP) + (MilSpend/GroupMilSpend) RS = —————————————————————— 2 where RS = relative strength MilSpend = military spending GDP = gross domestic product Group = aggregate scores for designated group powers Thus, we are able to use the resulting annual values for each state to measure its relational strength over time.

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Structural strength is far more difficult to measure. Our conceptual cues indicate that we need to measure it in ways that include attention to the following phenomena: • A broad range of capabilities directly used for external purposes; • Capabilities that are reflective of the complex asymmetries in relations with the broad range of state and nonstate actors relevant for architectural construction; and • Capabilities that are assessed in the context of increasing complexities in the international system. We start by collecting data on resources annually spent by states for external purposes. These include all military spending, spending on foreign affairs infrastructure (foreign policy agencies), and spending on foreign assistance. We call this measure the external capabilities (EC) of states. Such spending is assessed in local currency, and we control for inflation annually. Since all but two of our great powers12 are democratic polities and are required to publish their annual budgets, this task is not too onerous, although clearly missing from our calculations are data on foreign intelligence operations.13 We have no means of approximating the broad range of asymmetries between each of these states and the full range of actors critical for global architectural construction. Instead, we opt for a measure of state autonomy. Recognizing the growing interdependencies caused by increasing globalization, we concur with others (e.g., Rupert and Rapkin, 1985; Holm and Sorensen, 1995) that interdependencies in the global economy reduce national autonomy and weaken states. High reliance on international trade may mean that trading states are affected greatly by the domestic economic and political health of their trading partners. Trade dependencies also make it increasingly difficult for countries to pursue objectives in other areas of foreign policy.14 Thus, we incorporate into our measure of structural strength an indicator with which to assess the relative autonomy of states, and we do so by measuring a state’s total trade, divided by its GDP. We call this measure a state’s relative international autonomy (RIA). Third, we seek to measure state strength against the growing complexities of the international system. States engaged in architectural construction at the end of the twentieth and in the beginning of the twenty-first centuries face a far greater variety of actors and problems than their predecessors did hundreds of years ago. Equally important, as

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the system becomes more complex and critical actors increase significantly, such changes are bound to tax greatly the ability of states to build global infrastructure and to generate compliance with norms and rules. There is a bewildering array of potential measures with which to gauge system growth and complexity. We opt for a measure that is perhaps too simple to fully capture the richness in system complexity but one that we believe is a good first approximation of the phenomenon we seek to address. We call it system size (Size) and we measure it as annual changes (in percentages) in the number of states in the international system. Although the size of the system—measured as increases in the numbers of states—may not be very consequential for regional actors, growing system size alone can tax significantly the strength of global aspirants. 15 Furthermore, we choose it as our measure because we believe that it is a convenient shorthand for illustrating complexity. Growth in system size creates new problems in strategizing for states as well as firms engaged in the global market. Such enlargement provides increased domestic and external conflicts and increased opportunities for nonstate actors (e.g., terrorists, organized crime) for refuge and support. These conflicts place additional burdens as well on regional and global institutions. Combining these measures, we construct a simple, additive model of structural strength: SS = (EC – RIA) – ∇Size where SS = structural strength EC = all resources spent on foreign activity RIA = trade/GDP ∇Size = change (in percent) of states in the system Our operationalization of domestic strength takes into account not only the resources available to states but also the constraints operating on their use. We begin by measuring available domestic resources (DR) through the annual revenues the central government extracts from society, and we modify these results by identifying four endogenous constraints on state resources.16 The first is the extent to which the government’s revenue base is constrained by its overreach (OR) in spending. Overreach occurs when states identify problems and seek to address them without hav-

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International Politics and State Strength

ing the resources at hand to do so. Overreach should be important in assessing state strength by showing indirectly the extent to which state capacity may not meet perceived needs. It has an indirect effect as well, through indebtedness, on future state capabilities. We measure overreach as the amount the government spends annually in excess of revenues and the amount it spends on debt service as a result of previous overspending. Second, we identify a political constraint dimension as well, consistent with the literature noting the salience of domestic political conflicts and their management on the strength of the state (e.g., Hagan, 1998; Evangelista, 1997). Here, we are primarily concerned with the political strength (PS) of the primary decisionmaker responsible for the policies of the government. We presume that leaders in democratic polities will be constrained more in their activities when they lack broad political support either from the public or from the legislature. We are cognizant as well that such support is manifested differently in different types of systems. Thus, for Germany, England, France, and Japan, we measure the support that the chief decisionmaker holds in the national legislature through his or her party or coalition.17 For the United States, where party support is more fluid and there are no risks of “votes of confidence” threatening to bring down the government, we use both annual success scores in the Congress for the president’s legislative preferences and a measure of public support for the president.18 Our third constraint on fiscal capabilities is in response to the persistent suggestion in the literature (e.g., Evangalista, 1997; RisseKappen, 1991) that societal pressures (Social) and demands may constitute vigorous constraints on the state (especially for democratic states and depending on the centralization of state authority). Three societal pressures we view as particularly important are patterns of inflation, unemployment, and (for the United States) crime. Although democratic polities vary in their responses to such societal pressures, unlike nondemocratic polities, they are likely to be constrained by the need to commit significant resources to address these issues. We construct a social stress index with which we measure the average percentage of inflation and unemployment, and for the United States we add the crime dimension to the average values. Finally, we wish to control for the growth of a country’s population base. Therefore, we divide our domestic measure by the size of the population. Our index of domestic strength is an additive model, integrating political resources with economic, social, and political constraints:

The Three Faces of State Strength

47

DS = [(DR – OR) +/– PS – Social]/Pop where DS = domestic strength DR = central government revenues OR = overreach PS = political strength Social = index of social stress Pop = population

Caveats and Issues of Validity We constructed scores on domestic, structural, and relational measures for each of the major powers for the period starting with the early part of the Cold War through the 1990s (as late as data were systematically available). For the United States, data are available from the 1950s. For most other countries, reliable data often are not available prior to 1960. For the Soviet Union/Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), data outside of defense spending and GDP/GNP are contradictory and highly unreliable. Even in the case of measuring the size of their respective economies, general trends are supportable, whereas more specific measurements become suspect. Thus, in the case of the two nondemocratic states, we can offer only the most general of guesses regarding their respective domestic strengths and are forced to use measures different from those for the democratic polities. Rather than using revenues, we use measures of central government expenditures (and acceptable estimates of inflation), since these seem to be more reliable for both China and Soviet Union/Russia. Likewise, we check these projections against estimates of their respective GDPs. Despite these differences and in the context of considerable controversy even over expenditure and GDP measures, the patterns we are able to sketch are sufficiently obvious that there should be little contention regarding long-term trends. For similar reasons, we are unable to assess with relative accuracy the range of nondefense spending for either Soviet Union/Russia or China and are forced to rely on more primitive measures to sketch out their structural strengths. Nevertheless, we suspect that the pattern we are able to report further on would not be changed substantially (at least with respect to the direction of our findings) had we been able to unearth the additional evidence for these two countries. The relational strength measure is by definition such that it allows

48

International Politics and State Strength

comparison across countries and across time. We can compare, for example, the strength of Germany relative to that of Japan or that of the United States relative to the entire group. This is not the case with the other two measures. Both the structural strength and the domestic strength measures start with a baseline of resources operationalized in local currencies, and although they are deflated by annual measures of inflation, they produce index scores that are not comparable across the major powers. All we can show is a longitudinal comparison of individual countries: whether the domestic strength or the structural strength of a major power is increasing or decreasing over time. This is not an unimportant caveat, and it should be kept in mind as we look at the results that follow. We cannot say in any absolute way, for example, that there is a minimal threshold below which the United States no longer holds sufficient structural strength to have a hegemonic role in international politics. We can, however—given our understanding of the structural strength of the United States in the 1950s—estimate how much its structural strength has declined since the 1950s. Likewise, we may be able to see a minor increase in the structural strength of France between 1960 and 1990. However, we will need to keep in mind France’s weakness in structural strength in 1960 if we are to gauge whether a minor increase in that strength by 1990 is significant enough to allow France to engage in global architectural construction. In a similar manner, we can make assessments of domestic strength. Although we cannot show that French domestic strength is greater than Japanese domestic strength, we can estimate the extent to which there is a trend toward either increasing or decreasing domestic strength over time. One more important issue needs to be addressed before proceeding to the findings on state strength: How valid are these measures? We are fairly confident regarding the domestic strength index. It is initially in line with resource extraction measures used elsewhere (e.g., Gurr, 1990), and the constraints we have placed on resources are consistent with constraints on domestic strength identified in the literature.19 There is, however, less certainty concerning the operationalization of relational versus structural strength. Are we truly measuring different phenomena with our indexes, and are these phenomena faithful to the concepts we have previously discussed? We have confidence in the relational strength measure because previous research has used the same index (e.g., Spiezio, 1990; Volgy and Imwalle, 1995), and it has met tests of validity. This is less the case for the structural measure, and a case can be made that it simply duplicates

The Three Faces of State Strength

49

a facet of relational strength. To deal with this concern, we develop an empirical test of validity. We assess the relational and structural strength values for a particular state and make a series of predictions about the state’s strength relative to dynamics in international politics that should be associated with the conceptual meaning of the two types of strength. If in fact these indexes tap different phenomena, we should be able to find theoretically supportable empirical consequences in international politics when changes are observed in the two types of strength. Fortunately, such evidence is available. We start by focusing on the relational and structural strength of the United States during the Cold War period. Because that country is the leading state in that system, fluctuations in its relational and structural strength should have had important consequences for maintaining global architecture by minimizing system disturbances (relational strength) and for maintaining the integrity of the global architecture (structural strength). Since relational strength is more important for dealing directly with other states, especially those likely to contest for leadership in the system, we predict that fluctuation in U.S. relational strength is likely to correlate with fluctuation in disturbances to the system such as wars and crises. For these types of events, changes in U.S. structural strength should not be very important. However, structural strength should be important for activities in the international system that directly reflect its architecture. One such activity is the granting of prestige in concurrence with norms and rules fashioned in large part by the leader or hegemon in the system. We should find that, to the extent that U.S. structural strength varies, so should the consistency with which status or prestige is rewarded in the system.20 Here, U.S. relational strength should make little difference. Finally, we can offer one more test: In those rare cases where activities reflect both disturbances to the system and challenges to systemic norms, both relational and structural strength should be salient. This would be the case regarding the frequency of terrorism in the system, since terrorism reflects both challenges to specific actors and efforts to undermine the fundamental norms and rules of the system (e.g., Volgy, Imwalle, and Corntassel, 1997). We reproduce three tables that cumulatively provide a test of validity for our measures of relational and structural strength. Table 3.1 is consistent with our predictions. The relational strength measure does predict disturbances such as wars and crises, indicating the diminution of both crises and wars when the global leader’s relational strength is

50 Table 3.1

Event Count Regressions of War and Crises on Structural Strength and Relational Strength

Variable

War

Relational strength

Crises

–17.356a (4.305)

–7.126b (2.964)

Structural strength

0.0041 (0.0041)

0.003 (0.0027)

Constant

8.3021a (1.2848)

4.514b (0.9538)

Gamma

–0.346 (0.242)

0.282 (0.221)

Log-likelihood

83.16

N

36

250.82 45

Source: Volgy and Imwalle, 2000. Reprinted by permission of Overseas Publishers Association. Notes: Entries are parameter estimates (standard errors in parentheses). For an elaboration of the research design and the theoretical justification for the dependent variables, see Volgy and Imwalle, 2000. a. Statistical significance at p < .05. b. Statistical significance at p < .01.

Table 3.2

Regression of Status on Relational and Structural Strength Variable

Status Inconsistency

Relational strength

0.0832 (–0.29329)

Structural strength

–0.0058a (0.00256)

Constant

0.866 (0.090734)

SSE

0.0269

R-Square

0.597

N

33

Source: Volgy and Imwalle, 2000. Reprinted by permission of Overseas Publishers Association. Notes: Entries are parameter estimates (standard errors in parentheses). Regression diagnostics indicated no significant autocorrelation (rho = .21). a. Statistical significance at p < .05.

51

The Three Faces of State Strength

Table 3.3

Event Count Regression of Acts of Terrorism on Structural Strength and Relational Strength Variable

Terrorism

Relational strength

–7.772a (1.819)

Structural strength

–0.0034b (0.0017)

Constant

9.68 (0.7232)

Gamma

3.1479a (0.2647)

Log-likelihood N

64783.52 29

Source: Volgy and Imwalle, 2000. Reprinted by permission of Overseas Publishers Association. Note: Entries are paramter estimates (standard errors in parentheses). a. Statistical significance at p < .01. b. Statistical significance at p < .05.

relatively high. As expected, structural strength is not significant in the equation. Table 3.2 is also consistent with our predictions. Here, it is fluctuation in structural strength that predicts status inconsistency; relational strength does not. Finally, Table 3.3 shows that in a case where the activity (acts of terrorism) involves both a systemic disturbance and a challenge to systemic norms and rules, both relational and structural strength become significant predictors. Our measures of relational and structural strength meet the test we have devised, based on three sets of predictions regarding their effects on the international system. The results give us some confidence that the indexes we use to measure state strength are in fact reflecting different aspects of state capabilities in international politics. Now, we can proceed to sketch out empirically some trends in the strength of those states most likely to engage in global architectural construction.

52

International Politics and State Strength

Appendix 3.1

Data Sources for State Strength Variables Domestic Strength (DS)

Central Government Revenues (DR)

IMF International Financial Statistics Yearbook; additional data for Russia were secured through the research arm of MGIMO, including the use of GOSKOMSTAT, and crosschecked with Alan P. Pollard, USSR: Facts and Figures Annual. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1985–1991; Lawrence R. Robertson, Russia and Eurasia, Facts and Figures. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1997; and Nicolas Spulber, Restructing the Soviet Economy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) Estimates/Central Government Revenues (China)

Overreach (OR)

IMF International Financial Statistics Yearbook

Political Strength (PS)

Lipjhart Election Archive (http://dodgson.ucsd.edu/lij); Elections Around the World (www.electionworld.org/index.html); Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (presidential success score with Congress); Gallup (annual)

Index of Social Stress Unemployment

Inflation Crime

Population

OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Statistical Yearbooks; U.S. Department of Commerce Survey of Current Business OECD Statistical Yearbooks; U.S. Department of Commerce Survey of Current Business U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Uniform Crime Reports U.S. Census Bureau (/www.census.gov/ipc/ www/idbrank.html); Population Reference Bureau

The Three Faces of State Strength

53

Structural Strength (SS) Resources Spent on External Activities (EC) Defense State/Foreign Ministry

Aid Programs Autonomy (RIA) Trade/GDP System Size

SIPRI; U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; CIA Factbook National budget documents (e.g., Budget of the Ministry of Japan); data for France were compiled in large part from the following sources: Les Tableaux de l’Economie Francaise. Paris: INSEE, 1956–1999; L’Annuaire Statistiques de la France. Paris: INSEE, 1960–1978; Les Notes Bleues de Bercy. Paris: French Treasury Department: Paris, 1981–1999 OECD National Accounts

IMF International Financial Statistics Yearbook Correlates of War International System Membership; Gleditsch and Ward (1999, 2001) Relational Strength (RS)

Military Spending

SIPRI; U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; CIA Factbook

GDP

IMF International Financial Statistics Yearbook, Penn World Tables; additional data for Russia were secured through the research arm of MGIMO, including the use of GOSKOMSTAT, and along with SIPRI data, cross-checked with sources noted in the Central Government Revenues item

Notes 1. There are at least two reasons this may be the case in the present international political system. One is that the cumulative strength of nonmajor states is growing. It is obvious that the sheer number of states has grown dramatically since the 1950s and exploded in the aftermath of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. Such growth has functioned to increase further the complexity of the system. The second has to do with the exponential growth of nonstates in the system, including IGOs and NGOs, with the latter ranging from very strong multinational corporations to interstate terrorist organizations.

54

International Politics and State Strength

2. This is the case for both structural neorealists (e.g., Waltz, 1979) and power transition theorists (e.g., Organski and Kugler, 1980; Tammen et al., 2000), although power transition theorists recognize the importance of dissatisfaction with the status quo as a motivating force. 3. It is possible that some states may embark on global architectural construction without sufficient structural strength or vie for global leadership without sufficient structural and relational strength. Such possibilities are not trivial for international politics and are likely to yield explosive consequences, including the probability of intense conflicts and major wars. Our point here is that without the necessary structural strength, global architectural construction is not likely to occur. 4. There are clearly exceptions to this generalization, especially with global cycle theorists. Modelski and Thompson, for example, base much of their work on the separation of the strength needed for global reach from the strength needed to be a regional, or land-based, power, and this distinction leads to a dramatic difference between global and regional powers, and includes placing some actors typically seen as global powers into the regional category. 5. Strange’s notion of structural strength in turn owes an intellectual debt to Stephen Krasner (1981), who disaggregated state strength into its relational and “meta-power” components. 6. The sustained growth in the U.S. economy across nearly a decade during the 1990s illustrates the importance of trying to create global architecture through example. European skepticism and resistance regarding the U.S. economic model began to dissipate as the growth of this model continued despite predictions to the contrary. U.S. leadership with respect to an international trading regime, lessening government intervention in domestic industries, and high-technology investments would have met far stiffer resistance in Europe without the example of continued economic growth and the favorable competitive position for U.S. firms in the world market. 7. Strange’s definition of structural strength goes beyond those of some others, such as Keohane, whose standard requires that a hegemon “have access to crucial raw materials, control major sources of capital, maintain a large market for imports, hold comparative advantage in goods with high value added. . . . It must also be stronger on these dimensions, taken as a whole, than any other country” (Keohane, 1984:34). 8. Although Strange does not directly argue for the importance of domestic strength, this point is very much under the surface of her writings and becomes more transparent in the latest reanalysis of her writings, especially as it applies to the domestic strength of the United States vis-à-vis multinational corporations residing within its continental shores (Lawton, Rosenau, and Verdun, 2000). 9. We are aware that some scholars have argued quite persuasively that some states will use external resources to strengthen domestic capabilities (e.g., Mastanduno, Lake, and Ikenberry, 1989; Krasner, 1978). In fact, we don’t doubt that it may be very much the long-term goal of hegemonic architectural creation to fashion a new world order that will ultimately enhance and strengthen internal capabilities. Yet, we take issue with these arguments in two ways. First, we believe that substantial domestic resources are needed initially to maintain a strategy of global architectural construction. Second, under conditions of decreasing autonomy for states in international politics, the strategy of using international activity to increase domestic strength becomes increasingly less viable, and our data indicate decreasing autonomy for most major actors in the post–Cold War system.

The Three Faces of State Strength

55

10. The sources utilized for our measures of domestic, structural, and external strength are identified in the appendix at the end of this chapter. 11. We looked as well at potential great powers, such as India, Brazil, and Indonesia. By and large, these states lack today and in the near future the potential to rival the major powers for leadership in architectural construction. 12. As noted further on, the measurement strategy employed for China and Russia/Soviet Union varies substantially from those used with the democratic states. 13. Clearly, a hallmark of democracy is its transparency, and there should be nothing more transparent in a democratic political system than the state’s annual budget. It is understandable that intelligence budgets are not made public for any of these countries. What was more surprising was the lack of detailed accounting and accessibility to annual data for several of these nations. Budgetary data for the United States are routine, and they are relatively routine for Germany as well. Securing data for French foreign affairs infrastructure constitutes a complex process (our thanks go to Professor Marie Claude Smoot and her graduate student for their assistance in this effort) and is barely manageable even with extensive French academic assistance. Securing the same information for Japan required the assistance of academic colleagues in Tokyo (our gratitude goes out especially to Professor Hideo Sato and his colleagues). We expected data from the UK to be the easiest to locate, but that task proved to be the most difficult. Clearly, budgetary transparencies vary tremendously across democratic polities. 14. One clear example is the U.S. administration’s attempts to effectuate a human rights policy with China while the risks of deteriorating relations involve billions of dollars for U.S. industries. In fact, in the congressional battle over China’s trading status, U.S. business interests seemed to have played an embarrassingly decisive role, prompting the following news story: “One retailer warned [members of Congress] that Tickle Me Elmo dolls would soar in price if higher tariffs were imposed on Chinese goods. But one presidential advisor cringed, saying at last weekend’s economic summit in Denver, ‘It made it sound like we should decide China policy at Toys ’R US’” (Clymer, 1997). 15. Even the United States, the richest of actors in international politics, has experienced considerable difficulties in securing budgetary resources for fully staffing its embassies and developing adequate precautions against terrorism for its personnel overseas. The absence of adequate security, resulting from insufficient funding for embassy infrastructure, contributed to the impact of the bombing of its embassies in Africa and is but one indication of its struggles with minimal requirements for a global presence in a world of expanding states. 16. For a similar approach, see Organski and Kugler, 1980; Kugler and Domke, 1986; and Kugler and Arbetman, 1989. Yet, we depart from their empirical measures because we are assuming that the concerns raised in the literature regarding societal and political constraints on central government capabilities cannot be captured by a ratio based primarily on predicted tax extraction versus actual tax extraction. Such a measure may be more sensitive to economic fluctuations that are captured well by the combination of central government revenues and our concept of overreach. 17. We calculate percentages above and below 50 percent. When legislative support dips below 50 percent, the appropriate percentage is deducted from the domestic strength score; when it exceeds 50 percent, the value above it is added to the domestic strength score.

56

International Politics and State Strength

18. We measure the average support score on both measures over time. We then calculate for each year the percentage above or below the mean. We average the two scores to form an annual political support score for the president. 19. There is an argument to be made about the validity of treating the index as an additive model. We could have refined it more along the lines of agreements in the literature regarding the importance of societal considerations in more centralized democratic political systems. We could also have integrated into the model some additional variables, including the extent to which the central government delegates authority to regional and local units. In fact, we ran through a number of such permutations but found no significant departures from the results using the simpler model. 20. The test here is the degree of relationship between structural strength and status inconsistency. We would expect that at higher levels of structural strength there would be greater status inconsistency in the system as the global leader seeks compliance for norms and rules it has constructed and rewards states with prestige for their conformance. Thus more inconsistency would occur compared to the rewarding of prestige based on traditional factors of economic and military strength (e.g., see Volgy and Mayhall, 1995; Volgy and Imwalle, 2000).

4 Assessing State Strength Among the Major Powers

n this chapter, we assess the domestic, relational, and structural strength of the major powers. Then we place into a broader systemic context the results of this analysis.

I

Findings: Domestic Strength and the Major Powers Recall that we constructed domestic strength indexes for each of the major powers through the period spanning most of the Cold War and immediately after. This period coincides with two major trends in the international system: the growth of democratic polities and the democratization of political processes internally, and growth in the processes of globalization externally. The literature—including comparative politics and international relations—suggests contradictory notions about the domestic strength of these states. One group points to the tremendous growth in state revenues and argues that the modern state’s ability to extract resources from its economy and from its society dwarfs the minimalist state mechanisms that used to operate even less than a century ago. The other group argues that democratic processes internally and globalization processes externally have placed enormous constraints on states, making them far weaker than they appear. In order to take into account these contradictory ideas, we first created a domestic strength index that assesses trends in the revenues that central governments are extracting from their domestic context. Then we placed constraints on these revenues with measures that seek to capture fiscal overreach, political strength, and societal pressures. In this 57

58

International Politics and State Strength

manner, the index should be a fair test of how much strength a major power holds domestically. The trend for each of our states is demonstrated through a series of graphs. The results generally confirm the impressions of comparative politics scholars. Through the period of our analysis, only one state (Soviet Union/Russia) exhibits a pattern of declining domestic strength. Since longitudinal data for the measures constituting the index on domestic strength for the Soviet Union are suspect, we use two basic estimates instead. One is noted in Figure 4.1, showing estimates of the size of the Soviet/Russian economy. These data come from the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and are likely to be overestimates.1 Nevertheless, they indicate steady economic growth followed by an enormous drop in economic capacity as the Soviet Union disintegrated. The Russian economy looks to be smaller in 19982 than that of its Soviet predecessor in 1963. The second set of estimates is noted in Figure 4.2. These data are from official and unofficial sources in Russia on state expenditures.3 They indicate an increasing pattern of effort through 1985 to extract state expenditures from a growing economy and then an even greater effort to increase expenditures in the face of a disintegrating economy and a disintegrating Soviet Union. This pattern of declining state

Figure 4.1

Estimates of Real USSR/Russian GDP in Constant 1988 Dollars, 1963–1998

3000 3000

Constant Billions of Dollars

Constant Billions of Dollars

2500 2500

2000 2000

1500 1500

1000 1000

500 500

1996

19 97

19 95

1993

19 93

1990

19 91

19 89

1987

19 87

1984

19 85

19 83

1981 Year

19 81

1978

19 79

19 77

1975

19 75

1972

19 73

1969

19 71

1966

19 69

1

19 67

3 1963 96

19 65

0

1998

Year

Source: Compiled from estimates in World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, Washington, DC: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; and CIA Factbook, Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency.

59

Assessing State Strength

strength should not come as a surprise given the dramatic drop in the post-Soviet economy for Russia (Figure 4.1). Once the Soviet Union disintegrated into a number of smaller states and its smaller successor (Russia) then engaged in fundamental restructuring to its economy and its political infrastructure—while ravaged by economic and political crises—Russia was destined to demonstrate a pattern of domestic strength far inferior to its predecessor. In fact, given the economic decline noted in Figure 4.1, we suspect that Figure 4.2 substantially overestimates Russian efforts to generate state expenditures. Moreover, were we able to factor in Russian unemployment and inflation as part of our index, our hypothetical domestic strength index values in the 1990s would drop substantially further than noted by these indicators, even as they show Russian state extractive capacity to be far below that of the Soviet state in the 1960s.4 The Russian case, however, is the only one in the group that shows substantially diminishing state strength. In that sense it represents both an anomaly and a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about maintaining and increasing domestic strength, even for major powers. For the other six states, the pattern is one of persistent and increasing domestic strength. Even when we seek to constrain revenue-gener-

Figure 4.2

Estimates of USSR/Russia “State” Expenditures as a Percentage of Gross Social Product (until 1985) and GDP (from 1991), 1965–1997

0.35 0.35

0.3 0.30

Percentage

Percentage

0.25 0.25

0.2 0.20

0.15 0.15

0.1 0.10

0.05 0.05

0 5 1965 96

7 9 96 196896

1 1971 97

3 5 97 1974 97

7 1977 97

9 1 97 1980 98

3 1983 98

5 7 98 1986 98

9 1989 98

1 3 99 1992 99

5 1995 99

7 991998

Source: Estimates compiled from GOSKOMSTAT; Alan P. Pollard, USSR: Facts and Figures Annual, Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1985–1991; Lawrence R. Robertson, Russia and Eurasia: Facts and Figures, Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1997; and Nicolas Spulber, Restructuring the Soviet Economy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.

60

International Politics and State Strength

ating capabilities with political, social, and fiscal constraints, all demonstrate substantially greater strength at the end of the twentieth century than they did four decades earlier. Perhaps the clearest indication of increasing domestic state strength is demonstrated by Japan, as noted in Figure 4.3. At the end of the Cold War, Japan’s domestic strength index is roughly seven times higher than in 1960, showing a nearly monotonically increased growth in central government capabilities, even when we take into account social, political, and fiscal constraints. At the same time, the index shows Japan’s increasing domestic problems, in both sociopolitical and economic spheres, at the end of the time frame. The growth in domestic strength was arrested in the last decade, although Japan remained at the turn of the century a far stronger state than it was forty years previously. Figure 4.4 illustrates the domestic strength index for Germany. As in the Japanese case, but somewhat less dramatically, the graph illustrates better than a twofold growth in strength from the West Germany of 1960 to the one on the eve of consolidation with East Germany in 1989. Even consolidation—although quite costly—does not seem to have reversed the direction of German domestic strength. Although social, political, and even fiscal capabilities have been stretched to accommodate integration into a new Germany, the unified state looks to be substantially stronger domestically than its West German predecessor.

Figure 4.3

Japanese Domestic Strength Index, 1960–1966, 1971–1996

8000 7000

Index Values Index Values

6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000

0 1960 60 9621963 84 9861987 64 1966 66 9681969 70 1972 72 9741975 76 1978 78 9801981982 1984 88 1990 90 9921993994 1996 96 19 1 19 19 1 19 19 1 19 19 1 1 19 1 19 19 1 1 19

Source: See Appendix 3.1. Note: Complete data for the years 1967 through 1970 were unavailable.

61

Assessing State Strength

Figure 4.5 seeks to capture the trend in French domestic strength. State strength seems to have more than doubled between 1960 and 1989 despite some downturns that were fueled by a combination of political, social, and fiscal problems. Although the short trend line for the 1990s shows some dramatic changes, even the last data point shows the state twice as strong as its 1960 counterpart.

Figure 4.4

German Domestic Strength Index, 1960–1996

140 140

120 120

Index Values

Index Values

100 100

80 80

60 60 40 40 20 20 00 1960 60 19

621963964 19 1

1966 66 19

8 61969 70 19 19

1972 72 19

4 71975 76 19 19

1978 78 19

801981 982 19 1

1984 84 19

6 81987 88 19 19

1990 90 19

921993994 19 1

1996 96 19

Source: See Appendix 3.1. Figure 4.5

French Domestic Strength Index, 1960–1997

140 120

Index Values Index Values

100 80 60 40 20 0 1960 1963 60 962 964 19 1 1

1966 6 81969 0 96 96 197

1 Source: See Appendix 3.1.1

1972 1975 72 974 976 19 1 1

1978 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 78 980 982 984 986 988 990 992 994 996 19 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

62

International Politics and State Strength

Figure 4.6 represents the domestic strength index for the UK. The trend is similar to what we have noted for other West European states. British strength, despite an evidently painful period for the country in the first half of the 1970s, doubles by the end of the Cold War, and although the state encounters fluctuations in strength after the Cold War, the downward movement is corrected by the second half of the 1990s. In fact, the British, French, and German cases of domestic strength display some remarkable similarities despite substantially different approaches to the role of the central government in their respective polities (e.g., German federalism versus French centralization), differing impacts from the Cold War (e.g., German division), the success of Thatcherism in the UK, and differing approaches to—or at least enthusiasm for—integration in the European Union (e.g., the UK versus Germany). Figure 4.7 represents the domestic strength index for the United States. The longitudinal picture here shows both similarities with and differences from the European states. Perhaps the most important similarity is that the domestic strength index more than doubles between the early 1950s and the end of the Cold War, although the size of the increase is not as great between 1960 and 1989 as it is for some of the European states. Another similarity is that domestic strength continues to hold following the end of the Cold War, and the data for the end of the last decade show even stronger domestic growth, fueled by a very

Figure 4.6

United Kingdom Domestic Strength Index, 1961–1995

16 16

14 12

Index Values

Index Values

10 8 6 4 2 0 1961 1 3 196465 96 96 9

1967 9 197071 7 96 96 9

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

1973 5 197677 3 97 97 9

1979 9 1 198283 97 98 9

1985 5 7 198889 98 98 9

1991 1 3 1994951996 99 99 9

63

Assessing State Strength

Figure 4.7

U.S. Domestic Strength Index, 1953–1998

1200 1200

1000 1000

Index Values

800 800

600 600

400 400

200 200

00 1953 3 5 719589 1 1963 3 5 719689 95 95 95 95 96 96 96 96 96

1 1973 3 5 719789 97 97 97 97 97

1 1983 3 5 719889 98 98 98 98 98

1998 1 1993 3 5 7 99 99 99 99

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

aggressive economy and a reduced problem of fiscal overreach. The dissimilarity with the European states is obvious as well. There are substantially greater fluctuations in the U.S. trend line, with significant periods of downturn followed by aggressive movement in the opposite direction. Domestic strength is clearly increasing, and the fluctuations represent an interesting deviation from the trends shown by the other major powers that are democratic states. Finally, we come to the case of the People’s Republic of China. Reliable data for our domestic strength index are once more unavailable, but we are able to report two sets of estimates relevant to Chinese domestic strength. The first is represented in Figure 4.8. It estimates the growth of Chinese GDP and illustrates a dramatic increase in economic capability with nearly an elevenfold increase between 1960 and 1997. The second estimate is noted in Figure 4.9. The data illustrate a tenfold increase in Chinese central government expenditures between 1960 and 1996 with a dramatic acceleration of spending over the last decade shown. These estimates should be treated with substantial caution, since they are a product of a combination of hard data and guesstimates. Furthermore, the steep increases would be significantly modified had we reliable data on unemployment, inflation, and political strength. Nevertheless, these figures provide some credence for the notion that the

64

International Politics and State Strength

Figure 4.8

Estimates of Chinese GDP in Yuan, and Deflated by Annual Inflation Estimates, 1960–1997

2500 2,500

Billions of Yuan

2,000 2000

1500 1,500

1,000 1000

500 500

0

0 1960

219634

1966 6

81969 0

1972 2

419756

1978 8

01981 2 1984 4

61987 8 1990 0

21993 4

1996 6 1998

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

Figure 4.9

World Bank Estimates of Chinese General Government Expenditures in Constant 1995 U.S. Dollars, 1960–1997

1.00E+11 1.00E+11 9.00E+10 9.00E+10

U.S. Dollars Constant 1995 U.S. Dollars

8.00E+10 8.00E+10 7.00E+10 7.00E+10 6.00E+10 6.00E+10 5.00E+10 5.00E+10 4.00E+10 4.00E+10 3.00E+10 3.00E+10 2.00E+10 2.00E+10 1.00E+10 1.00E+10 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 1960 0

6 19

1963 1966 1969 1972 1975 1978 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1998 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

Assessing State Strength

65

Chinese state has substantially increased its domestic strength since the 1960s, emulating a pattern observed for all major powers except Russia. Overall, then, with the exception of a disintegrated Soviet Union, all the major powers exhibit substantial growth over time in domestic strength. At the turn into the twenty-first century, the pattern for these states is consistent with the claims of comparative scholars that—and in spite of imposing fiscal, societal, and political constraints—the major powers were not only stronger than their nineteenth-century predecessors but continued to strengthen into the next century. These trends clearly indicate that these states have the capacity (irrespective of will or desire) to translate additional capabilities for external activities, and with but one exception, none seem strained domestically by their external commitments.

Findings: Structural Strength and the Major Powers Our findings are quite different, however, when we examine the evidence related to the structural strength of the major powers. Recall that we constructed a structural strength index that measured the resources these states committed to their external activities, and we modified those capabilities by the extent of their autonomy and the size of the system. The results indicate that nearly all of these countries have substantially decreased their structural capabilities over time. The evidence for the United States is contained in Figure 4.10. The index values demonstrated in the graph illustrate a dramatic and consistent decline over time in U.S. structural strength. Although the decline is somewhat arrested toward the end of the time period, by 1998 the structural index value for the United States is only 24 percent of its value in 1953, the highest point during the period. But even if the 1950s are eliminated from the equation, the latest index value is substantially less than half of what it was in 1968. The graph indicates as well that the decline is not automatic. There are at least four periods when the pattern is reversed, although the reversals appear to be temporary in nature and, with the exception of the Reagan administration’s infusion of resources for military expenditures, quite short-lived. Figure 4.11 represents the structural strength index for the UK. The pattern seems to demonstrate four cycles. The first period, between 1960 and 1967, is one in which structural strength remained relatively stable. The second period—from 1968 through 1978—shows both

66

International Politics and State Strength

Figure 4.10

U.S. Structural Strength Index, 1950–1998

400 400

350 350

250 250 Index values

Index Values

300 300

200 200

150 150

100 100 50 50

00 1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

1999

Source: See Appendix 3.1. Figure 4.11

UK Structural Strength Index, 1960–1997

2.02 1.8 1.8 1.6 1.6

Index values

Index Values

1.4 1.4 1.2 1.2

1.01 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.2

00 0 1960 96 1

621963964 19 1

6 1966 96 1

681969970 19 1

2 1972 97 1

4 71975 76 19 19

8 1978 97 1

0 81981 82 19 19

4 1984 98 1

6 81987 88 19 19

0 1990 99 1

921993994 19 1

6 1996 99 1

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

decline and quick stabilization in the decline. The third period—from 1979 through 1985—is one of increased structural strength and is a period that actually restores the original strength indicated in 1960. The final period—1986 through 1997—shows the steepest decline with an index value in 1997 that is 35 percent lower than the strength indicated

67

Assessing State Strength

in 1960. Although this pattern of decline is far less dramatic than that of the United States, the end result is similar: substantially less structural strength at the end of the twentieth century. Changes in the German structural strength index are demonstrated in Figure 4.12. Given West Germany’s role and position through much of the Cold War era, we would expect that in the context of substantial economic growth, it would seek to maintain and increase its international presence through cultivating substantial relational and structural strength. Yet, flowing against this expectation is the realization that dramatic increases in the size and complexity of the global system make such aspirations extremely expensive.5 In addition, the more Germany’s economy was tied into regional and global trading arrangements, the more its autonomy would have been reduced, and consequently its structural strength. The trend in German structural strength seems to reflect both of these arguments. There is a short burst in increasing structural strength between 1960 and 1963, followed by a period of decline between 1964 and 1968, and then an extensive period between 1969 and 1992 when German structural strength neither increases nor diminishes. This latter period is particularly impressive, since significant additional resources for foreign activities were required in the face of growing complexities and increased system size.

Figure 4.12

German Structural Strength Index, 1960–1996

16 14

Index Values Index Values

12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1960 60

621963 64 1966 66

68196970

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

1972 72

74 197576

1978 78

80198182 1984 84

6 81987 88 1990 90

921993 94 1996 96

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International Politics and State Strength

Finally, the graph shows a sudden and dramatic loss of structural strength between 1992 and 1996. The last data point on the index is 26 percent lower than German structural strength in 1960, and it represents a level of strength that is nearly 50 percent lower than the highest period of strength for Germany during the entire period. The German case seems to illustrate well three issues with respect to structural strength. First, it is possible (especially under conditions that Germany faced during the Cold War) in the midst of substantial economic growth to maintain structural strength in the face of very strong exogenous pressures from the global environment. Second, even for nations such as Germany, it may not be possible to swim against the global tide indefinitely; at the end of the twentieth century, German structural strength declined as well, and quite precipitously.6 Third, an overview of the graph should remind us that in terms of structural strength, Germany at the end of the period looks no stronger than it did in 1960, a time when German structural strength was substantially weaker than that of the United States, the Soviet Union, and even the UK. The Japanese case is somewhat analogous to that of Germany. Rebuilding from the ashes of World War II and blessed with an economic engine that was considered nearly miraculous for over three decades, Japan had the capability to increase its structural strength even though such changes were likely be treated with suspicion and possibly hostility by former foes. What makes Japan different from most of the major powers is that a substantial portion of the resources it had committed to external affairs (the defense budget) was controlled by its constitution. Ironically, it is obligated to spend no more than 1 percent of its economy for military purposes. Perhaps to avoid controversy over developing military capabilities, the Japanese government had come to equate the maximum with the minimum, and as its economy skyrocketed, so did its military spending and, along with it, its structural strength. It is not altogether true, however, that this is the sole reason for increased Japanese structural strength. Its bilateral and multilateral assistance programs grew substantially as well and in fact surpassed in size assistance programs of the United States by the 1990s. Not surprisingly, Figure 4.13 shows Japan as the only one of the great powers that substantially and consistently increased its structural strength in international politics, even in the face of growing system size and complexity. The index value for 1990 is nearly four times higher than that for 1960. In fact, the index value peaked in 1990, and there was only a modest decrease in Japanese structural strength through the rest of the last decade shown, corresponding to its increased economic difficulties, and at a time of further growth in system size.

69

Assessing State Strength

Figure 4.13

Japanese Structural Strength Index, 1960–1997

800 800

700 700

500 500

Index Vallues

Index Values

600 600

400 400

300 300

200 200

100 100

00 1960

1963

1966

1969

1972

1975

1978

1981

1984

1987

1990

1993

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

French foreign policy throughout the Cold War (and after) is characterized by a clear commitment to seeking an independent path in foreign affairs, including attempts at testing both U.S. leadership and U.S.imposed norms and rules on the international system. Given that history, we would expect that French policymakers would invest heavily in France’s structural strength. At the same time, we would expect mixed successes given the growth in size and complexity of the global system and the limited ability of the French economy to accommodate major commitments to external affairs. Figure 4.14 shows a pattern of structural strength over time that is not dissimilar from these predictions. Between 1964 and 1970, there is a significant decline in strength, followed by a longer period of stability. Then follows a nine-year period when structural strength increases only to fall and stabilize once more. That period is followed by a sharp increase in state strength over four years, culminating in 1990, only to be followed again by a substantial decrease in strength through 1995. The last data point on the graph indicates state strength for France that is the lowest for the time period, and some 22 percent lower than it was in 1964. Figure 4.15 estimates Chinese structural strength. We recommend a strong dose of caution regarding these estimates. Note first that we have somewhat reliable data on defense spending and trade but have no access to additional data to construct external resource commitments (e.g., foreign policy infrastructure, bilateral and multilateral aid) for the

1996

70 Figure 4.14

International Politics and State Strength

French Structural Strength Index, 1964–1997

30

25

Index Values Index values

20

15

10

5

0 1964

1967

1970

1973

1976

1979

1982

1985

1988

1991

1994

1997

Source: See Appendix 3.1. Figure 4.15

Estimates of Chinese Defense Spending (ACDA) Minus Chinese Autonomy Values, and Deflated by System Size, in Constant Units, 1961–1995

30 30

25 25

Values

Values

20 20

15 15

10 10

55

00

1961

1964

1967

1970

1973

1976

1979

1982

1985

1988

1991

1994

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

major-power democracies. There is even controversy over the defense data source (ACDA, again probably overestimating Chinese spending). Yet, the pattern indicated by the data is not surprising and is consistent with the estimates of a number of experts (e.g., Christensen, 2001). Our data illustrate first a very strong pattern of increase in structur-

71

Assessing State Strength

al strength between 1962 and 1971, followed by six years of continuous decline. Then we observe another brief and sharp increase in strength, followed again by a gradual, longer-term decline between 1980 and 1991. After 1991, the decline is arrested, and our last data point shows a modest increase in structural strength. Clearly, Chinese structural strength has grown substantially compared to its very low state in 1961. However, the Chinese pattern, different as it is from Western states, shares with them the similarity of declining structural strength over the past three decades (for example, the index value in 1995 is 35 percent lower than in 1980 and 24 percent lower than in 1971) in the face of growing system size and complexity. Even the enormous growth in the Chinese economy and in its domestic strength since 1975 has translated only modestly into structural strength enhancements. Finally, we come to changes in Soviet/Russian structural strength. Again, the data presented in Figure 4.16 are limited both by data unavailable for this country and by data over which there is substantial controversy (e.g., military spending; longitudinal data on inflation). Yet, the trend is not unlike our expectations: we expected the former Soviet Union, as a superpower, to wage a struggle to maintain its structural strength against rapidly increasing costs to do so, and we expected that such attempts would disintegrate along with the Soviet Union and the economic and social crises facing its Russian successor.

Figure 4.16

Estimates of USSR/Russian Military Spending in Constant 1988 Dollars, 1963–1995

400 400

350 350

Billions of U.S. Dolalrs

Billions of Constant Dollars

300 300 250 250

200 200 150 150 100 100 50 50

00 1963

1966

1969

1972

1975

1978

1981

1984

1987

1990

1993

Source: Compiled from estimates in World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, Washington, DC: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

1996

72

International Politics and State Strength

We simplified Figure 4.16 by showing only Soviet/Russian defense spending in constant units of currency. We added, however, Figure 4.17 to our assessments; unlike the ACDA overestimates of Soviet/Russian defense spending, these data are based on SIPRI’s more modest estimates of spending as a function of GDP. The data in Figure 4.17 are especially striking in the context of the dramatic decline in the Russian economy (e.g., see Figure 4.1). By the late 1990s, Russian military spending is down to 4 percent of its GDP, a GDP that has already shrunk to levels last seen in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1950s. Just as instructive, however, is the trend showing a steady decline in the effort at military spending a full decade before the disintegration, suggesting that Soviet structural strength was in significant decline prior to the disintegration of the state. Regardless of which trend we observe, the conclusion is obvious and consistent with the dramatic changes that occurred in transition from the Soviet Union to Russia. Irrespective of the growth in system size and complexity, the structural strength of the new Russian state is but a dramatically smaller version of the Soviet Union’s. Further, even the substantial increases in military spending from 1978 to 1988 (Figure 4.16) would flatten and decline had we factored in lessening Soviet autonomy and placed these numbers in the context of growing system size. Overall, we find that structural strength has substantially decreased

Figure 4.17

Estimates of USSR/Russian Military Spending as a Function of GDP, 1960–1997

0.18 0.18

0.16 0.16 0.14 0.14

Percent of GDP

Percent of GDP

0.12 0.12 0.1 0.10

0.08 0.08 0.06 0.06

0.04 0.04 0.02 0.02

0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

Source: Stockholm Institute for Peace Research (SIPRI) (see Appendix 3.1).

1990

1995

2000

73

Assessing State Strength

for all but one of the major powers. Japan—according to Figure 4.13, probably the weakest state at the start of the measurement period—is the one exception to the trend, although its own growth is arrested in the post–Cold War system. For the others, structural strength declines either continuously and monotonically throughout the period (e.g., the United States) or declines ultimately in the face of persistent attempts to supplement external resources (e.g., France, Germany). If we view state strength from a structural perspective, these findings are consistent with the claims of IR scholars who argue for persistent and uniform decline in state strength in the face of globalization processes and growing system size and complexity. It does not appear to be the case, however, that these trends are due to declining domestic state strength; the patterns we have noted suggest both growing domestic strength and increasing availability of resources for external activity. What does seem clear is that these states have not reallocated resources to external activities in proportions either consistent with the growth of their extraction capabilities or consistent with the growth and complexity of the international system. Table 4.1 illustrates the relationship both between time and structural strength and between domestic and structural strength. Consistent with our narrative, in only one case (that of Japan) is there a positive and significant relationship between time and structural strength. All the other states demonstrate a negative relationship, showing decreasing structural strength over time (and for all but Germany, these negative

Table 4.1

Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996

Country

U.S. Japan China Soviet Union/Russia Germany France UK

Time Predicting Structural Strength

Domestic Strength Predicting Structural Strength

R2

R2

(–).517a .837a (–).542a (–).779a (–).022 (–).381a (–).276b

.090 .344b (–).603a .074 .045 (–).311b (–).112b

Notes: When the relationship is negative, it is noted before the regression values. a. Significance level at .01. b. Significance level at .001.

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International Politics and State Strength

relationships are statistically significant). Table 4.1 also shows that with one exception (Japan), either there is no relationship between structural and domestic strength (United States, Russia, and Germany) or the relationship is negative (China, France, and the UK). The results underscore that declining structural strength is not due to weakening domestic capabilities. In fact, with the exception of Russia, all the major powers seem capable of increasing—and perhaps increasing substantially—resource commitment to external activities.

Relational Strength Having reviewed the data on both domestic and structural strength, we now turn to illustrating relational strength across the post–World War II time period. Recall that this notion of strength requires us to evaluate the strength of the major powers not in the context of the global system but vis-à-vis each other, in terms of their respective shares of the group’s total strength. Relational strength—through conceptual and operational definitions—is a relative measure and thus cannot address whether major powers are uniformly weakening or strengthening. It can show only changes in relationships within a group of states, regardless of the strength of those states vis-à-vis the remainder of the international system. Nevertheless, it is a critical type of strength; it is this type of relationship that underlies broader structural concepts regarding multipolarity, bipolarity, and unipolarity. Each of those structural conditions assumes a certain distribution of relational strength among the major powers. It is in this context that scholars and policymakers alike have invoked the idea of the “American unipolar moment” since 1990 (suggesting a preponderance of U.S. relational strength within the group of major powers). Likewise, when Russian, Chinese, and French policymakers advocate a multipolar arrangement for the new world order, they are suggesting a structural condition of rough equality in relational strength among three or more of the major powers. Furthermore, relational strength is secondarily important for architectural construction to the extent that it can deter or minimize great-power challenges to global leadership engaging in architectural construction. Recall that we measured the relational strength of the major powers by averaging each of their relative shares of economic and military capabilities and arrived at a percentage that is each power’s share of the group total. Figure 4.18, based on these aggregate shares, illustrates trends in relative strength among the major powers. Of greatest interest

75

Assessing State Strength

Figure 4.18

Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities (in percentages, 1960–1999) US US UK UK France France German Germany Japan Japan Soviet/Russia Soviet/Russia China China

0.50 0.5 0.45 0.45 0.40 0.4

shares

Shares

0.35 0.35 0.30 0.3 0.25 0.25 0.20 0.2 0.15 0.15 0.1 0.10 0.05 0.05

00 1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

1998

Source: See Appendix 3.1.

is the pattern for the United States. As the graph illustrates, the United States demonstrates formidable relational strength during the 1960–1999 period. In 1960 it controls half of the relational strength within the group, and although there is substantial decline in the 1970s, by 1999 the United States once more holds nearly half of major-power relational strength in the international system. Although its structural strength has declined substantially, U.S. relational strength looks preponderant at the start of the twenty-first century. A few other observations are worth noting from the graphs. As expected, the Soviet Union’s relational strength vis-à-vis the United States is substantial in the first fifteen years of the graph but then begins its decline, and by the end of the century, its relational strength is the weakest in the group and roughly equal to Japan’s at the start of the period. Meanwhile, the weakest two of the great powers—Japan and China—at the beginning of the period vie for a second (albeit a very distant second) position at the end of the twentieth century. Finally, the three European powers remain relatively weak throughout the period with none of them escalating past 10 percent of relative strength across the four decades. Only France comes close to breaking the 10 percent barrier, but even French relational strength declines from that point onward.

76

International Politics and State Strength

Conclusion In Chapter 3, we presented three contending arguments about state strength. Comparative scholars suggest that the modern state is stronger than ever before. We found this to be the case for six of the seven major powers. Except for the disintegration of the Soviet Union, all major powers have substantially increased their domestic strength, even under substantial fiscal, social, and political pressures. Most IR scholars have argued for a uniform weakening of states’ strength. Again, assuming that our concept of structural strength is closest to their arguments, we found supporting evidence for this position as well. With the partial exception of Japan, the major powers exhibited substantially lower values on the structural strength index at the end of the twentieth century than they did forty years prior. Even Japan began to exhibit a new trend toward this general picture in the 1990s. Furthermore, we note that this picture is not due to the decline in domestic strength, and we infer that most of these major powers have sufficient domestic capabilities to at least partially reverse declining structural strength. Finally, a minority of IR scholars has suggested that some states— especially the United States—still have sufficient strength to demonstrate global leadership and develop architecture for the post–Cold War system. This line of argument, called the “unipolar moment,” suggests that the strength is temporarily there. Our analysis of the relational strength of states finds such a unipolarity for the United States, but it is accompanied by substantial and fundamental decline in its structural strength, calling into question the extent to which “unipolarity” among great powers translates even at this moment to the type of global strength needed to develop system architecture.

Notes 1. Although ACDA estimates are likely to be on the high side for the Soviet Union, others show similar trends, including declining fortunes prior to the end of the Soviet Union (e.g., Brooks and Wohlforth, 2000–2001). 2. Our last data point is immediately before the major financial crisis of 1998, which had once more damaged substantially the Russian economy, and had that event been reflected in the graph, it would show an even bleaker picture. 3. We are grateful to Professor Andrei Melville and his research colleague at MGIMO in Moscow, who assembled for us both official data and researchers’ estimates on the nonmilitary data discussed in this section. 4. These figures may still overestimate the difficulties experienced by the

Assessing State Strength

77

Russian state in extracting resources from its economy. At the 2001 meeting of the Russian International Studies Association (Moscow), economists estimated the outflow of financial resources from Russia at $2 billion per month. 5. In addition to dealing with these constraints, German decisionmakers through much of the Cold War faced the potential of substantial discord with allies if their structural strength were to grow too fast in the aftermath of World War II. 6. Although the fiscal and sociopolitical consequences of East German absorption into a united Germany have been quite substantial, they are by no means the only reason for the decline in German structural strength. Increasing German dependence on the European Union (EU) and global markets has decreased German autonomy and thus contributed to the decline in structural strength.

5 “Creeping Incrementalism” and “Group Hegemony”: State Strength and the New World Order

t the end of World War I, the victors struggled to create global architecture that would stabilize international relations and establish some permanence in relations between states. Yet, such efforts quickly disintegrated because the victors did not secure the necessary structural strength to buttress security and economic infrastructures. In the absence of sufficient structural strength, victorious powers couldn’t even resolve substantial disagreements over which security and economic regimes were acceptable and couldn’t develop appropriate integration and containment processes. No wonder, then, that in less than two decades, global war erupted once more. The conditions that arose from World War II in the twentieth century were quite different, however. The victorious states developed a much more complex and durable set of architectural arrangements that were able to withstand a halfcentury of conflict and ideological warfare we called the Cold War. Nevertheless, as the twentieth century came to an end, this “stable” global architecture disintegrated nearly overnight, crashing down from the implosion of the Soviet Union and its East European allies. What has replaced the old bipolar system of international relations? What is the new global architecture? We stand now—more than a decade later—upon the ashes of the old order; we should know by now how the new world order is being governed. In Chapter 1, we suggested that there are three main reasons for the difficulty in deciphering the contours of the new world order. First, no global war and no major-power transition forced preparation for a new world order. Restructuring of an international system typically occurs either as dissatisfied states overtake status quo powers (e.g., Tammen et

A

79

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International Politics and State Strength

al., 2000) or as major systemic disturbances culminate in war and motivate great powers to rearrange the global order (e.g., Thompson, 1983, 1988). War has been the primary instrument forcing such change; decisionmakers engaged in major war planned not only for winning but also for fashioning the world after victory. Woodrow Wilson articulated replacement architecture prior to the end of World War I, exemplifying both the attempt and an acknowledgment that war may motivate architectural construction but is clearly not sufficient to create postwar order. Perhaps learning from that experience, the Allies by 1944 were busy not only fighting but also sketching the parameters of a very different post–World War II global order. Unsurprisingly, within a few years after that war, the outlines of the new global architecture were clear. No such wars occurred in 1989, and since there was no expectation that the old architecture of international politics would end, there was little planning for the post–Cold War world. The absence of planning, though, was not due to any expectations that “history had ended” or that substantial challenges to world order would not arise. Within less than two years of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Bush administration was calling for a “new world order,” and the current events since 1989 indicate both change from and continuity with the past. The United States alone has fought three wars since 1989 and continues to station hundreds of thousands of troops abroad. Interstate conflicts have increased in Africa. The conflict between Palestinians (and their allies) and Israelis is at least as intractable today as it was at the height of the Cold War. In Asia, Pakistan and India face each other with renewed bitterness and nuclear weapons. In Southeastern Europe, immediately adjacent to the “zone of peace,” ethnic conflict and bloodshed continue and approximate conflicts hundreds of years old. In Latin America, assaults by drug lords on governments threaten national sovereignty (and the viability of the state) and invite involvement and intervention by the United States. Clearly, history has not ended, and there is still a need for global architecture in international relations—a need for a coherent set of rules and norms governing the interstate system. The second reason the evolution of the new world order continues to look so problematic concerns declining structural strength. This trend appears to undermine efforts to create and maintain global order. Architectural construction does not occur automatically. It requires extensive capabilities and, in addition, the desire, will, and competence to construct architecture that is both viable and “realistic.” We remind the reader once more that our effort addresses only the issue of strength as a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition, assuming that if capabili-

“Creeping Incrementalism” and “Group Hegemony”

81

ties are lacking, issues of competence and desire become irrelevant to architectural construction.1 Domestic, structural, and relational strength constitute three dimensions of state strength that we judge to be necessary conditions, providing states the ability and opportunity to engage in architectural construction. Domestic resources sustain structural and relational strength. Structural strength creates and enforces essential rules and norms governing various dimensions of the international system. Relational strength deters challengers and mitigates disruptions or crises caused by such phenomena as globalization. All three faces of strength are critical for institutionalizing global norms and rules. If all three are necessary and yet structural strength has diminished, then how do we explain post–Cold War architectural construction and maintenance? This is the power enigma challenging those who seek to understand the outlines of post–Cold War architecture. The third obstacle to clearly understanding post–Cold War architecture lies in the fragmented study of international relations. Different schools explain different facets of world politics, and yet it is almost impossible to examine all five building blocks—state strength, security regime, economic infrastructure, integration process, and crisis management—without utilizing perspectives gained from at least realist and liberal institutionalist frameworks. State strength draws almost exclusively from realism. The other building blocks, however, straddle the fence between power and institutionalism as well as other theoretical approaches to international relations. Although these additional building blocks demonstrate how great powers cooperate through regimes to constrain the excessive use of force, mitigate economic problems, and reach mutual expectations and satisfaction with the order, they cannot perform such functions without considerable state strength. We have argued that state strength forms the foundation of any world order. A weak foundation often translates into a powerless security regime, a tenuous economic infrastructure, and the inability to overcome global crises, as was demonstrated after World War I. The significance of state strength may be the reason that most realist studies of world order focus almost exclusively on global power configurations. We believe, however, that these studies present an incomplete picture of the new world order, as we will demonstrate further on. We begin this chapter with a discussion of the most prevalent realist views of the new world order. We show first that our findings on state strength suggest that none of these perspectives offer a realistic view of the new world order. Then, we note as well that the scope of these per-

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International Politics and State Strength

spectives is also too limited: They fail to consider cooperative international interactions and the relationship between state strength and the other building blocks. We then present what we hope is a more comprehensive perspective of the new world order in light of the unique ending of the previous system. We believe the evidence indicates that the old Western building blocks and mechanisms are being adjusted incrementally to create post–Cold War architecture. The third section examines the new face of architectural construction in the context of declining structural strength.

Why Realist Predictions Are Not Working as Viable Architectural Arrangements Two of the most obvious power configurations (posing in the realist literature as architectural arrangements) for the post–Cold War international system are hegemony and multipolarity. These arrangements have been extensively discussed, urged, and criticized by various greatpower foreign policy makers. U.S. policymakers have articulated their perceptions of dominant U.S. military2 and economic3 capabilities consistent with hegemonic intentions and speak of a new “global system we are structuring” (Erlanger, 1997:A1). In response, many states and some of the great powers have publicly condemned U.S. hegemony and advocated multipolarity as the appropriate architecture (Gordon, 1997: A3; Eckholm, 1999; Cohen, 1999:A1). Given our findings on trends in state strength, is it realistic to expect either hegemony or multipolarity in the near future? By hegemony we refer to a global leader emerging with both the strength and the desire to articulate and—through a variety of means—compel the global community to follow a clear set of rules and norms of global governance, at least in the areas of security and economics. Clearly, only the United States comes near to approximating the strength needed for unipolar, hegemonic architectural construction. Our data indicate that although it has the relational strength (Figure 4.18) to hold and deter other great powers, its structural strength is but a small fraction of what it was in the 1960s (Figure 4.10). Of course, U.S. domestic strength has grown substantially, and it would be possible to reverse declining structural strength. The debate about the state of the U.S. military and the advocacy for a national missile defense is in part an effort to do so. Nevertheless, without a large and explicit external threat, it is not likely that more than incremental enhancements will be made to U.S. structur-

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al strength in the foreseeable future. The second Bush administration’s strategy of spending down budget surpluses by first reducing taxes and then pursuing defense and domestic priorities has practically guaranteed that nonincremental enhancements to U.S. structural strength are virtually impossible without a major change in domestic policy direction or without an unexpected and explosive external threat. Such a threat was envisioned by virtually no one prior to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Whether the response to international terrorism becomes such an event is treated in detail in Chapter 7. Irrespective of its favor with Chinese, Russian, French, and numerous third world policymakers, is multipolarity a more likely scenario? Multipolarity assumes a certain amount of decentralization in the global system, across three or more power centers. This schema would require at least minimal cooperation in establishing the norms and rules of the international system by several, relatively equal great powers, and the devolution of responsibility to those great powers for maintenance of order between and within their respective poles. Multipolarity implies at least two conditions about great-power strength. The first is that there are relatively equal great powers in the system (relational strength) or that the trends are moving toward such a state of resource distribution. The preponderant share of relational strength of the United States, in terms of both its military and its economic components, suggests otherwise (Figure 4.18), and the disparity between it and the other great powers is so great that there seems to be little reason to argue that this trend will be reversed in the near future. The second condition is that leaders of these poles need to be strong enough (structural strength) to be able to set the rules for the system and for their own poles. Again, the data we have offered earlier would suggest otherwise. All the great powers exhibit reduced structural strength in the context of growing global complexities, including the ones that have urged most strongly the value of multipolar arrangements. Except for Russia, each may have the domestic strength to reverse this state of affairs, but none has chosen to do so. A few have argued that the “unipolar moment” is most likely to lead to a bipolar system in the near future. By bipolarity, we are referring to an arrangement through which global resources are divided into two poles likely to be in conflict over the contours of the international system. The leaders of the two poles would develop ground rules for relationships between and within their respective areas of governance. In this scenario, the United Sates and China would share primary global

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leadership, due in large part to power transition dynamics occurring between the two states (e.g., Tammen et al., 2000:153–181).4 Our data suggest that such a scenario should be treated with a strong dose of pessimism. First, projections regarding the PRC are based on predictions of continuing growth in the Chinese economy for a substantial period into the future.5 Whether or not such projections are accurate, growth in the domestic economy has not been paralleled by a similar growth in the domestic strength of the central government.6 Although it is possible that China’s government will at some future time seek to convert a greater share of its economy to its political system, it is equally possible that it will not be able to do so. Second, we see no clear trend in converting domestic strength into external strength. In fact, the structural index shows that despite the growth in the Chinese economy, Chinese strength has been declining. It would take a Herculean effort for decades just to bring Chinese military capabilities in line with those of the United States (Swaine and Tellis, 2000). For example, the latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicate that although Chinese military expenditures increased by some 65 percent (in constant dollars) between 1995 and 2000, and Chinese military spending now ranks eighth in the world, China’s actual military spending in 2000 was still less than 8.5 percent of U.S. defense spending.7 From our state strength perspective, we see no evidence that a bipolar global architecture— based on a Chinese pole—is likely to emerge in the next two decades. Alternatively, one can argue for a European pole as a contender for the United States with the British, Germans, and French acting as the backbone to such a group. Clearly, the Germans and the French have taken policy positions that are substantially different from those of the United States in the post–Cold War environment. Additionally, these European countries have pursued initial measures under the European Union (EU) umbrella to try to pool foreign and military policies. Furthermore, the combined economic strength of the EU is far more formidable today than even the most wild-eyed speculation about future Chinese economic growth. Yet we are even more skeptical of this scenario than the Chinese one. Attempts at policy coordination between the three major European states—when facing the challenges posed in the Balkans—have not been successful, and coordination of military resources looks to be even more problematic. It is likely that the creation of a common European defense initiative under the EU umbrella will bear at least symbolic fruit, but actual EU military capabilities will be less than formidable without NATO assets. This is so because any EU military capabilities

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would have to develop substantial and expensive infrastructure support presently not envisioned by EU members. In fact, most EU states have reduced their national defense capabilities and thereby widened the technological gap between the United States and its European counterparts in the field of defense. In addition, for European members of NATO, interoperability issues are becoming increasingly problematic even though interoperability is required for NATO membership. Reliance on NATO assets, however, reduces EU military involvement to those cases when NATO (meaning the United States and possibly Turkey) is not interested in the problem and yet is still willing to agree to the use of alliance capabilities.8 This latter scenario is not suggestive of a major competitive pole in a bipolar system. As our data indicate, U.S. relational strength vis-à-vis major European countries has increased since 1990 and remains quite formidable against the combined capabilities of France, Germany, and the UK (see Figure 5.1), and none of Europe’s major powers have been able or willing to arrest the diminution in their structural strength.9 The common European foreign policy and defense approach does not seem to reverse these trends. Hegemony, multipolarity, and bipolarity seem inappropriate to the

Figure 5.1

U.S. Share of World and Major EU Nations’ (France, UK, Germany, and Italy) Military Expenditures, 1995, 2000

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contours of the new world order. In addition, the scope of these scenarios is limited to only one of our building blocks: state strength and its distribution among the great powers. The task ahead is to provide a more comprehensive approach to the new world order. We begin by examining how the unique ending of the old order produced conditions that influenced global architectural construction and maintenance and how these conditions affect the building blocks of the new world order.

Creeping Incrementalism: Why the New World Order Looks Much Like the Old One We suggest that the unique ending of the previous system has created a set of circumstances that allow for—if not necessitate—new architecture that minimally reconfigures and modifies existing aspects of the previous Western system. We call this construction process creeping incrementalism. It refers to adjustment of a rather slow and limited form from the previous era, coupled with an emphasis on continuity and stability whenever feasible. Creeping incrementalism is a process of propping up existing architectural arrangements and strengthening them, albeit incrementally,when possible or feasible. This process is less expensive and requires substantially less state strength than trying to replace older architecture with architecture designed to fit a new world order. Creeping incrementalism as a form of architectural replacement is likely to occur under very rare circumstances in international politics. We would not expect it to be an appropriate strategy when major wars have ripped apart the fabric of previous orders or when challengers have successfully replaced global leaders that have created previous architecture. Even when global leadership and the reigning world order are challenged through major war and the challenge fails, we would still predict that nonincremental approaches would follow (e.g., wholesale revisions on the part of the victorious powers, as attempted after World War I).10 We propose that as an architectural strategy, creeping incrementalism is feasible when the following conditions exist: • The major powers, individually, lack the necessary strength to construct substantially new architecture. • The conditions in the newly emerging system have not been so

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fundamentally transformed as to render the building blocks and mechanisms from the previous system irrelevant. • The strongest of states, after the collapse of the old order, are the ones most heavily invested in the previous status quo, that is, the building blocks and mechanisms from the previous order. • No immediate and major conflict threatens the major powers or the order. If the major powers do not have the strength to construct global architecture, they may opt for incremental changes to the previous system—a remodeling as opposed to completely new construction. Of course creeping incrementalism is possible only if the old structure is viable, that is, if the building blocks and their mechanisms are still useful. Thus there must be significant continuity between the old and new system. Even if the first two conditions are satisfied, the major powers may not wish to perpetuate the old order. If, however, the strongest of states are the ones most heavily invested in the status quo, they will be highly motivated to sustain the old system. Similarly, if there are no immediate and major threats to the order or the major powers, they will be more likely to gradually adjust the old building blocks and mechanisms as needed. We believe all four of these conditions are satisfied in the new world order. We have demonstrated that all the major states lack the structural strength to fashion new architecture along conventional models. Clearly, the new world order exhibits continuity with the old Western system. Democratic polities, for instance, are more numerous than ever before, and yet, this “contagion” of democracy has its roots firmly planted in the previous era. Likewise, globalization processes constitute a critical characteristic of the new system; yet this trend was as observable before the end of the Cold War as it is today (Hirst and Thompson, 1999).11 The basic building blocks—state strength, security regime, economic agenda, integration process, and crisis management—have not been significantly altered or made irrelevant by the end of the old order. The strongest of states maintain these building blocks because they are all heavily invested in the status quo and at present face no major, identifiable threat. In these terms, although the pre-1989 conditions have changed, they have not changed sufficiently to rule out a creeping incremental strategy to new architecture construction. The new world order looks in many ways to be a continuation of the previous order with respect to the key building blocks constituting global architectural arrangements.12 Regarding state strength, our data

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indicate that whereas declining great-power strength characterizes the new system, this trend was already evident for most major powers during the Cold War era. The major states, individually, lack the structural strength to fashion new architecture. Even if they had the strength, however, they probably would still implement creeping incrementalism because the great powers are the ones most heavily invested in the status quo ante. The security and economic institutions they continue to sustain—and draw benefit from—can be adapted to the new environment without much revision. Thus, the substantial range of global and regional regimes and institutions today took shape and form in the previous system, and with some exceptions (e.g., in the security arena), they have remained generally intact. We do not mean to imply that conditions have not changed dramatically with the ending of the Cold War. In fact, they have, and the world is fundamentally different without the ongoing East-West conflict and with the disappearance of the Soviet Union and its European allies. However, even the disappearance of the persistent political and military challenge to the United States serves in some ways to reinforce the previous era by minimizing threats to institutions and regimes developed during the Cold War. Illustrative is the Western security infrastructure that remains in effect after the Cold War. The raison d’être of NATO—to contain Soviet military power (and perhaps that of Germany as well)—is gone. The Soviet security threat has virtually disappeared; the new Russian state’s military is in shambles and was nearly decimated by relatively disorganized, outnumbered, and outgunned but determined Chechen rebels inside Russia (Lieven, 1998). A united Germany exists, but its military is downsizing and the country is heavily integrated into the sociopolitical-economic processes of the European Union. So why does NATO continue to exist and prosper in the twenty-first century? Part of the answer is that NATO existed and prospered before 1989. As a key part of the security regime, it is being adapted relatively easily to expand the defensive umbrella to states previously in the Warsaw Pact and is gradually transforming itself into a collectivesecurity arrangement for most Euro-Atlantic states. Criteria for accession into NATO also create important integration processes for states previously isolated from the West. The enthusiasm with which most East European states have sought entry into NATO would indicate that both the security guarantees and the integration process are well received by aspirants to NATO membership. Broadening the NATO mandate to include involvement in areas such as the Balkans and the

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willingness, particularly of Western European states, to continue with NATO instead of a potential EU capability have also functioned to keep the United States in Europe and to avoid the decoupling of the United States from its long-term European security commitments. NATO expansion and adjustment have been incremental. Early accession into NATO for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary occurred on a relatively ad hoc basis. Today, the criteria for accession by states as diverse as Estonia and Bulgaria are more rigorous and more clearly specified and involve not only military capabilities but also other state characteristics such as democratic institutions, progress toward a market economy, civilian rule of armed forces, and settled territorial borders. These requirements reflect much about how NATO has gradually evolved as a security institution. The continuity in security regimes can also be observed in the Pacific region. The United States and Japan, for example, reaffirmed their security commitment to each other in a joint declaration on security in 1996, a renewal of the United States–Japan security treaty of 1960. NATO, however, best exemplifies the extent of continuity and incremental change from one system to another despite obvious attempts by other great powers—including France, Germany, and the UK—to create alternative security arrangements. The roots of the post–Cold War economic infrastructure are also planted firmly in the post–World War II Western system. This Western agenda has persevered because the victorious powers favor it and the economic regime is embedded in a thick network of institutional arrangements. The great powers continue to support the primary monetary and trade regimes including the IMF, World Bank, and GATT/WTO. These institutions facilitate the flow of trade and capital, finance safeguards to aid countries experiencing economic difficulties, and guard against discriminatory economic processes. The post–Cold War economic regimes continue to promote multilateral rule-making and dispute-settlement mechanisms. As was discussed in Chapter 2, these regimes give the appearance of joint management, and thus the major players find the order satisfactory. Previous multilateral mechanisms were expanded and strengthened with the creation of the WTO in 1995. The WTO was the culmination of the Uruguay Round trade negotiations and formalized the GATT. The WTO locks in predictable trade relations. It provides a stronger legal framework for trade policy rules. Likewise, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (APEC) secure governmental commitments to market and

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political reform. These regimes reinforce the predictability of economic policies. Institutionalism constrains the participants’ behavior as members become more interdependent. Great powers support the regimes and ensure access to their markets in exchange for a commitment to political and market openness. The process of integration/containment has been generally left undisturbed by the events of 1989; in fact, one can argue that continued globalization simply functioned to speed up the process of integration in both the security and the economic dimensions. It is really the containment part of the process that has become less relevant in the new order, but the loss of such relevance hardly diminishes institutional mechanisms inherited from the previous order. In fact, the loss of rationale for containment may simply accelerate mechanisms of integration for dissatisfied states.13 The status quo powers are making substantial outreach efforts to dissatisfied states, seeking to integrate them into multilateral institutions. Not only was the German Democratic Republic (GDR) united with the Federal Republic, but now, as part of a united Germany, it participates fully in the Western alliance and the European Union. Thus, institutional integration quelled Soviet and European fears of a united Germany. Similarly, Russia has been brought into close consultations with the G-7. East European states have been offered a path into NATO and the EU. China is entering the WTO. Many of these integration processes are not new. They began during the post–World War II order and at times over the vociferous objections of the United States. Ikenberry (2001:221) notes, for example, that “despite strenuous opposition by the Reagan administration, the NATO allies pushed ahead with a natural gas pipeline linking the Soviet Union with Western Europe.”

The Face of New Architectural Construction: Institutionalized Group Hegemony The gas pipeline issue should remind us that even prior to the events of 1989, even the strongest of states could no longer direct single-handedly the nature of global economic transactions. In the context of both declining structural strength and the nature of these global changes, perhaps the most we should expect in terms of a new global architecture is one based on creeping incrementalism, although this phenomenon still falls short of accounting for actual governance mechanisms in addressing both major global problems and crisis management. In the context

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of declining state strength, creeping incrementalism can provide architectural enhancements only as long as there is substantial multilateral coordination among the strongest states of the system to provide crisis management. We call this type of coordination institutionalized group hegemony (Bailin, 1997, forthcoming). By institutionalized group hegemony we refer to a phenomenon related to but different from multilateral institutionalism. Multilateral institutionalism facilitates cooperation among states (Keohane, 1984; Ruggie, 1993; Caporaso, 1993; Ikenberry, 1998) as institutions govern routine international transactions. Institutions provide forums for negotiation and assist in establishing rules to regulate a particular issue area. Generalized rules of conduct enable participating countries to overcome coordination problems. International cooperation is most successful, however, when participants are faced with routine decisions; multilateral institutionalism is less useful in accounting for global crisis management, or crises exogenous to the institutional setting (Martin, 1993:97). When the great powers act as a group to mitigate crises and to maintain stability, and they take steps to institutionalize their relationships, we refer to such dynamics as institutionalized group hegemony (Bailin, 1997, forthcoming). The G-7 manifests these dynamics. Created in the mid-1970s to compensate for the inability of the United States to sustain the Bretton Woods system and to manage the 1973 energy crisis, the G-7 began to supplement U.S. hegemony with collective leadership to maintain the status quo. The G-7 facilitates great-power collaboration based on limited membership, iterated interaction, and restricted membership (Axelrod, 1984; Keohane, 1984; Axelrod and Keohane, 1986; Oye, 1986). Small or limited numbers mean that group members can easily identify one another and specify each member’s role. The small size of the group also makes it easier to discern individual efficacy. Iterated interactions enable participants to gauge one another’s future actions based on past policies. This strategy reduces uncertainty and the temptation to defect because an actor knows its actions will probably be reciprocated in the future. Restricting membership to countries with mutual interests and expectations facilitates trust and the desire to cooperate to achieve common goals. In theory, G-7 collaboration is likely. In practice, if ex ante all members expect to gain, but ex post only some gain, what prevents cheating and defection? One answer is that the substance of the game is always changing, as are the winners and losers. The G-7 institutional mechanisms regulate the game or institutionalize G-7 collaboration.

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These mechanisms include regularly scheduled meetings, a preparatory process, and documentation of meetings and commitments (Bailin, 1997, forthcoming). Set meetings ensure iterated interaction, provide a forum for negotiation, and develop personal relationships among the most powerful heads of state. Meetings are scheduled as well at the ministerial level and are more focused and efficient than ad hoc meetings of heads of state. The preparatory process determines which issues will be discussed and provides the necessary background information, further increasing efficiency and maximizing focus on mutual interests and expectations. Documentation details discussions and member commitments, functioning as a monitoring and enforcement mechanism. Institutionalized group hegemony addresses the power enigma and the problem of architectural construction and maintenance. Although the external strength of the major powers—individually—is in decline, collectively the G-7 exhibits overwhelming strength compared to the remainder of the international system (see Figures 5.2 and 5.3). The group possesses the necessary strength to provide stability as a public good, furnishing liquidity, large open markets, and intervention in crises when necessary (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2000). The G-7 continues to play a significant role as well in sustaining many international institutions: It provides key resource support to the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, and NATO, which in turn stabilizes a system beneficial to the group. Given the transition from the previous system, creating an institutionalized group hegemony in the post–Cold War world could have proven quite problematic, but such creation was unnecessary. The G-7 group formed and developed in the previous system, beginning its meetings and institutional processes some fifteen years before the end of the Cold War. It was developed, among other reasons, to address the declining structural strength of the United States (Kirton, 2000). Figures 5.2 and 5.3 illustrate that at the time of the G-7’s formation, both the United States and the Group of 6 (G-6) were exhibiting declining economic and military capabilities vis-à-vis the international system. Figure 5.2 illustrates both the substantial decline in U.S. economic strength across the last two decades of the Cold War and the G-7’s collective economic strength (which remains substantially over 50 percent of global economic resources). Figure 5.3 shows that the group’s military strength substantially exceeds half of global military spending in the post–Cold War system. The collective strength of the G-7 states more than compensates for the structural decline of its individual members.

93 Figure 5.2

G-7, U.S., and G-6 (G-7 minus U.S.) Share of Global GNP, 1965–1997

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Figure 5.3

Comparisons of G-7, U.S., and G-6 Without U.S. Shares, of Military Expenditures (ME) of World ME, as Estimated by U.S. ACDA, 1965–1997

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Institutionalized hegemony is best illustrated in the economic realm. We use the Asian crisis as an example, allowing us to illustrate as well the difference between multilateral institutionalism and institutionalized group hegemony. That crisis began with the Thai baht’s crash in July 1997 and the depletion of its international reserves. Consistent with multilateral institutionalism, the IMF responded by providing an emergency package of US$17 billion. Soon thereafter, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank provided support packages for Indonesia and South Korea. Despite these actions, multilateral institutional mechanisms failed to manage the impending crisis. The great powers then acted in a manner consistent with the concept of institutionalized group hegemony. Meeting in Hong Kong in September 1997, the G-7 authorized measures to strengthen the IMF and the international financial system. The new package created a 45 percent increase in IMF quota shares, amended the IMF’s agreement to make it responsible for capital account liberalization, and increased the IMF’s role in financial sector reform. As the crisis proliferated, the G-7 accelerated its role in mitigating the crisis. While it used its financial clout to stabilize Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea, its announcement of further support with additional funds served to calm markets and had a critically important secondary effect for Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Japan. Further actions were taken as well to reduce the effect of the crisis on emerging markets (e.g., Brazil). The financial institutions in place lacked the resource mechanisms to deal with the Asian crisis. “In the end, it was concerted G-7 governance, and not the heavily bureaucratized, long established, rules-bound multilateralism that beat the mania of the marketplace” (Kirton, 1999:623–624). Each member of the group hegemony had significant incentives to defect—each incurred substantial financial costs—yet none defected. The G-7 acted as a group hegemon and bore the burden of providing the public good of stability. A number of scholars have found that the G-7 members often coordinate their policies and comply with their summit commitments (Von Furstenberg and Daniels, 1992; Cooper, 1994; Li, 2001; Kirton, Kokotsis, and Juricevic, 2001). Quan Li (2001) finds, for example, that reciprocity prompts the G-7 members to comply with their summit commitments on inflation control. The inflation targets set at the summits serve to stabilize the international economy (Li, 2001:357). Through policy coordination and collective strength, the G-7 is able to exert tremendous influence over the world economy.

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A Test of Validity Our examples of group hegemonic activity in responding to crisis may be helpful in an illustrative sense, but we should be able to offer as well a more rigorous test of the group hegemon’s existence. Here, we propose one test, based on a combination of declining state strength and the group’s ability to influence the structure of systemic architecture. The normative dimensions of global architecture and the strength of major states in affecting such dimensions should be noticeable in the form of changes in the level of status consistency in the system (Volgy and Imwalle, 2000). Status consistency refers to the relationship between a state’s attributes and the amount of prestige conferred on the state. It is measured by calculating a Spearman’s rho correlation between the attributes of countries (e.g., GDP/GNP or military spending) and the number of embassies and legations sent to their capitals. At the aggregate level, the correlation between attributes and prestige refers to status consistency. We would expect, all other things being equal, a country’s prestige to hinge upon its attributes. When, however, a hegemon alters the distribution of prestige to reflect compliance to hegemonic rules and norms, countries exhibit less status consistency, or a lower correlation between attributes and prestige. To the extent that the United States has acted as a hegemon since the 1950s, changes in U.S. strength were highly correlated with changes in systemic status consistency (Volgy and Imwalle, 2000). In the same vein, if a group hegemon supplants U.S. strength and helps to maintain and to create new architecture, then the period from its creation to the present should reflect unique relationships to status consistency measures. One such relationship, separate from compliance with U.S. norms, would be for the rest of the group to reward its principal trading partners with enhanced prestige as a benefit of partnership, in line with the group’s hegemonic importance in the international system. Once group hegemony is established, all other things being equal, the group’s trading partners would gain prestige based on their position as major partners irrespective of their attributes or even as a result of conformance to hegemonic norms set by the United States. Thus, the group’s trading partners should show less status consistency than the system as a whole, since their prestige is not dependent solely on attributes and hegemonic compliance, and linkages to the hegemonic group minimize intratrading group differences in attributes. Therefore, we propose that if group hegemony exists, we should find the following patterns: (1) Prior to the

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group’s existence (pre-1975), status consistency scores for G-6 (G-7 excluding the United States) major trading partners should be no lower than for the system as a whole. (2) From its existence onward, the G-6 should be able to command significant prestige conferred on its trading partners, and we should find that those partners have lower status consistency scores than the system as a whole. (3) Since the structural strength of both the United States and the other members of the group hegemony have continued to deteriorate since the early 1990s, both the system status consistency and the trading partner status consistency values should increase. These three predictions, over time, should exhibit status consistency scores that approximate a rough U-shaped curve. Using IMF statistics, we identified the top ten trading partners (excluding those that overlapped) for each of the G-6 (excluding U.S. trading partners) at five-year intervals between 1965 and 1995. We also ran Spearman’s rho statistics for the system as a whole, and separately for G-6 trading partners.14 The results are displayed in Figure 5.4. The data displayed seem to support each of the three predictions. Prior to 1975, the G-6 trading partners exhibit status scores more consistent than for the system as a whole. After 1975, G-6 trading partners show more inconsistent scores than the system as a whole. Further, state

Figure 5.4

Status Consistency Scores for G-6’s Major Trading Partners and for the International System, 1965–1995

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strength seems to matter: As the G-7 states continue to weaken, status consistency scores rise, and do so especially in the 1990s. Finally, and consistent with our expectations, the overall data for the G-6 do seem to exhibit a rough U-shaped distribution.

Conclusion Institutionalized hegemony is, of course, limited in its application, even in the economic realm. It is most effective when addressing macroeconomic problems that can be solved by great-power cooperation. It is less successful when addressing regional microeconomic problems, or when the targets of its policies are themselves large and are required to make painful structural adjustments (e.g., G-7’s impact on Russia’s economic problems). Since creeping incrementalism and institutionalized group hegemony work best when the normative and rule foundations of the system are well articulated and relatively stable, we would assume that these mechanisms apply better to the economic than the security dimension of the post–Cold War order. Additionally, since the United States does not have the preponderance in economic capabilities that it carries in the security realm, it is reasonable to assume that group hegemony is more important for economic matters than for security matters. Creeping incrementalism and group hegemony should be more problematic in the security area of global architectural creation, since it is in this area where the most profound transformations have occurred since 1989. Nevertheless, creeping incrementalism has been practiced to a surprising extent in the security area. Consistent with multilateral coordination, efforts to maintain or modify the status quo in the security realm have not been primarily unilateral despite the overwhelming relational strength of the United States. NATO has continued and expanded in order to address issues of East European security. The Gulf War was fought in close coordination with other powers and under the sanction of the United Nations. Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo was coordinated within the NATO framework. The architecture of creeping incrementalism and institutionalized group hegemony is the only arrangement that seems to adequately describe global architectural construction and maintenance in light of the decreasing structural strength of the major powers accompanied by a unipolar configuration in relational strength on the part of the United States. Whether it is likely to remain viable as an arrangement is more problematic to ascertain.

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Notes 1. We do not dispute that asymmetries in motivation can overcome asymmetries in capabilities. In fact, the Vietnam War was a painful example of such asymmetries between motivation and capabilities. We do believe, though, that global architectural construction is such an extensive, massive, and global effort that it cannot be sustained through motivation alone. 2. U.S. Secretary of Defense Cohen stated, “We want to dominate across the full spectrum of conflict, so that if we ever do have to fight, we will win on our terms” (Cohen, 1999:A1, 11). 3. “[The United States is] the world’s only economic superpower [and has] the world’s most flexible and dynamic economy” (Sanger, 1997:Al). 4. Ronald Tammen and others (2000) also raise major qualifications and caveats to the possibility of China’s “power transition.” 5. Data on Chinese domestic and foreign spending, and especially measures based on purchasing power equivalents, are highly unreliable. Reliable longitudinal data on central government revenues and expenditures are difficult to obtain. We have no great confidence in our data on China, although we are somewhat reassured that they are generally in synch with data obtained by other researchers, at least in terms of the direction of trends. 6. We are not alone (e.g., Tammen et al., 2000:156) in finding that although Chinese domestic strength has been increasing, those increases have lagged far behind the growth in the Chinese economy. 7. Http://projects.sipri.se/milex/mex_major_spenders.html. 8. No wonder, then, that these forces are seen as available primarily for peacekeeping, support for humanitarian interventions, policing operations and civil infrastructure development after the end of military operations, and “out of area” operations where encountering minimally hostile force levels. 9. According to SIPRI estimates (http://projects.sipri.se/milex/mex_major_ spenders.html), between 1995 and 2000, French military spending was reduced by 4 percent, German spending by 3.4 percent, and spending in the UK by 6.4 percent. 10. This is so because the precipitation of major conflict by challengers, although having failed, nevertheless highlights the need for substantial revision of architecture, especially in integration/containment processes. 11. There are those (Friedman, 1999; Gray, 1999) who argue that a specialized, market-based international system involving unique forms of globalization, new actors, and new rules has already emerged. We are suggesting that the emerging system is not all that new. 12. It is relatively easy to specify the wealth of continuity from the Cold War era, especially continuity that, when absent, would pose significant problems for a strategy of incrementally modifying architecture left from the previous era. Consider the question of whether architectural arrangements must address more conflict and turbulence than in the previous system. The likely answer is no: For example, both international terrorism and ethnic intra-state and interstate violence (despite some horrendous examples to the contrary) decreased substantially in the 1990s, compared to the last decade of the Cold War. 13. For example, there is little discussion today (except among a small minority of advocates) about containing the People’s Republic of China, and the strategy of integrating that state into the WTO is widely perceived not only as an appropriate response but perhaps as the only alternative in the absence of containment strategies. Containment after the Cold War seems to be relegated to small Cold War relics

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such as Cuba and North Korea, yet even there, the advocates of integrationist strategies seem to be getting the upper hand. Much symbolic integration has occurred with respect to Russia, including titular Russian inclusion into the G-7 and Russia’s role as part of the Partnership for Peace Program in NATO. 14. We use Spearman’s rho to conform to the conventional measurement in the literature on status consistency. We report relationships based on the correlation between diplomatic missions and the GNP attribute. The alternative relationship— between diplomatic missions and military expenditures—was also tested, and the two results showed highly similar patterns.

6 Gazing Through the Crystal Ball: The Stability of Today’s Architecture

lobal architectural construction is a precarious undertaking. It requires a delicate balance between the exercise of state strength and multilateral cooperation. In the absence of sufficient state strength, international organizations such as the League of Nations do not have the necessary capability to be effective. Too much unchecked state strength may result in the inability to stabilize security structures, as was the case with the balance-of-power system, the rise of Bismarck Germany, and the fall of the Concert of Europe. Multilateral cooperation involves integration or power sharing and co-governance. It may not be enough to partially integrate dissatisfied nations into multilateral institutions and regimes, without jeopardizing the stability of the entire architectural scheme. For now, group hegemony and creeping incrementalism appear to have achieved a precarious balance between state strength and multilateral cooperation, as evidenced by the multilateral coalition against international terrorism, but will this balance last? Structurally, the international system today exhibits at least four characteristics that may threaten the stability of existing architectural arrangements. First, present global norms, rules, and institutions are inherited in large part from the Cold War era. We have argued that the old bipolar system has been remodeled rather than razed and replaced. The success of the remodeling depends on the new order being built on a foundation that transcends the conditions that created it in the past; otherwise it will be inadequate for the problems in the post–Cold War order. Second, threats to international stability are also reflected in significant imbalances in different facets of state strength. These imbalances are manifested in

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economic versus military strength, in the structural strength of individual states, and in the inability/unwillingness of countries to convert domestic strength into relational or structural strength. The third potentially destabilizing problem concerns partial integration. Major powers may not be satisfied with simply being allowed to participate in international regimes and institutions. They may insist on a greater role in global governance. However, too much heterogeneity in global leadership may render co-governance impossible. The fourth threat is the need for new mechanisms. One of the problems of using creeping incrementalism to construct global architecture is that it does not provide new mechanisms to address new conditions. This chapter examines the stability of today’s architecture in light of the fact that it appears to be based on the Cold War arrangement. It then explores other potentially destabilizing threats including disproportionate state strength, partial integration, and the need for new mechanisms.

Beyond Bipolarity Although the bipolar dimension has disappeared in the post–Cold War international system, we nevertheless argued that many of the salient architectural features of the pre-1989 world have remained and have been adapted incrementally to the circumstances of the new world order. Yet, this can be the case only if the underlying structural dynamics of the previous era were based on characteristics that derived not primarily from the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union—a confrontation now missing—but on dynamics persisting beyond Cold War antagonisms and the capabilities that states assigned to Cold War–related interests. Otherwise, virtually all of the Cold War architecture would have become irrelevant in the new era. It would be foolish to argue that there was no Cold War or no great, ongoing political/ideological/economic confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. No attempt at revisionist history of the era that lasted from 1945 to 1989 could deny the bipolar antagonisms reflected in the actual confrontations that transpired between East and West. The mileposts of that time—the Berlin crises, the Korean War, the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Vietnam War, Star Wars, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and the reconceptualization of the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” by the Reagan

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administration—are but a few of the undeniable twists and turns of an era dominated by conflict between East and West. Clearly, the previous era was in many ways characterized by conflict between two major alliance formations armed with thermonuclear weapons, a hostile system history, and radically opposed ideological orientations. Nevertheless, the architecture that was developed, in our view, should not be construed as one that created norms, rules, and institutions based solely or primarily on the conflict between the two superpowers. Instead, and by looking at the structural and relational distribution of state strength, we can see a somewhat different picture emerging. That picture is one of preponderant structural and relational strength on the part of the United States at the start of the era. Although the perceived Soviet threat was tremendously influential, the United States applied its structural strength to create architecture consistent with promoting its long-term interests in international affairs, a leadership consistent with the type of activities theorized by both the long cyclist (e.g., Modelski, 1987; Modelski and Thompson, 1988) and hegemonic stability (e.g., see Keohane, 1984) schools of scholarship. We are by no means the first to suggest that bipolarity can exist side by side with global architectural construction by a very powerful global leader. Thompson’s (1986) work along with Rasler’s (Rasler and Thompson, 1994) illustrates that historically, and coming out of major global warfare such as World War II, new global leadership, having developed a primary global reach, often encounters rapid challenges to its leadership and such long-term leadership cycles can and do coexist with challenges that have often been interpreted as bipolar or multipolar in character, even while the global leader continues to have the structural strength to mold global architectural arrangements. Obviously, a global leader’s preponderance in strength cannot coexist with bipolarity if the latter is defined in terms of equal relational strength between two major powers. Our data indicate that clearly such relational strength was not the case throughout the Cold War. To the extent that bipolarity existed in terms of a rough equivalence, it existed at times only in a minimal sense and only regarding military capabilities and strategic nuclear forces (of a second strike nature). Even in the context of relational strength needed by a global leader to maintain existing architecture, the United States enjoyed a highly imbalanced relationship in its favor with the Soviet Union, first alone, and then, after 1975, in combination with those allied great powers that made up what we have labeled the institutionalized group hegemony of the G-7. Is there evidence that U.S. relational strength was more important

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than military/ideological bipolarity during the Cold War era? In order to provide at least a preliminary answer, we constructed an empirical test.1 The nature of the test revolves around activities in the international system that we believe are reflective of stability and challenges to the status quo in the system. Three types of behaviors were identified that may reflect on efforts to disturb the stability of the system: interstate wars, interstate crises, and levels of participation in the system through foreign policy activities of states. Particularly wars and crises constitute important disturbances in international politics. Crises reflect an especially important form of conflict between states, and the history of the Cold War is peppered with them. Interstate wars are less frequent but tremendously destabilizing of the status quo and have been at the forefront of international politics scholarship. Although some have called the Cold War the “long postwar peace” (Kegley, 1991), it is also clear that interstate hostilities continued throughout the period. Changes to the volume of foreign policy activity are much less clearly linked to either system stability or to bipolarity. Yet, from a bipolar perspective, it makes some sense to argue that as bipolarity declines, states are more inclined to take independent action and increase their activities in international politics. Conversely, when bipolarity is strong, independent state activity is likely to be less frequent. Likewise, we can see a relationship between the volume of foreign policy activity by states in the system and fluctuations in global leadership. When the global leader is strong and can compel others to accept its leadership, the volume of activity by states is likely to be less than when the global leader’s strength diminishes and its ability to compel conformity to its leadership is reduced. Hypothetically, then, changes in foreign policy activity can be attributed to either changes in bipolarity or to changes in global leadership. Thus, using crises, wars, and foreign policy activity as our dependent variables, we created a test of the relative salience of hegemonic versus bipolar perspectives on the Cold War. In order to measure changes in bipolarity, we created a measure of military balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. In addition, with the use of events data, we created a measure of bipolarization, showing fluctuations in conflictual versus cooperative relations between the two superpowers.2 We created as well two hegemonic measures. One is the relational strength measure for the United States that is described in Chapters 3 and 4.3 The second is a measure of global acceptance of hegemonic leadership, which is operationalized as the percentage of

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states voting with the United States on contested roll call votes in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Table 6.1 demonstrates the results of our test.4 Once we control for the two global leadership measures, neither the degree of hostile interactions nor the relative military balance between the United States and the Soviet Union is significant in predicting fluctuations in crises, wars, or foreign policy activity during the Cold War era. However, controlling for the effects of these bipolar measures, U.S. relative strength is a consistently significant predictor of all three dependent variables, and concurrence with U.S. leadership is also significant for foreign policy activity.

Table 6.1

GEC Regressions of Wars, Crises, and Events During the Cold War

Variable

Wars

Constant

7.049a (1.041)

Bipolarization

Bipolar military balance

U.S. relational strength

Crises

Events

4.678a (1.333)

13.523a (0.429)

(Bipolar Variables) –0.006 –0.029 (0.021) (0.022)

0.020 (0.096)

–0.016 (0.019)

–0.016 (0.023)

–0.029 (0.099)

(Global Leadership Variables) –6.038b –11.833a (2.730) (2.888)

–7.223a (0.219)

Concurrence with leadership

–1.026 (0.653)

–0.146 (2.888)

–1.140a (0.219)

Dispersion parameter

–0.369 (0.204) 85.99 35 42.48a

0.184 (0.302) 149.98 28 5.69d

6.797a (0.058) 2729116.1 27 31.99a

GEC log-likelihood Number of cases Likelihood ratio testc

Notes: Entries are parameter estimates with standard errors in parentheses. a. p < .01. b. p < .05, two tailed test. c. Test is Chi-square with 4 degrees of freedom. d. Likelihood ratio test between full and null model is not significant at p < .05 but the inclusion of the relational strength variable in the model is a significant improvement over the model estimated without it (LR = 3.90 with 1 degree of freedom, p < .05).

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The test offered here is by no means a definitive one in showing that the Cold War system reflected architecture for world order that was far more comprehensive than just the bipolar conflict that ebbed and flowed through it. In fact, we doubt very much that without anticipating the long-term conflict between East and West it would have been possible for the United States to marshal the strength needed to create the architecture that stabilized international politics across the decades of the Cold War. However, we do believe that this test does provide some evidence for the assertion that the global architecture of the era was by no means tailored exclusively for that conflict. We also believe that the fluctuations in the intensity of the bipolar conflict of the Cold War reflected architecture that was relevant not only for that conflict. Layne and Schwarz (1993), in observing the emerging new world order, have made the same argument by looking backward to the previous one. For example, they point to the 1950 U.S. National Security Council (NSC 68) document indicating a U.S. strategy “as one designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish”—regardless of the presence of a Soviet menace. This strategy was a “policy of attempting to develop a healthy international community . . . a policy which we would probably pursue even if there were no Soviet threat” (Layne and Schwarz, 1993:5). That such an approach continued through the era is noted by the quote attributed to then secretary of state Dean Rusk, nearly thirty years later; he indicated that the United States “is safe only to the extent that its total environment is safe” (Layne and Schwarz, 1993:15). Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO and GATT, the multifaceted character of the United Nations, the containment approach to the Soviet Union (including the development of strategic nuclear weapons along with a deterrence policy)—all illustrate architectural properties that combine concerns about a strong challenger with elements that go far beyond the military/ideological challenge posed in the 1950s and early 1960s by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Even such architectural elements as NATO, designed primarily with the bipolar challenge in mind, have been found adaptable to the post–Cold War environment without a bipolar challenge. At the same time, and to the extent that the architectural arrangements of the new world order have their foundations buried in the previous one, the performance of these architectural arrangements during the Cold War experience should not be ignored in the evaluation of how the new world order will likely function. In that sense, the recent past can

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help provide data and understanding of the durability and weaknesses of today’s global architectural arrangements.

The Imbalanced Strength Problem The distribution of state strength in the present world order creates several versions of what we call the imbalanced strength problem. There are three types of imbalances in the system especially capable of creating threats to architectural stability. One type of imbalance—relational imbalance—exists between the economic and the military strengths of the great powers. The imbalance itself, we believe, gives rise—in part—to the phenomenon of institutionalized group hegemony, and as we noted earlier, the G-7 was created partially to supplement declining U.S. economic capabilities. Yet, the institutionalized group hegemony outcome is an awkward one, as it rests on a minimalist definition of relative equality in the economic sphere while the United States exhibits predominance in the military sphere. The strength of the United States in the economic realm is substantially greater than any of the other great powers, but it is not great enough to prevent a rough semblance of equality within the group when it comes to economic issues, allowing the group to act in concert. This, however, is not the case with respect to security issues, where the United States enjoys substantial predominance. During the decade between 1991 and 2001, the United States generally sought broad group support for governance in areas other than the economic realm, but the imbalance created by the preponderance of U.S. military strength has been accompanied by significant grumbling within and outside of the group. It is far from clear that countries would be willing for long to stay on the back benches on security issues. The problem of an imbalance in relational strength is not unique to the period of U.S. global leadership, but the U.S. period has manifested a pattern distinctly different from nineteenth-century British global leadership. Aside from the fact that U.S. relational strength may have been generally more predominant at times than Britain’s (see Figure 6.1), the nature of the relational strength of these two global leaders shows a significant and consistent difference. Britain’s predominance came primarily from relative economic strength, which was substantially greater in the nineteenth century than that of the United States in the twentieth (see Figure 6.2). Except at the beginning of their respective eras, not only was relative British economic strength the defining characteristic of its relational advantage over the great powers, but that level

Figure 6.1

Aggregate Relational Strength Measures for Britain (1815–1895) and the United States (1950–1999)

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Relational Strength Index RelationalU.S. USAggregate Aggregate Strength Index

Source: Compiled from data in Spiezio, 1990; and Volgy and Imwalle, 2000.

Figure 6.2

Comparison of British (1815–1995) and U.S. (1950–1999) Relational Economic Strength

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of economic advantage was unmatched by the United States in the twentieth century. In the U.S. case, predominance has been based on both military and economic strength, but the U.S. military advantage over other great powers dwarfs British military relational strength in the nineteenth century (see Figure 6.3). The absence of such U.S. preponderance in economic strength may be part of the reason that the Western European great powers and their partners in the EU are no longer resting on the back benches. States strong in economic capabilities can convert and have historically converted such capabilities to a wide range of foreign policy assets. Calls for a stronger unified foreign and military policy for the European Union (resulting in the Common Foreign and Security Policy, or CFSP) are one such manifestation of states with economic strength seeking to broaden their external capabilities. As the EU’s high representative for CFSP, Javier Solana (who in a previous incarnation was the Secretary General for NATO) has been at least as visible in Macedonia and Kosovo as his NATO successor, and perhaps more so than Europe’s leading foreign ministers. More important, the EU’s joint defense force is moving forward and will meet on time its announced quota of military personnel. Yet, it is a weak force. Even in the relatively small Macedonian theater of operations, and despite the consent of the Albanian rebels, the

Percent share of great powers

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Figure 6.3 60

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Europeans in August 2001 were required to rely on NATO backup and logistics and on a U.S. role for deploying 3,500 European troops to implement the agreement to disarm the rebels (even though this operation was far less extensive than those involved with efforts at peacekeeping or “peacemaking”). None of the European great powers are increasing their defense budgets to provide the broad range of logistics and technology needed to make a military EU response comparable to either NATO or U.S. military capabilities. This determination to play a major role despite substantial weakness in the realm of security can easily become problematic for systemic stability. It is possible that once created, an EU military force could intervene in conflicts either in Europe (the Balkans) or outside of Europe (e.g., North Africa, the Middle East) only to find itself in dire difficulties without immediate NATO or U.S. intervention. Failure on the part of the United States to assist such an EU force could easily lead to a long-term deterioration in G-7 relations and begin to decouple critical aspects of the institutionalized group hegemony. Creating the EU defense force, however, and then not using it in response to crises in or near Europe would create even greater political problems (domestic as well as international) for EU member states, and especially for the great powers in Western Europe that constitute the will and backbone for such forces. The second aspect of the imbalanced strength problem lies in the disparity between structural and relational strength in the present system. As noted in Chapter 4, U.S. relational strength is one of preponderance among the great powers, whereas both the United States and the other great powers evidence substantial decline in structural strength. Are there destabilizing consequences to looking hegemonic (relational preponderance) without being so (structural decline)? We believe so. First, it is not implausible to think that in the context of relational strength, the United States will be increasingly tempted to act hegemonically without developing the structural capabilities to do so. The second Bush administration’s series of unilateral initiatives—including national missile defense and the willingness to destroy the AntiBallistic Missile (ABM) treaty; the rejection of the Kyoto protocols; and the rejection of new norms and rules for biological and chemical weapons—are three of the most recent examples of attempts on the part of the United States to reconstitute, on its own initiative, salient aspects of the global architecture. The administration’s persistent claims that the president is not a “unilateralist” have served only to reinforce the unilateral nature of these actions; post hoc consultations with G-7 states did nothing to alter the U.S. position on these issues.5

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The adverse reaction from old foes to such unilateral moves is to be expected. From old allies, however, the reaction has been just as harsh. Note the following comments from European colleagues: Curiously, this country [the United States] that invented the most democratic social contract imaginable is today applying no less formidable energies to undoing the web of multilateral agreements and contracts that govern the functioning of international society—or at least freeing America itself from all the constraints of the system. . . . The aim is to free America from all its constraints while at the same time increasing its range of strategic options. (Chaillot Paper 48, 2001:vi)

Why are these actions potentially destabilizing? Acting hegemonically without developing the resources to do so, by definition, will not allow the creation (or alteration) of new global architecture. The issue over the Kyoto protocols illustrates well the resulting difficulties. U.S. intransigence did not destroy the protocols. The outcome, however, is one that will likely have little positive impact on global warming and is unlikely to have a positive impact on future U.S. leadership in the environmental arena. The administration was able to avoid what it considered a negative impact on the U.S. economy but was unable to alter the global approach to environmental degradation, leaving important consequences that are both ecologically important and politically dangerous for an administration seeking reelection. It is also difficult to accept the idea that the United States can simply alternate between unilateral initiatives and multilateral approaches to changes in global architecture. The second Bush administration’s unilateral initiatives followed nearly a decade of close coordination with G-7 nations. Then again, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the same administration called immediately for multilateral action on the basis of existing architectural arrangements for terrorist-related security issues, including invoking the Article 5 provision of the NATO charter. In the midst of genuine mourning for the United States and the victims of the attacks, responses from Russian, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, and British policymakers were unanimously supportive yet cautious. Although none invoked (and it would have been inappropriate to do so at the time) the new U.S. administration’s unilateralism of the previous months, the cautiousness belied not only a fear of terrorist contagion but also the noticeable change in the United States toward collective action when it suited U.S. interests. National missile defense constitutes another example of the illusion

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of hegemony and shifts between unilateral and coordinated approaches to global security arrangements. Clearly, national missile defense is not new to the post–Cold War world. The Reagan administration’s push for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) had already heralded an era of fascination with missile defense over strategic nuclear deterrence. Yet, the stubborn insistence of the second Bush administration to quickly deploy missile defense and abrogate the ABM treaty in the midst of strong evidence that the technology is still suspect, and even stronger animosity from both allies and former enemies, suggests hegemonic intentions spurred on in part by domestic politics. Given U.S. military preponderance, especially in the area of military technology, it is probably extremely tempting to think that this is the time to move forward aggressively with a system that—if it worked—could nullify strategic nuclear capabilities of potential adversaries and eliminate the need for a deterrence posture. If this system were successful, and even though it would not make the United States invulnerable to nuclear attack mechanisms other than long-range launchers, it could qualitatively improve and to some extent continue to sustain U.S. military preponderance in world affairs. The emphasis on missile defense seems like the actions of a great power seeking to act hegemonically, and to extend its hegemony, at least in the area of global security. Of course it would be insane to assume that the Bush administration’s strong push for national missile defense is solely (or primarily) based on its concern about the future of U.S. security or about needed global architectural enhancements. Missile defense is also about many domestic political issues, including in no small measure a litmus test between the president and the right wing of his party, and also about a rich source of campaign contributions from the defense and technology industries. Nevertheless, and regardless of whether they are driven by domestic politics or strategic global considerations, unilateral hegemonic actions on the part of the United States, without the resources to act hegemonically, are likely to have significant destabilizing consequences. Destroying the ABM regime is easier than creating its replacement, which would require a massive infusion of military commitments on the part of the United States (and its allies and adversaries were they to want to participate in a missile shield as well). Those resources seem to be unavailable to most of the parties concerned, assuming that such a missile shield will actually work. Short of this option, a cheaper one is escalation of offensive strategic weapons, an option discussed by the

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Russians and the Chinese (the Chinese seem to be encouraged by the Bush administration to continue nuclear testing and to generate increases in Chinese nuclear strategic forces). Similarly, a growing belief (based on unilateral U.S. initiatives) that the United States will act hegemonically is likely to lead to pressures to counteract such hegemonic actions, irrespective of whether the United States has the full range of resources to act unilaterally to construct global architecture. The earlier discussion of the EU’s efforts to construct a joint foreign and defense policy is a typical reaction to such fears about U.S. unilateral behavior. Furthermore, it is hard to believe that such stresses and strains over one area of the global architecture are unlikely to spill over into other areas: Clashes over environmental norms and security structures are not likely to be quarantined well when group hegemony is required to address issues related to global economic infrastructure. In fact, such clashes may function as a source of temptation (or as a major rationale) for some G-7 members to begin to leave the consensus of the group. It is far from given that all of the present members of the group will resist the temptation to expand their economic influence or to create coalitions in contravention of G-7 norms—even if such actions require undermining present multilateral governance mechanisms—in order to gain favor with those dissatisfied states that are chaffing at either economic regimes or hegemonic leadership. One such case has been unfolding in Asia. Strong opposition to the policies of the IMF in East Asia has already led to an attempt to restructure the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as an alternative to IMF resources and policies, with Japan (as a G-7 member) and China working together on the effort.6 If the ADB approach had been successful, the ADB would have been able to emulate a significant bit of the IMF’s role without IMF conditions for restructuring economic policies along Western guidelines (Economist, 2000; Bergsten, 2000). That the actions of the Japanese—halted in large part by their rapidly deteriorating economic position—were part of a process of challenging the structural conditions governing global finance is fairly clear (e.g., see Helleiner, 2000). It may be a bit less clear that attempts at creating the European Monetary Union (EMU) for the EU through a regional, integrationist approach may be designed to provide a similar challenge to global financial structural arrangements. Note, for instance, the words of Jacques Delors in describing the global consequences of the EMU: “[It would make the EU] strong enough to force the United States and Japan to play by rules which would ensure much

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greater monetary stability around the world” (Helleiner, 2000:245; Henning, 1998:565). The third imbalance problem reflects the imbalance between the relatively extensive domestic strength of the great powers and the range of domestic politics militating against converting domestic strength into external strength. It is fairly clear from our data that all but Russia (among the great powers) have the domestic resources for substantially expanding their relational and structural strength. Yet, at least since the 1970s and including periods of increased conflict between East and West during the Cold War, growing domestic strength among the great powers has hardly correlated with commitments to either increased relational or increased structural strength.7 As we noted earlier, there is nothing inevitable about the discrepancy between increased domestic strength and declining external strength, and in fact the trend has been reversed, albeit temporarily, for the United States and other great powers in a number of instances. We suspect that the inability to sustain such enhancements to the external strength of states—although partly related to the growing complexities in the international system—is in large measure due to a thick web of domestic political constraints on policymakers, especially in democratic polities. This web has many sources, ranging from public fatigue with the long Cold War and the large military budgets that were needed to sustain it, through a variety of societal pressures for government services in liberal democracies, through long periods of fiscal pressures caused in part by no fewer than two global energy crises, and through ideological commitments to smaller, fiscally less intrusive governments. The exogenous pressures caused by increased globalization and a global market for goods and labor will likely continue to add to such domestic pressures. The migration of production facilities from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states to countries with less expensive (and less organized) labor will especially continue to create inequalities within the wealthiest of states and is likely to increase public pressure for more domestic spending. Even the less wealthy nations benefiting from globalization processes (e.g., China) are experiencing and will continue to experience huge economic inequalities that may threaten the viability of their political systems unless there is a strong recommitment of resources to address social problems. The problems resulting from the imbalance between looking (and being) strong domestically and not matching such domestic strength

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with external strength are twofold. One aspect of the problem is that the unwillingness/inability to transfer additional resources for external objectives may send the wrong signals to both allies and adversaries. European reshuffling of existing capabilities into the Common Foreign and Defense Policy looks to many outsiders, including policymakers in North America, like a shell game. Consequent European demands for multilateral approaches to global architectural construction sound hollow because those European countries with substantial domestic strength are reducing rather than increasing resource commitments to foreign affairs. Likewise, for those states that are actively involved in globalization processes through international markets, the temptation has been great to control the negative consequences of such processes while surrendering voluntarily both sovereignty and autonomy to international markets (Holm and Sorensen, 1995; Strange, 1996). Yet the differences between European countries (not to mention those in the third world) and the United States are far more profound than the simple absence of additional resource commitments to foreign affairs. Misunderstanding the depth of disenchantment by erroneously using the yardstick of external resource commitments distorts significantly the actual level of dissatisfaction in many European states with present architectural arrangements and U.S. leadership. The partial surrender to market forces is driven in large measure by domestic politics, or, in terms espoused by Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2000; Bueno de Mesquita, forthcoming), is determined by the size of the winning (governing) coalition and the size of the “selectorate” in most political systems. A large winning coalition will press leaders to expend much of their domestic strength on domestic public goods. But even a small winning coalition, based on corporate contributions and funding of elections, will likely urge a diminution in global regulatory mechanisms. Restructuring architecture involving financial markets and the flow of international capital, for example, is unlikely to happen. Equally unlikely would be to fashion human rights regimes when the domestic winning coalition is made up in part of transnational corporations needing good relations for their production facilities in countries where human rights are of low priority. The second problem with possessing significant domestic strength but not committing resources to external strength is that breaking the pattern requires—perhaps especially in democracies—the construction of substantial external threats before it becomes politically palatable to shift resources from domestic to external concerns. How much of an

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external threat is required probably varies by political culture. The Algerian terrorist bombings of Paris did not substantially rechannel French domestic resources toward foreign activities. In the United States, however, the horrendous terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., were immediately reconstructed by the government and the media as an act of war and led to bipartisan reshuffling of domestic resources for external efforts of both a military and an economic nature.8 A Congress deeply divided between critical domestic priorities (including health care, social security, and education) and more attention to military priorities dissolved into unanimous support for wholesale enhancements to the defense budget, even as recession loomed and the budgetary surplus evaporated. Nearly twenty years earlier, the Reagan administration was able to restructure resources from domestic to external strength by successfully invoking the rebirth of the Soviet “evil empire” in response to the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan. The switch in priorities proved temporarily successful, arresting the slide in U.S. structural strength over a four-year period but requiring at the same time both a growth in deficit spending and a shift of domestic programs to the state and local level (in the guise of a “new federalism”). The episode illustrates both the costs of restructuring and the need to heighten the external threat to generate sufficient support from the “selectorate.” The costs of heightening the threat are difficult to assess, but such public conceptualizations of the external environment are likely to become self-fulfilling prophecies, resulting in increasing polarization in the system. Such polarization in turn will likely require additional, albeit scarce, structural and relational capabilities.

The Problem of Partial Integration We also note the problem of partial integration. Creeping incrementalism and institutionalized group hegemony are possible at the moment because there has been a concerted effort to integrate important and dissatisfied nations into multilateral institutions and regimes. Yet, consultation with, benefit from, and even integration into multilateral institutions are far from the concept of integrating major dissatisfied states into mechanisms of power sharing and co-governance. Neither Russia nor China is likely to enter the ranks of group hegemony as equal members in the near future. Their dissatisfaction with the status quo is likely to escalate over disagreements with the direction taken by the govern-

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ing powers and/or over conditions for full acceptance into the cogovernance process. Such conflicts have already brewed with respect to concerns regarding human rights, approaches to ethnic secessionist movements, economic policy, NATO expansion, and national sovereignty and may likely escalate further over these and myriad other issues. Alternatively, if these dissatisfied powers are admitted fully into the institutional group hegemony structure under present circumstances, their inclusion will only serve to jeopardize the governance capabilities of the group. This is so because their admission would chip away at the relatively homogeneous composition of the group and its near-total commitment to maintaining and stabilizing the status quo. Partial integration may not be sufficient. Its symbolic manifestation stands today at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers of Europe (SHAPE), the military arm of NATO. Strolling around SHAPE grounds, one is impressed with the nature of integrated forces. Officers and enlisted men and women from Germany, Holland, the UK, Poland, Turkey, and Hungary comingle and work together. They interact as well with the partially integrated: those who are there under the Partnership for Peace program, including the Russians. It is not hard to detect who are the second-class citizens. The Russian building looks like an oversized, aluminum mobile home. Before it sits a monument, a large piece of the old Berlin Wall, reminding all who walk past it of who won and who lost the Cold War. Even the officers’ mess seems to reflect the process of partial integration. Inside, soldiers in well-dressed uniforms eat well. Outside, high-ranking Russian officers—dressed in somewhat shabby uniforms—are observed checking their pockets to see whether they have enough money to eat inside. The symbolism of partial integration at SHAPE is further underscored by the realities of additional architectural enhancements in the security realm through further NATO expansion. But it is an expansion of a limited nature: Sitting at the door are Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Baltic states. Particularly the countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would bring NATO to the edge of Russia, and Russian foreign policy makers have loudly denounced any attempt to do so. The response has been that NATO is no longer security architecture aimed at Russia. Yet, when Russian representatives have asked to join the enlargement process, the silence has been deafening.9 Russia did, of course, request membership in and was allowed to join the G-7, now known as the G-8. It is clear, though, that Russian participation is of a consultative nature, as Russia lacks the economic (and probably the military) resources with which to participate in the

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institutionalized group hegemony process. Underlining its second-class status is the fact that Russia is the only participant in the G-8 that is not a member of the WTO. The G-7 often meets without Russia on many issues, especially relating to global finance and other economic matters. None of the major decisions of the G-8, since Russia’s accession, have depended on Russian participation or commitment of resources in the economic realm.10 China, as another major, dissatisfied state, is soon to enter the ranks of the WTO, although there hasn’t been even the pretense of that country’s symbolic accession to the G-8. Even partial integration into the economic regime represented by the WTO may be quite problematic. The Chinese will be thrust on the horns of a major dilemma once they have to accept WTO rules. On the one hand, foreign direct investment should accelerate along with investments into higher-technology-based production facilities. Likewise, Chinese foreign trade should continue to grow. On the other hand, the Chinese will face three formidable problems. First, the already vexing problem of high unemployment should grow worse, as the Chinese will have to phase out continued protection to state industries. Second, the high rate of corruption, affecting most aspects of the economy, will have to be brought under control. Third, the country will have to accept substantial foreign involvement in and perhaps a degree of control over its economy as well as intrusion into its social and cultural affairs. No wonder, then, that within the Chinese power structure major conflicts have erupted over the WTO membership issue. Those conflicts may become destabilizing as the government confronts its responsibilities and tests its legitimacy and competence in the face of WTO impacts. Such destabilization will be especially evident when the payoffs of partial integration translate—according to Chinese policymakers—to no more substantial growth for the Chinese economy and no additional resources with which to address societal problems resulting from integration.11 Further for the Chinese, and to make life more difficult from a symbolic point of view, Taiwan will become a WTO member at the same time as China. Partial integration replaces the full integration mechanisms (intrabloc) and the containment mechanisms (interbloc) of the previous era. Partial integration into both co-governance mechanisms and institutional arrangements offers a glimpse into an important and yet unstable aspect of the new global architecture. Our previous comments have applied only to the major powers that are dissatisfied with the status quo. Beneath them, however, are dozens of other states even more dissatisfied and ones that have been most problematic in the early phase of

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the new world order. Some of these have been conceptualized as “rogue” states and include Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and many others—dubbed “weak states”—that may barely contain social movements that threaten regional and global norms of conduct. These states are not amenable to partial integration, and there are virtually no viable containment mechanisms in the system for them.12

The Problem of Incrementalism Another problem facing the new world order is that of addressing issues that may be incompatible with incremental mechanisms. Creeping incrementalism and institutionalized group hegemony work best when seeking to stabilize existing mechanisms of governance, or in responding to crises. The inheritance from the previous system is likely to work far less well in constructing new global norms and institutional arrangements when little consensus exists over the direction these issues should take and the resource commitments needed to address them. 13 Illustrative of spheres needing to be addressed in a more dramatic fashion include growing inequality issues in the economic sphere and in addition a range of global ecological problems that were scarcely addressed in the previous system. In the previous era, economic inequality and poverty in the South were not altogether ignored, but with rare exceptions, they were treated either as a function of East-West conflicts or as part of historical colonial relationships. Neither of those frameworks is useful in the new millennium; yet the pace of global inequality is very much likely to widen with globalization, and not only between countries but within countries as well (Keller, Lowi, and Gendlin, 2000). For example, the new information economies are driven by new and changing technologies that are produced among a handful of the richest nations; 183 countries with 80 percent of the global population spend only 15 percent on technology development (Keller, Lowi, and Gendlin, 2000:77). Today’s international economy depends on rapidly changing technology to generate new products and services; the acquisition of such technology is capital intensive, and the capital is seldom available to poorer countries. Although technology-poor countries have been able to cope through cheap labor or through selling natural resources, these strategies will not produce much greater wealth in the long run, and we expect the inequality gap to widen. Growing inequality between (and within) states is not new to the

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post–Cold War era, as recent research (e.g., Korzeniewicz and Moran, 1997; Wade, 2001) demonstrates. However, the “level of inequality [between countries has become] so high that no individual nation in the contemporary world reaches similar levels of inequality in the distribution of income within their borders” (Korzeniewicz and Moran, 1997:1016). This inequality is not a temporary phenomenon; the Gini coefficient (measuring the degree of inequality) shows inequality increasing by over 8 percent between 1965 and 1992 (Korzeniewicz and Moran, 1997:1016).14 Whether such inequalities between states have continued since 1990, as globalization processes and international trade have increased, is an empirical issue. Certainly those who argue for the positive effects of international economic globalization would argue that they have not. Therefore, we constructed a simple test to assess, in a comparative perspective, the trend for the 1990–1999 period. Using Korzeniewicz and Moran’s methods and data, we updated their measures for deciles controlling economic resources in the international system. The results are delineated in Figure 6.4. Despite increased globalization, despite the “transnationalization” of large corporations, and despite large investments of production facilities in countries with low labor costs, the march in inequality between the richest of states and all others contin-

Figure 6.4

Richest 10 Percent of World’s Countries’ Share of Global GNP, 1965–1999

70

50 50 Percent of World GNP

Share of World GNP

60 60

40 40

30 30

20 20

10 10

00 1965 1965

1970 1970

1975 1975

1980 1980

1985 1985 Years

Source: World Bank (www.worldbank.org).

1990 1990

1995 1995

1999 1999

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ues in the international system. By 1999, according to our figures, the richest 10 percent of countries captured nearly 61 percent of all global economic resources, a level that was roughly 8 percent higher than for the same group in 1990, and a level of concentration in wealth by the top 10 percent of countries that was about 30 percent higher than in 1965. Clearly, the trend in inequality between states continues across the post–Cold War architecture. Are there international mechanisms to address adequately these inequality issues? We doubt it. In fact, quite the opposite may hold. The ideology of economic globalization holds that poverty and inequality are to be addressed by a growing global market free of political interference. Institutions that have been developed primarily to encourage global and regional markets are ill suited to begin to address concerns about growing inequality. Are there significant global consequences if inequality issues are not addressed? In such increasing inequalities are to be found the seeds of greater interstate and intrastate conflicts, and perhaps the underlying reasons for further escalation in ethnic and racial conflicts within and across borders. Unchecked, such growing inequalities are likely to destabilize further international politics.15 We can write a similar scenario about global environmental issues (such as global warming, deforestation), coming to equally dire conclusions, and global mechanisms to adequately address these issues are absent. Much of the international community is likely to suffer the consequences stemming from unchecked global ecological damage. The issue is just as likely to escalate into North-South conflicts as rich and poor countries see these issues with different historical lenses; the poorer ones have far more limited resources with which to cope with the problems. Yet, neither growing global inequality nor deteriorating global ecological circumstances are likely to be addressed well by creeping incrementalism and institutionalized group hegemony. Our crystal ball is only partially clear when it comes to using it for predicting the long-term viability of institutionalized group hegemony and creeping incrementalism. We suspect that neither new power transitions nor substantial rechanneling of domestic strength to external strength on the part of the great powers is likely to occur and disturb present arrangements. Instead, we believe that the principal weaknesses may lie within the architectural arrangement itself: the festering imbalance between economic and military strength, the delicate balancing act involved in bringing dissatisfied powers closer to co-governance without making co-governance impossible, temptations for G-7 members to expand their influence by establishing or committing to regional norms

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at variance with unpopular global governance mechanisms, and incremental processes of change for issues unsuitable for incremental mechanisms. All of these areas may carry seeds of destruction, but it is the last one that should give us greatest pause. The new world order does bring with it unique and unusual threats, and incremental processes and an institutionalized group hegemony will be ill suited to address them. Then, perhaps another global order will emerge.

Notes 1. For an elaboration of this test, see Volgy and Imwalle, 1995. 2. For these and the measures noted further on, along with a discussion of sources and the validity of the measures, see Volgy and Imwalle, 1995. 3. We argued earlier that both structural and relational strength are important for architectural construction and maintenance, and relational strength is important once architectural mechanisms are firmly in place. It is due to this latter notion that we are using the relational measure here. 4. The test is based on a GEC events count model. For a justification of this approach and its validity to the task at hand, see Volgy and Imwalle, 1995. 5. The extent to which unilateral impulses are mitigated by the realities of ongoing architectural arrangements was underlined by the Bush administration’s insistence that it would not bail out the Argentinean economy; later it suffered a change of heart because of the consequences of not doing so (“From No Aid to a Bailout for Argentineans,” New York Times, August 23, 2001). 6. For an account of the anger and frustration outside of East Asia with international financial institutions and their policies, see the brief but fascinating article by a former chief economist of the World Bank (Stiglitz, 2001). 7. As noted earlier, and for idiosyncratic reasons, the one exception was Japan, until the beginning of the 1990s. 8. Immediate discussion of economic assistance to those nations that have been previously hostile or neutral to U.S. initiatives drew virtually no negative response from even those members of Congress who have been battling to eliminate most forms of aid and grants to other countries. 9. As one high-ranking NATO briefer noted in 2001 to a group of Atlantic Fellows: “If we let Russia in, then we might as well end NATO as a security organization.” 10. It is clear that the Russians still have political assets in certain parts of the post–Cold War world: For example, they did make a substantive contribution to the political process by working with Serbia to end the war on the G-7’s terms (Kirton, Daniels, and Freytag, 2001:287). 11. For these and related issues noted previously, see “Ready for the Competition?” Economist, September 15, 2001:35–36. 12. This observation assumes that our projections are correct about the changing face of architectural construction, as we note in Chapter 7. 13. This lack of consensus may be true even for “integrating” institutional arrangements involving a relatively homogeneous membership and similar objectives; see Bobrow and Kudrle, 2000.

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14. The Korzeniewicz and Moran (1997) study noted here used a variety of measures of inequality between states, including GNP per capita and GDP per capita, without appreciable differences. Further, inequality was tested with more than one model and with the use of varying assumptions for the model. Across all this variation, the trends toward substantial and increasing inequality stood for the 1965–1992 period. For the debate over the use of GNP versus purchasing power parity measures, see Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2000. 15. Erik Voeten’s (2000) analysis of UN General Assembly roll call votes, comparing the Cold War with the post–Cold War period of voting, indicates that the post–Cold War period is dominated by a single pro-West versus anti-West dimension, with the latter group consisting of dissatisfied, nondemocratic, non-Western states.

7 What If: Another Round of Architectural Enhancements for a New World Order?

You will be asked for your patience; for, the conflict will not be short. You will be asked for resolve; for, the conflict will not be easy. You will be asked for your strength, because the course to victory may be long. —George W. Bush, “Radio Address of the President to the Nation,” September 15, 2001 Our war on terror begins with [Al-Qaida], but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. . . . We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions—by abandoning every value except the will to power—they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies. Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. —George W. Bush, address to a joint session of Congress, September 20, 2001

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t is difficult to imagine how the future of international politics looked to Americans from the vantage point of 1948. A global war had ended. The United States, victorious in the war’s aftermath, stood as the strongest power on earth. Yet, almost immediately U.S. policymakers articulated a global threat from the Soviet Union and its allies, a threat at once military, ideological, and economic. The Korean War was around the corner, and the Soviet testing of an atomic weapon served to deepen the perception of the communist threat. An architecture was already developing in 1948 that would help guide the course of international politics for nearly a half century. Typically, the demarcation lines between old and new architecture are not difficult to identify: They are demarked by global wars and designated by the victors that emerge from them. The old architecture turns into rubble at the war’s commencement, as it clearly did in 1939. Soon after, as was equally clear by 1951, new architecture is constructed to replace it. The year 1989 brought no such obvious demarcation line, and for the reasons we noted in the earlier chapters, the global architecture in existence since the end of the Cold War closely resembles the architectural elements that preceded it, regardless of claims that states were constructing a new world order. It is plausible, however, that the events of September 11, 2001, may motivate U.S. policymakers to embark on an attempt to reconstruct post–Cold War architecture in nonincremental ways. Certainly, the quotations from President George W. Bush that begin this chapter and that signaled the response to the terrorist acts on New York and Washington, D.C., echo a determination to engage in a long-range effort to do so. In the aftermath of the “easy victory” over the Cold War and through the delusion of the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1992), it is difficult to envision more than a long-range campaign to minimize the potential of international terrorist organizations to inflict harm on the United States and its allies. Yet, in the effort to minimize that potential, it may be that the U.S. administration is willing to try to alter the global architecture in some fundamental ways. It may even be the case that what will be required to achieve the more limited objective of eradicating international terrorist organizations will trigger consequences requiring massive changes in global architecture even if those changes were originally not intended. In any case, if that is where the war against terrorism takes us, the end result may be substantially more difficult to perceive today than it was in 1948 to contemplate the contours of international politics on the eve of the Cold War. The purpose of this last chapter is to apply the conceptual tools we

I

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used earlier to create some insight into what could possibly be the contours of such new architecture and whether such architecture could feasibly be erected. We do so first by examining the scope of the problem facing U.S. policymakers and then by looking at the consequences of the problem for global architecture and the state strength that would be needed to engage in fundamental architectural changes.

The Scope of the Problem International terrorism is not new either to the previous epoch or to the post–Cold War world of international politics. As Figure 7.1 illustrates, according to the U.S. State Department’s definition of international terrorism, there has been an average of over 420 incidents of international terrorism per year since 1968. The figure shows as well considerable fluctuation in terrorist activity, both from year to year and across the entire period. The frequency of terrorist events peaked around 1987, two years prior to the end of the Cold War. Since then, there seems to be a reversal of the earlier trend toward increasing incidents over time. Although by no means languishing, terrorist activities abated after the end of the Cold War (Figure 7.2 notes an average of 386 incidents

Figure 7.1

Frequency of International Terrorist Incidents, 1968–2000

700 700

Number of Incidents

600 600

500 500

400 400

300 300

200 200

100 100

0 1968

1973

1978

1983

1988

Source: U.S. Department of State (www.state.gov/s/ct/t/s/pgtrpt/).

1993

1998

2000

128 Figure 7.2

International Politics and State Strength

Average Annual Frequency of International Terrorism by Decades, 1970–2000

600

Number of Incidents

500

400

300

200 200

100 100

00

1970–1979

1980–1989

1990–2000

Source: U.S. Department of State (www.state.gov)

between 1990 and 2000, compared to an average of 543 events between 1980 and 1989), perhaps corresponding to the decline in Cold War–related state sponsorship of terrorism. Less clear is what else has changed with respect to international terrorist activity; three new trends may be evident. First, state sponsorship (e.g., by Libya, Syria, and obviously the Soviet Union) may have diminished, and the role of nonstate actors and nonstate resources available to terrorists may have substantially increased. The financial networks involved with the support of terrorist organizations will not be clear for some time, but preliminary evidence seems to indicate substantial sums of funds available to terrorist organizations from fundraising activities separate from the resources of national governments, and also from a global market of drug transactions and other criminal activities.1 Second, the technology available for international terrorism is probably more lethal than ever before. The monopoly on force by states is in part diminishing through a combination of the willingness on the part of some states to sell their capabilities to nonstate actors and their growing loss of competence to control their own stockpiles of military technology (and perhaps as well their territory). The sheer diffusion of technolo-

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gy across borders is likely to place more lethal capabilities in the hands of terrorist organizations, upping the ante on the intensity of violence available to terrorist groups. Access to biological, chemical, and possibly nuclear capabilities both reduces the need of using commercial jets as explosives and increases geometrically the potential damage against the targets of terrorist actions. The third obvious change is that terrorism descended on the continental United States in an unprecedented fashion. Prior to September 11, 2001, there had been numbers of attacks on U.S. citizens, the U.S. military, and U.S. property, but nearly all of these attacks were outside of the continental United States. With the exception of the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, no major terrorist attacks occurred on U.S. soil out of over 14,000 incidents recorded over a thirty-three-year time-span . . . until 2001.2 Then, Americans witnessed a sophisticated, well-planned and -coordinated attack that resulted in the single largest loss of lives on U.S. soil—apart from the Civil War—in the history of the nation. The fatalities from the September 11 incident were also nine times greater than the second highest fatality terrorist incident in the twentieth century.3 The brutality of the attack toward civilians and the subsequent loss of lives combined to create a unique and catalytic event for the U.S. public and for U.S. policymakers. Yet, the uniqueness of the event lies at least as much in the rarity of terrorist targets on U.S. soil in spite of open borders, huge movements of people into and out of the country, and virtually no security restrictions against freedom of movement in the United States.4 The belief that overwhelming military, technological, and economic capabilities, coupled with extensive intelligence operations, would be sufficient to deter such an incident was shattered with the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. The elusive nature of terrorists—combined with concerns over increasingly lethal terrorist capabilities and fears that these actions will be likewise undeterred in the future by either U.S. military-economic capabilities or its intelligence operations—and the number of casualties at “home” have forced a significant amount of rethinking about security under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Witness the words of a key U.S. Defense Department report, issued some nineteen days after the attacks: The attack on the United States and the war that has been visited upon us highlights a fundamental condition of our circumstances: we can-

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not and will not know precisely where and when America’s interests will be threatened, when America will come under attack, or when Americans might die as the result of aggression. We can be clear about trends, but uncertain about events. . . . We should try mightily to avoid surprise, but we must also learn to expect it. . . . Adapting to surprise—adapting quickly and decisively—must therefore be a condition of planning. (Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 2001:3)

Domestic (or “homeland”) vulnerability is one-half of the uncertainty equation. The second is the uncertainty in trying to decipher answers to concerns about the range of terrorist organizations, their strengths (military, economic, technological), their intentions, and the support accorded to them by social movements and states both prior to and in the aftermath of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan. If the “war on terrorism” is to be conducted to its conclusion, it will require action not only against Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida organization but also against a range of other organizations operating today, organizations that are present inside dozens of countries: U.S. policymakers indicated that AlQaida and its sister organizations may be operating in no fewer than sixty-eight different countries.5 To be substantially successful, the effort will have to reach as well those states that “harbor” such cells or provide financial infrastructure for their activities. To be fully successful, the effort will have to create mechanisms that will prevent states from providing highly lethal capabilities (either through incompetent security capabilities or in response to economic incentives) to terrorists. In addition, mechanisms will need to be developed to prevent the takeover of weak and potentially unstable political systems by terrorist organizations or to find a means of containing such political systems if their takeover cannot be prevented. This type of security dilemma—because of the uncertainties it presents—provides a challenge that at a minimum compares in complexity with the security dilemma that was faced by global architects in 1948. Then, the enemy was clear, and the strategy involved traditional geopolitical issues, albeit with a high ideological content, and force levels around which there was substantial certainty. The terrorist security dilemma of the twenty-first century is that today’s terrorists are diffused without a geographical center and are armed with technological and lethal capabilities that are both unclear and constantly changing. In addition, the terrorists’ radical voice may have limited appeal to parts of the Islamic world or a much broader appeal beyond Islam to the poorer tier of states in the international system.6

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Three Scenarios We project three possible scenarios reflecting U.S. policies in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States. The scenarios represent different types of threats to the status quo and consequently different gradations of response to the issue of terrorism—and therefore, different consequences for architectural construction. These scenarios by no means exhaust the problems and policy options available but are outlined because they represent midpoints on a scale from minimal to maximum responses and show the impacts such responses would have on international politics. Table 7.1 indicates the key attributes we use to address the three scenarios. They stem from our previous analysis of the nature of state strength in today’s international politics, and the manner in which such state strength can be utilized to make changes to the architectural arrangements we outlined in the previous chapters. The Minimalist Scenario: Pursuing Al-Qaida This scenario is both the minimalist one and also the one that seems to have been designed by the Bush administration in response to the events of September 11. Here, the United States and its allies define the threat of international terrorism as primarily associated with bin

Table 7.1

Projected Relationships Between State Strength,Types of Challenges, and Architectural Options for Three Scenarios Regarding International Terrorism Scenarios

Attributes

Minimalist

Moderate

Level of threat Security structure

Moderate No major alteration

Economic regime Integration/ containment process Crisis management Mechanism

Minimal impact Minor

Extensive Some additions and alterations Some impact Substantial

Ideology of dissatisfaction State strength

Worst Case Strong security impact Extensive alterations

Status quo

Status quo with limited changes

Low

Moderate

Extensive alternations Substantial integration and containment needed Status quo with substantial enhancements Very strong

Minor adjustments

Substantial adjustments

Major adjustments

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Laden’s Al-Qaida organization. Thus, a limited campaign is fought to destroy command and control, training and logistical, and financial capabilities of the leadership of the Al-Qaida organization. At the same time, and in coordination with Western states and sympathetic states outside the Western alliance, there is a combined effort to root out as many Al-Qaida cells as possible when such cells have been identified; this latter process is one that is intelligence based and coordinated with local police powers across the myriad countries where the cells may be present. The immediate state regime providing physical support (i.e., the Taliban Afghan regime) for Al-Qaida is, for all practical purposes, destroyed, and pressure is placed on other potential state sponsors (i.e., Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen) to continue their rejection of “any and all international terrorist movements.” However, in order to limit conflict over the definition of terrorism, such movements are operationally defined as the Al-Qaida organization and others that provide support for it or work with it. In order to reduce the backlash against these initiatives, “collateral” damage to civilian populations is minimized both inside and outside of Afghanistan, and U.S. troops show a very low profile on the soil of Arab states outside of Afghanistan. Restoration of a viable political system to Afghanistan is done primarily under the auspices of the UN and a coalition of Arab states in the region, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The United States uses existing global and regional institutions in combination with unilateral initiatives to pursue its response to the threat of terrorism. The G-8 (now involving a more active role for Russia for terrorist-related issues) helps to coordinate responses for European and Asian allies. Under the NATO umbrella, member states pledge a common policy for pursuing Al-Qaida cells in their own countries, for coordinating intelligence regarding terrorist cells, and for coordinating investigations into the financial assets associated with terrorist networks in Europe and North America. Similar coordination occurs under the APEC umbrella for Asian states. Resolutions are introduced in the UN Security Council and the General Assembly to broaden the regime on international terrorism, including cooperation with and assistance to states with limited political capabilities to respond to international terrorist organizations that have penetrated into their societal networks. Conceptual distinctions are created between terrorism and wars of national liberation. The minimalist approach provides some clear trade-offs for policy success and also some clear-cut implications for global architectural

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construction. Regarding policy success, this approach dramatically reduces the scope of the problem from fighting global terrorism to engaging a specific terrorist group and its affiliates and relations. Clearly, the approach cannot address the larger terrorist problem, but the shrinkage of objectives reduces the costs of engagement and increases the likelihood of success. Furthermore, if the policy proves successful, the structure of actions taken can form a platform for incrementally adding other international terrorist organizations at a later date and thus expanding the scope of objectives, particularly if the actions of other terrorist networks would warrant such expansion. It may be possible as well that by using the minimalist option, the potential fallout in the Islamic world will be limited and will not threaten the stability of moderate and conservative governments. Under this scenario, global architectural enhancements are minimal. No new institutional mechanisms are necessary. Although the United States uses a combination of unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral responses to the problem and although it may seek to strengthen the antiterrorism regime, most of these activities are carried out along the lines of existing and well-developed security structures, crisis mechanisms, and integration processes. The costs of such a scenario are not minimal, but neither are they prohibitive (at least compared to the other scenarios). For the United States, state strength needs to be increased, especially in the military domain (and in fact this did occur with substantial congressional increases for military appropriations), along with additional economic assistance to states where there is a potential threat of destabilization to their political systems (e.g., Pakistan). Likewise, G-8 partners will need to increase their military and intelligence capabilities proportionally. Other costs, particularly political ones, are much harder to assess. In order to maintain support from moderate and conservative Middle East states, the United States will be challenged to place extensive pressures on Israel for a settlement with the Palestinians that goes above and beyond the point that will likely be palatable to either Israel or domestic U.S. constituencies. The political price for Russia’s participation may be extensive as well, demanding at the minimum a larger political role in NATO or alteration to the NATO architecture. In addition, Russia will seek admission to the WTO, and likely a larger role in the G-7. Furthermore, the Russians will ask for diminished or disappearing criticism of their actions toward Chechnya and, potentially, other insurgency movements within Russia. The Chinese government may likewise pressure the United States with respect to its support for

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Taiwan and demand a lower Western profile against human rights violations. It is plausible as well that members of the EU will demand of the United States that multilateral approaches—used for terrorism—be now applied to national missile defense, global warming, and other environmental issues. None of these costs are unimportant, and they will require complex negotiations. Some of them may threaten the stability of the present global architecture. As we noted earlier, neither NATO nor the G-7 is likely to survive in its present role if its membership becomes more heterogeneous; thus, full Russian admission into the governance mechanisms associated with the G-7 is likely to minimize decisionmaking capabilities and the long-term viability of these aspects of global architecture. Nevertheless, the minimalist option appears to be the least expensive alternative, and the war following the events of September 11 clearly seems to have followed this approach. Certainly the words of U.S. policymakers speak to an option that is far more extensive than limiting the response to Al-Qaida and its relationships around the world. Yet, the actual steps taken suggest that the minimalist option is precisely where U.S. policymakers are trying to head. Despite the rhetoric regarding all international terrorism, the U.S. administration was quick to differentiate between terrorist organizations operating in close proximity to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other terrorist organizations that are symbolically less connected to the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. 7 Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—two organizations listed on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations—were not part of the network of organizations whose financial assets were being frozen until Hamas-affiliated terrorists blew up bombs in Jerusalem and Haifa in December 2001, prompting a strong Israeli reprisal and leaving the U.S. administration with little alternative but to accept Israel’s response. Neither had the administration initially targeted terrorist organizations trained and operating in Pakistan and aimed at Indian-controlled Kashmir, a lack of attention that may have prompted the Indian government to escalate tensions on the Pakistani-Indian border after terrorist attacks occurred in Indian-held Kashmir and on India’s Parliament. Consistent with a minimalist designation of terrorist organizations, the U.S. administration has engaged in no public discourse regarding the building of new architectural arrangements of a global or even a regional nature.8 Although there has been much rhetoric about higher levels of uncertainty and the need for broad alliances against terror, the

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administration’s actual response has been to reinforce existing institutional commitments, consistent with the notion of a more minimalist response to the problem.9 A Midrange Scenario: When Minimalist Strategies Go Awry It is possible to articulate a very broad range of reasons for why the minimalist scenario will not succeed. For example, it is plausible that regardless of bin Laden’s elimination as a continued threat, midlevel operatives may be sufficiently enabled to launch additional terrorist strikes at the United States, and in fact the infrastructure to do so could have been put into place prior to the first round of attacks in anticipation of strong U.S. retaliatory responses. It is plausible as well that some of the leadership within Al-Qaida escaped from Afghanistan and found harbor elsewhere from which to conduct additional terrorist operations against the United States. A second attack on the United States or substantial attacks on U.S. citizens abroad would place exceptional pressures on the U.S. government to dramatically increase the conflict not only with Al-Qaida but also with the broader scope of international terrorist organizations on the State Department’s list. An increase in the level of response would be especially the case if another round of attacks came not from Al-Qaida but from another terrorist organization. This is not a far-fetched proposition. At least two organizations—Hamas and the PFLP—have the capabilities of striking not only at U.S. personnel but possibly at targets in the continental United States. In fact, such attacks, in the name of the Palestinian cause and in retaliation for the deaths of Palestinians in the recent round of conflicts with Israel, would likely generate far more public support in the Arab world than bin Laden’s fundamentalist views. The secretary general of the Arab League, Amir Moussa, for instance, has publicly stated that terrorism “stems mostly from injustice to the Palestinians, who see no light at the end [of] foreign military occupation.”10 Although neither of these organizations is likely to have the financial capabilities of Al-Qaida, their strength lies in greater numbers of supporters and in the substantial numbers of veterans of numerous encounters with Israeli armed forces and police. Perhaps even more important, both moderate and radical Arab governments would find it extremely difficult to participate in reprisals against Palestinian-linked terrorists without jeopardizing the stability of their own regimes. Mitigating against this possibility has been the work of U.S. policy: drawing a distinction between the terrorist attacks against the United

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States and Palestinian activists embroiled in the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as avoiding specific denunciation of these organizations and placing substantial pressure on the Israelis not to expand the conflict in the West Bank, even after the assassination of an Israeli cabinet member. Of course, this policy became untenable with the Palestinian bombings of civilians in Jerusalem and Haifa in December 2001. The Israeli reacttion was similar to the U.S. response against the Taliban and Al-Qaida, and Israel’s actions forced U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to admit that as a sovereign state, Israel was very much within its right to defend itself against terrorism. Of course, in the logic of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the major loser in all these activities is likely to be the “moderate” leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian-sponsored terrorist strikes against Americans could be seen as a significant alternative to the more cautious approach practiced by Yasser Arafat’s organization, an approach that has not succeeded.11 The Israeli foreign minister has publicly indicated that despite the rhetoric of the Bush administration in insisting that Israel diminish reprisals against the assassination of its minister, the Americans understand what needs to be done. Such statements are likely to be seen on the Islamic side as further evidence of the permanence of the tilt in U.S. foreign policy.12 Either of the two alternatives could occur in response to the use of U.S. force in Afghanistan, or after a substantial period of time has elapsed and domestic security is relaxed in the United States. Each of those options would be consistent with the ebb and flow of terrorist activity (Figure 7.1 shows the typical cycle of frequency increase, decline, and increase within long-term trends toward increase and decrease. Such ebbs and flows are often characterized by both a contagion effect and an exhaustion effect; for example, see Volgy, Imwalle, and Corntassel, 1997.) In either case, the impact would be substantial and the public response sufficiently explosive to require new and major initiatives to deal with the problem. Prior to relaxation of security, the practical impact of another round of attacks—especially on U.S. soil— would greatly increase the feeling of insecurity in the United States, particularly in the face of a government anticipating and guarding against further attacks. After relaxation of security, another round of attacks would drive home the belief that homeland security can never be guaranteed without a broad assault on all forms of international terrorism. Under such circumstances it is highly likely that the direction of policy would shift toward the eradication of most—if not all—terrorist

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organizations, along with a systematic confrontation with all states harboring them, consistent with the initial rhetoric (but not the behavior) of the Bush administration. That task would be quite formidable and would include the creation of additional security architecture. Key to new architectural construction would be the creation of a new global antiterrorism regime (GATR) constructed from existing architecture and supplemented by new forms. First, it would rely on an expansion of existing security infrastructure. Global-level responses to fast-moving targets across national boundaries would require the development of rapid-reaction teams, substantially from the United States but also supplemented by units of military from coalition partners, including perhaps the British, the French, the Russians, and even a patchwork of EU rapid-reaction troops (with U.S. logistical support). Regional zones could be established as well in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the latter in coordination with Japanese and Australian military agencies or through the participation of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Buttressing such increases in military responsiveness would require a global, extensive network of intelligence operations including not only electronic forms but substantial human intelligence capabilities with the latter extensively coordinated by the most successful national intelligence operations. Second, GATR would require substantial agreement among those states in possession of nuclear materials and biological and chemical manufacturing capabilities regarding the stockpiling of such capabilities and the safeguarding of facilities. The regime would establish long-term and substantial sanctions against states that violated those safeguards and allowed access to such materials to actors linked to terrorist organizations. All states in these categories would agree to inspection by UNdesignated inspectors. States unwilling to participate in this program would be suspended from participating in international loan and grant programs, all forms of multilateral assistance, and international trading regimes. Third, existing regional organizations may have to be strengthened or rebuilt to address the issue of extremely weak or failing states that will be unable to respond to penetration by international terrorist organizations. Such vulnerability will be less of a problem in North America and most of Europe but will be a potentially very large problem in subSaharan Africa, parts of the Middle East, the Balkans, parts of Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. Regional organizations could respond quickly when home governments expressed the need for assistance in their struggle against armed transnational groups fitting the

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definition of international terrorist organizations. There are virtually no such regional organizations today outside of Europe that have the ability to react quickly to such circumstances.13 The costs of this scenario are clearly far more extensive than those related to the minimalist one. In order to have some significant chance of success, the midrange scenario requires a dramatic increase in the leadership and activism of the United States, with attendant costs of upgrading and maintaining both military and intelligence capabilities fitted to the tasks described. In addition, the scenario requires coordination with other major powers capable of assisting with intelligence and military operations. Those other states in turn will need to increase their capabilities in both areas. Building architecture to meet the requirements of this scenario is quite costly as well. Establishing a GATR with a large enough basket of incentives for both cooperation and disincentives for withdrawal by critical states may necessitate a larger foreign policy apparatus than is presently in use by the United States. In addition, and far more expensive, would be the incentives created for other states and maintenance of a collective will to enforce rules against defectors. Substantial assistance may be required for monitoring and compliance mechanisms. Substantial additional resources would be needed to assist critical states that are willing but unable to conform to the requirements of the regime if they lack the strength to do so.14 Agreement on such new architecture will require as well a fuller integration of major states into existing architectural arrangements. Such integration may yield a substantial cost in the abandonment or rethinking of major foreign policy directions on the part of the United States. Integration of particularly the Russians and the Chinese will become critical to this process for some obvious reasons. The Russians have substantial assets to contribute in dealing with the expanded terrorist problem. Even more important, they can pose enormous difficulties for constructing an appropriate structural response if they fail to fully cooperate in the new regime. Russian borders are porous; Russian assets (from biological and chemical through nuclear) are vulnerable to theft and sale to private parties.15 Ongoing domestic turmoil involving separatist groups in Russia is likely to continue and perhaps to escalate in the near future, incurring further demands on Russian state strength at a time when the Russian state is not especially strong. Even without the socio-economic-political stresses on the Russian state, cooperation on architectural construction would be difficult under conditions of partial integration. Although the Russians are clearly con-

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cerned with their own indigenous security issues, they remain highly suspicious of U.S. hegemony and especially so in their own backyard. Witness the reservations of influential Russian figures at the same time as the Russian government was pledging cooperation with the United States: According to “Vremya novostei” on 19 October [2001], members of key Russian elites oppose Putin’s backing of the U.S. antiterrorist campaign in Afghanistan. Indeed, the paper quoted Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center as saying, many in Moscow view this split between the president and the elites as being very similar to the Russian political scene during the “late Gorbachev” period. An article in “Kommersant-Daily” on 19 October suggested that the U.S. will not tolerate any interference with its plans and is not even willing to commit “not to using nuclear weapons.” Another article in “Izvestiya” the same day said that the U.S. is using the antiterrorist campaign to promote its own interests and to leave Russia in the position of “a poor relation” rather than “a partner.” “Nezavisimaya gazeta” on 19 October said that Washington has “bought” Uzbekistan with $8 billion and will use that base to oppose Russian interests in Central Asia. At the same time, Viktor Zorkaltsev, the chairman of the Duma social and religious organizations committee, told Interfax on 19 October that the U.S. is engaging in “a witch hunt” in Afghanistan. And Duma deputy (Russian Regions) Viktor Alksnis said the same day that Moscow should provide Cuba with a security guarantee given the new environment and given the Russian government’s decision to close its listening post there, Russian agencies reported.16

Lingering suspicions regarding U.S. intentions may require substantial Russian integration into the co-governance mechanisms of global architectural arrangements. Primary among these would be a heightened role in both the G-7 and NATO. Yet, as we noted earlier, expanding either one of those structures to closer integrate Russia into security structures and crisis mechanism aspects of architectural arrangements carries with it substantial threats that the homogeneity of decisionmaking by status quo–based states will be undermined and the architectural arrangement in the long run will be weakened. One alternative in the security field would be to return to the Reagan administration’s conception of a condominium between the U.S. and Russia on missile defense. This option would provide a sharing of the necessary technology, created by the United States, for Russian missile defense. The condominium would create new architecture in the security field and some sense of partnership between the two

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states pertaining to strategic missile defense. There are, of course, substantial trade-offs and problems with this option as well. Even though the Russians would not have to invest in the research-and-development phase of missile defense, they could not in the foreseeable future generate the capabilities needed to erect an extensive missile defense program (assuming the program will work eventually). In addition, the condominium concept would not be well received by other interested parties, including EU states and the Chinese. Furthermore, it would exacerbate the problem of imbalanced strength, substantially weakening in the security field those actors with strong economic capabilities (e.g., Japan and the major European states). Yet, in the absence of more substantial integration of Russia into global co-governance mechanisms, it is difficult to construct a scenario of sustained Russian cooperation in an emerging GATR. The integration-versus-cooperation issue seems even more complicated in the case of the Chinese state. As we noted earlier, partial integration has meant Chinese inclusion in the WTO, but China has been kept at arm’s length from great-power co-governance mechanisms such as the G-7. At one level, the Chinese “problem” would not be as vexing as the Russian one, since the Chinese seem to have more control over both territory and assets than the Russians, and whereas Russian military capabilities are deteriorating, the Chinese are modernizing theirs. Yet, Chinese foreign policy has included sales of military technology to dissatisfied states, including those that have harbored and assisted international terrorist organizations in the past. Furthermore, Chinese concerns about U.S. hegemony would likely lead to substantial resistance against new architecture and activities involving intrusions into national sovereignty and the establishment of regional structures that could intervene quickly into the domestic affairs of states. At the same time, Chinese concerns about rebellion from Muslim minorities in the Northwest are substantial and could become far more worrisome if the turmoil in Afghanistan spreads further into Central Asia. Integration of China into architectural arrangements may require a commitment to return to the UN Security Council as the primary vehicle that would initiate regional or global responses to terrorism. This is an architectural arrangement that has been favored by the Chinese in the past, and they have received considerable support for this position from Russia as well. However, a commitment to using this type of architecture, and thus giving a veto to either China or Russia on future decisions against terrorism, would seem quite unpalatable to U.S. policymakers.

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Regardless of the difficulties encountered with developing integration mechanisms that would satisfy those with limited access to global crisis-management processes without endangering the viability of the mechanisms themselves, the midrange scenario faces as well the need to substantially increase both relational and structural strength on the part of the United States. Whereas the minimalist scenario requires relatively modest increases in military and economic assistance capabilities, this scenario would require substantial expansion of foreign policy infrastructure, significantly more commitment to special forces, a substantial broadening of intelligence capabilities, and large increases in economic and military assistance to regional organizations where a standing regional response to terrorism would be appropriate and feasible. Support would have to be provided as well for international institutions monitoring nuclear, biological, and chemical stockpiles and industries capable of developing them. Assuming that the cohesion of the G-7 can be maintained, it would be possible to reduce such costs through a collaborative process whereby other G-7 states would complement capabilities with additional intelligence operations and economic assistance programs. As we noted earlier, sufficient domestic strength exists for all of these states to transfer resources for external strength, and it is possible for most major powers to arrest the slide in their structural strength. Therefore, a joint effort on the part of the G-7 countries to engage in the structural enhancement necessary to deal with the second scenario is not incompatible with their potential to increase their structural strength in the face of a global terrorist threat to the status quo. Whether the will to do so exists—particularly the will to accept the costs in domestic political consequences of a shrinking domestic state role in addressing societal programs—is far more difficult to predict outside of the United States. The Worst-Case Scenario: Taking on Global Terrorism and the New Bipolarity The third scenario represents the worst-case analysis. Here, international terrorism is not only unchecked but becomes part of a larger, ideological movement. Again, there are at least two versions possible. One avenue occurs through the rapid spread of fundamentalist militancy across the Arab and Muslim world. A number of stimuli can trigger this path, including reactions to a substantial escalation in the conflict between Palestinian and Israeli forces; and/or the fall of the military

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regime in Pakistan at the hands of a combination of fundamentalists supporting the Taliban and also enemies of the military regime; and/or a sharp escalation of hostilities between Pakistan and India. The replacement of moderates in the PLO with a Hamas-based political organization could function as a similar trigger. For the conflagration to reach its more severe consequence, the “revolution” would have to spread to both Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Once it did so, a very large movement, with state apparatus at its disposal and armed with a strong cultural/ideological message, not only would provide safe haven for terrorist organizations but also would actively challenge the status quo, starting with Israel and challenging as well the reigning global architecture along with its globalization processes and neocolonial consequences. The movement would have access to significant economic resources, military capabilities, and organizational infrastructure. It would also carry with it a great weapon: the substantial dependence of much of the industrialized world on oil from the Middle East. Figure 7.3 illustrates the relative impact of the oil crises in the 1970s on world oil prices (Figure 7.3 shows that in constant dollars, the price of oil in the twentieth century did not exceed $70 after 1984 and hovered near

Figure 7.3

Average Annual Crude Oil Prices in Constant 1998 Dollars, 1900–1999

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U.S. Dollars

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Source: Energy Information Administration (http://www.eia.doe.gov).

1999

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$30). These shocks stand as unique across an entire century, and their consequences were felt for over a decade by much of the industrialized world. Yet, these oil crises were minimal compared to the potential impact posed by this scenario. And unlike the previous period, there would be no elites in power in Saudi Arabia protecting their economic investments in the industrialized world.17 A second version of this scenario expands the conflict substantially further. Dissatisfaction with the status quo states might be successfully redefined not primarily in terms of preserving Islamic culture against the forces of globalization (and against Israel) but instead in terms of the larger realm of an ideological conflict between rich nations and poor nations, already divided by the growing inequalities between them. In this ideological sense, revolutionary Islamic states would then be united with most of the poorer states of Asia and Africa and would perhaps receive at least symbolic support from numerous Latin American states as well.18 Soo Yeon Kim and Bruce Russett (1996) and Erik Voeten (2000) have already demonstrated this type of preference ordering between Western and poorer states in the post–Cold War world of the UN General Assembly. Voeten’s research indicates that an “Arab” dimension to voting during the Cold War has been superseded by a single dimension that seems to closely mirror the economic divide between those Western, democratic states that have benefited most from globalization and all others. 19 President’s Bush’s statement on the nature of the war against terrorism recognized this very same possibility, when he stated, “This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.”20 Dealing with a world divided into “West” and “South” would tax tremendously all present architectural arrangements. A global economic regime based on free trade would have to be substantially altered and reconfigured to reflect a trading regime and a financial system primarily confined to the “West,” further reinforcing existing regional trading relations across Europe, North America, and a redefined version of APEC states, along with NAFTA members and perhaps additional signatories to an expanded NAFTA. Much in limbo would be poorer, oilproducing states: Plans would likely be developed to minimize dependence on them, as the West would seek a rapid development of alternative energy sources (nuclear, solar, etc.), exploration of existing sources in the “Western” tier (including a reinvestment in Russian and Kazak oil fields), and broad energy conservation measures. Globaliza-

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tion would be redefined in terms of regionalization as investment, and trade would be overwhelmingly redirected to safer markets in the “West.” Security infrastructure would have to be likewise altered. NATO would need to be reconfigured not as an Atlantic military alliance but as a collective-security apparatus for Western states, including Israel, Japan, Australia, and cooperating Latin American states. Since the global antiproliferation regime would likely fail, the Bush administration’s conception of national missile defense would have to be broadened as a military shield within this collective-security agreement covering all parties. Rapid-reaction forces would be available as well under the collective-security apparatus to respond quickly to terrorist threats against all members. The integration process would need to be redefined along lines similar to the Cold War. Those sharing the ideological position of the West would be fully integrated into both security structures and economic regimes. Those in opposition to the West would be subject to containment mechanisms similar to the process of relative isolation between West and East during the Cold War. Individually, strategic states in the South would be strongly encouraged and provided economic support to join the Western alliance. China would be stuck in a particularly complex domestic political situation. The domestic quarrels among those previously contesting Chinese entry into the WTO and those seeking to place China more at the center of global trade would reignite the debate along West-versusSouth lines. Likewise, ideologues and pragmatists would be at great odds over China joining a Western camp as a junior partner rather than joining the Southern camp as a leader of the Southern pole. The latter would be consistent with China’s long-standing ideological position during the Cold War as leader of the third world. With or without China, the West would enjoy a very substantial advantage over the South in terms of both military and economic capabilities. Such capabilities may be sufficient to forge both containment and integration strategies, but they would require an extensive reshuffling of priorities from domestic needs to external strength. The United States, along with the G-7 (but now including Russia due to its rapidly increasing oil wealth), could remain as the primary crisis mechanism in the order, responding to both military and economic crises. Together, they would manage coordination between NATO and other regional groupings favorable to the West in the security

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sphere. Likewise, they would intervene when economic crises loomed between regional arrangements. The state strength required to build such new architecture would need to surpass the state strength that was available at the start of the Cold War. This is so because the architecture needed for construction would be required to manage a set of relationships far more complex than the ones confronted in 1950. Containment would be aimed at scores of states in excess of the communist countries that faced off against the West five decades earlier. The technology available to the southern pole would be likewise far more complex today. Severing economic ties to resource-rich states will also require extremely painful adjustments to the industrial economies. Is such strength available? The answer to the question lies in a series of discrete questions about the G-7, starting first and overwhelmingly with the United States. First, we assume that other G-7 states would be willing to increase their external strength proportionally to that of the United States in order to meet the challenges faced by constructing new global architecture. We make this assumption to simplify our task of calculation, although it is not far-fetched that the rest of the G-7 would align with U.S. perceptions of a threat to security. Our second assumption is that the combined capabilities of the G-7 countries today offset the significantly greater complexity of the international political system in the twenty-first century compared to the one existing in 1950. Then, and based on the previous assumptions, we assume that the minimum increase in strength needed by the United States to engage in the architectural construction needed under the worst-case scenario would have to equal its capabilities in the early 1950s. We estimate present U.S. structural strength as roughly 35 percent of the strength it exhibited on average during the 1950s. Can it return to that strength? It is not impossible, but the effort would be Herculean, requiring an expenditure of roughly 9 percent of the country’s GDP on external strength, compared to about 4 percent at the start of the new millennium. All outlays for foreign activities would need to be increased by nearly $500 billion, a sum that is roughly 1.5 times the defense budget in 2000 (Office of Management and Budget, 2001). A change of this magnitude is rare but possible. In the middle of the twentieth century, it required the threat conceptualization of the Cold War, and possibly that degree of threat perception could exist again with all the ideological intensities that were produced during the Cold

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War, especially in its early phases. No such enormous ideological changes have occurred since the Cold War. The largest instances of increased structural change occurred during the Vietnam War: U.S. structural strength increased between 1965 and 1968 by approximately 26 percent. However, rebuilding architectural strength in the midst of the worst-case scenario would require substantially more than during the 1960s. Further, such reprioritization of resources would mean a tremendous slashing of the federal government’s role in domestic social programs and perhaps a huge devolution of public policies back to states and cities. It is difficult to imagine that the U.S. government would try to engage in such restructuring of societal resources without the worstcase scenario, and we find it plausible but unlikely that the worst case will occur. Two main factors mitigate against it. First, we find it plausible but unlikely that fundamentalist militancy would spread across the Arab and Muslim worlds. Senior Arab officials dismissed Osama bin Laden’s appeal to Muslims to join a holy war against the West, saying that bin Laden does not represent Arabs and Muslims. The Arab League secretary general, Amir Moussa, reiterated this sentiment, declaring that bin Laden “does not speak for Arabs and Muslims.”21 These sentiments are not likely to change unless conservative Arab regimes fall or the Americans decide to target other Arab or Muslim countries. 22 Correspondingly, and in the face of worries about an inescapable quagmire, the U.S. administration has focused far more on wooing Arab allies than taking even tentative steps toward other states potentially “harboring” terrorists.23 The second indication that the worst-case scenario has arrived would be if the conflict were redefined as a struggle over inequality between rich and poor nations—a war between the West and South. Although this scenario is, once more, plausible, both the network of complex economic interdependencies and recent history mitigate against it. Recall that a loose alliance between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the third world was attempted in the 1970s. The alliance made demands on the West by calling for a new international economic order (NIEO).24 The call for an NIEO went largely unanswered. One reason for its failure, among many, is that despite statements to the contrary, OPEC members were unwilling to use their power and wealth to back third world states (Gilpin, 1987:300). Many OPEC members invested large sums in the West, where the money remains.

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Conclusion It appears, for now, that the minimalist scenario is most likely to be the response to the threat of international terrorism. Barring a second terrorist attack or the spread of the U.S.-led campaign to other Arab countries, the minimalist approach is likely to continue. Its objectives from the outset have included eliminating bin Laden as a significant international force, toppling the Taliban, gathering intelligence on Al-Qaida and systematically seeking out Al-Qaida cells outside of Afghanistan, and stopping the funding of international terrorism related to the AlQaida organization. The first two of these objectives have been accomplished, and substantial progress has been made regarding the second two. The West can claim victory if it can freeze further financing of terrorism and use intelligence to prevent future attacks from whatever AlQaida cells are still in existence. The accomplishment of the latter objectives will reassure the public that safety is ensured and will offer satisfaction that terrorists are being scouted out. Creeping incrementalism and U.S.-led group hegemony have provided the means to achieve these objectives. Previous architectural constructions created global processes—along with minor enhancements of structural and relational strength—that were used to sustain current security and economic regimes. For instance, NATO immediately declared the attacks on the United States to be an attack on all European allies, invoking Article 5 for the first time in its history. The Bush administration also secured the necessary state strength to buttress the Western security infrastructure in terms of both domestic financing and international commitments. The G-7 partners acted in concert. Britain has played an extremely visible and active role in the antiterrorist campaign. France committed 2,000 members of the French armed forces, a number of ships, and reconnaissance aircraft to the coalition military effort. Germany agreed to mobilize 3,900 troops.25 Even Japan provided backup military support. All of the G-7 members have also actively participated in intelligence gathering, and Russia provided target information on caves and tunnels in Afghanistan.26 Adjustments made to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) show that incrementalism and group hegemony are clearly evident in the economic agenda as it pertains to the antiterrorist campaign. The G-7 founded this task force in 1990 to combat laundering of drug profits. It was expanded in the wake of the September attacks to include terrorist financing. This multilateral agency eased the burden on the United

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States to single-handedly oversee intelligence on money flows and bank accounts related to suspected terrorists. All G-7 members provided aid in suppressing terrorist funds and in persuading other countries to do likewise. The new plan included cutting off the flow of funds to terrorists and setting up a G-7 research center to investigate the sources of terrorist funding. The G-7’s role in combating the global economic slowdown is less clear-cut. There is no concerted plan partly because the European members do not think a world recession is imminent.27 Each country will take different actions depending on domestic conditions. As the French finance minister Laurent Fabius said, “The actions can be different, but the general idea—to overcome these difficulties—is the same.”28 Two days after the September 11 attacks, however, the G-7 did pledge to coordinate central-bank action to prevent further economic disruption. All of the central banks of the G-7 cut interest rates following September 11. Although the rate cuts were viewed largely as symbolic, Peter Dixon, an economist with Commerzbank Securities, argued that they would provide a cushion. 29 The global slowdown has not reached crisis proportions yet. If it does, we would expect the G-7 to respond. For now, the IMF and World Bank will continue to be the main sources of help for struggling economies. We believe that more than incremental adjustments would be needed, however, if the United States were attacked again or the antiterrorist campaign were expanded to other Arab countries. This new reality would signal a midrange scenario, and a new era in global architectural construction would begin. Until then, the international system will continue to be held together by an architecture that was constructed for another system and has been found to be minimally useful for the present.

Notes 1. For fundraising activities by other than national governments, see “The Spider in the Web,” Economist, September 22, 2001:17–19; “Trade in Honey Is Said to Provide Money and Cover for Bin Laden,” New York Times, October 11, 2001:A1, B9; Reuters, “G7 Joins US Freezing Assets of New Names,” October 12, 2001; Joseph Kayn and Judith Miller, “US Targets Assets of Groups Linked to Saudis, Pakistanis,” New York Times (web edition), October 13, 2001. Regarding funding from criminal activities, see, for example, Chris Hedges, “A European Dragnet Captures New Clues to bin Laden’s Network,” New York Times (web edition), October 12, 2001. 2. Prior to September 11, 2001, there were eight major incidents when the

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United States was a main political target, but seven of those incidents occurred outside of the United States (see “Who Did It?” Economist, September 15, 2001:18). 3. The destruction of the Air India flight over the Irish Sea resulted in the deaths of 329 people in 1985 (“Who Did It?” Economist, September 15, 2001:18). 4. One U.S. immigration official indicated that over a twelve-month period roughly 450 million people (nearly twice the size of the U.S. population) passed in and out of the United States (“America at War,” MSNBC, October 11, 2001). 5. President George W. Bush’s press conference, October 11, 2001. 6. Even prior to the events of 2001, Voeten (2000) noted the consistent West/anti-West division in the post–Cold War system. Immediately after the terrorist attacks in the United States, even Mexican elites, historically unhappy with their dominant neighbor but now deeply entrenched in and benefiting from their NAFTA relationship with the United States, nevertheless reacted warily and critically to U.S. initiatives toward Afghanistan, and toward their own president’s support of U.S. attacks (“Fair-weather Friends?” Economist, September 22, 2001:35). 7. Even muted criticism toward these groups led the Syrians to deliver a strong protest, arguing that “there should be a distinction between terrorism and the people’s right to resist foreign occupation in accordance with international law and the United Nations charter” (Reuters, “Syria Summons U.S. Envoy, Protest Against Threat,” New York Times [web edition], October 12, 2001). Five days later, activists from the ranks of the PFLP assassinated Rehavam Zeevi, a far-right leader and a minister in Israel’s coalition government. 8. The difficulties for the U.S. administration in building coalitions for fighting terrorism without committing to new architectural arrangements were best underlined by its dancing around the issue of developing a more stringent global regime to address the problem of biochemical weapons proliferation. It opposed France’s leadership in the UN to strengthen such a regime, and then it was reduced to arguing for a voluntary process of inspections for nations capable of producing such weapons. See Elaine Sciolino, “Bush Team Rejects U.N. Plan to Condemn Anthrax Attacks,” New York Times (web edition), November 1, 2001; and Judith Miller, “US Seeks Changes in Germ War Pact,” New York Times (web edition), October 31, 2001. 9. It is impossible to dismiss the increased long-term presence of U.S. forces in Central Asia. For example, Pakistan has agreed to the U.S. request that the role of U.S. troops be lengthened “indefinitely” at the Jacobabad air base in Pakistan, including the development of additional infrastructure at the base in order to accommodate U.S. forces (e.g., see Martin Walker, “Central Asia—Is the U.S. Settling In?” UPI Wire Services, December 23, 2001). Few would fail to notice that a decade after the Gulf War, U.S. troops are still stationed in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. 10. Associated Press, “U.S. Pressures Israel on Forces,” New York Times (web edition), October 23, 2001. 11. Alternatively, such strikes coming from Palestinian sources would have as well the objective of undermining more moderate Palestinian leadership and legitimacy. 12. Associated Press, “U.S. Pressures Israel on Forces,” New York Times (web edition), October 23, 2001. 13. Of course, complicating this process will be the problem of designating organizations as terrorist groups versus “wars of national liberation.” 14. Some of this assistance has already started. For example, in geographical

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proximity to the conflict with bin Laden and the Taliban, the U.S. government acted quickly to help eliminate biological warfare assets in neighboring Uzbekistan (“U.S. to Assist Uzbekistan in Destroying Biological Weapons,” RFE/RL Newsline 5, no. 202, part 1, October 24, 2001). 15. The issue of missing suitcase bombs from the old Soviet arsenal has surfaced periodically, including most recently. See “Soviet-Era ‘Suitcase Bombs’ May Be in Terrorist Hands,” RFE/RL Newsline 5, no. 203, part 1, October 25, 2001. 16. RFE/RL Newsline. 5, no. 200, part 1, October 22, 2001. An even more chilling response to U.S. initiatives came two days later: “Leonid Shebarshin, the former head of Soviet foreign intelligence, said in an interview published in Pravda on 23 October that he does not exclude the possibility that ‘ultra-right extremists’ in the U.S. may have been behind the terrorist attacks of 11 September. He noted that certain investors appear to have made enormous profits by their stock manipulations immediately preceding the terrorist attacks, a possible indication that ‘someone knew about the operation in advance.’ Shebarshin added that up to now no convincing evidence has been made public that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the attacks. He insisted that Russia must not under any circumstances allow itself to be drawn into participating in any U.S.-led counter terrorist operations” (RFE/RL Newsline 5, no. 202, part 1, October 24, 2001). 17. Saudi Arabia alone holds roughly one-quarter of all proven global oil reserves; presently it exports 40 percent of OPEC oil. As non-OPEC sources diminish, it could substantially increase its share, since the Saudis choose not to produce as much oil as they can. As mentioned, Figure 7.3 shows that in constant dollars, the price of oil in the twentieth century has not exceeded $70 since 1984 and has hovered near $30. Osama bin Laden suggested an “appropriate price” of $144 per barrel of oil for the West. See “A Dangerous Addiction,” Economist, December 15, 2001:15–16. 18. There has been a rapid spread of Islam through sub-Saharan Africa. The following excerpts from a New York Times article indicate the extent to which Islamic fundamentalism and growing poverty are likely to intersect, especially in places such as Nigeria: “A generation of radical Islamic preachers . . . have been spreading anti-Western messages here and pressing the government to impose Shariah. In Fagge, one of the biggest Muslim neighborhoods in Kano, a place where children and goats share dirt roads and open sewers, Osama bin Laden posters are plastered on many walls and stickers on many vehicles.” “‘The Muslims are winning—they have won,’ said the Rev. Benjamin Kwashi, 46, the Anglican bishop of Jos, a city in central Nigeria where at least 500 people were killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians in September. ‘Islam is growing very fast. For many Africans, it makes more sense to reject America and Europe’s secular values, a culture of selfishness and half-naked women, by embracing Islam.’” See Norimitsu Onishi, “Rising Muslim Power in Africa Causes Unrest in Nigeria and Elsewhere,” New York Times (web edition), November 1, 2001. 19. The growing North-South divide is demonstrated as well in attempts to continue expansion of the WTO’s authority. Behind the facade of eventual unanimity in the Qatar round, for example, Brazil and India were leading the confrontation with the North over objections to medical patents while southern states were seeking greater trade opportunities with the North (Joseph Kahn, “The Rich-Poor Division Is in Stark Relief in Talks for Trade Agenda,” New York Times (web edition), November 1, 2001. 20. George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” September 20, 2001.

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21. Associated Press, “A Nation Challenged: Mideast Meeting,” New York Times, November 5, 2001:B5. 22. The Arab world would be alarmed and dismayed, according to Khaled alMaina, the editor of Saudi Arabia’s Arab News, if the United States targeted other Arab countries such as Sudan or Iraq (David B. Ottaway and Thomas E. Ricks, “Somalia Draws Anti-Terrorist Focus,” Washington Post, November 4, 2001:A1). 23. Regarding worries about a quagmire, see, for example, Romesh Ratnesar, “Bombs Away,” Time, November 12, 2001:49. Regarding wooing Arab allies, see Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Tries to Sway Worldwide Opinion in Favor of War,” New York Times, November 6, 2001:B3. This is clearly a balancing act that is increasingly difficult to maintain as the Palestinian peace process continues to spiral out of control. Similar problems would arise if those in the Bush administration who continue to focus on Saddam Hussein and the need to change Iraq’s leadership gain greater influence in the foreign policy making process. Regarding other states harboring terrorists, see David B. Ottaway and Thomas E. Ricks, “Somalia Draws Anti-Terrorist Focus,” Washington Post, November 4, 2001:A1. 24. The NIEO basically constituted a call for substantial redistribution of resources and political-economic power from the West to the third world (Blake and Walters, 1983:195). 25. Roland Watson and Michael Evans, “America Turns Up the Heat,” Times (London), November 7, 2001:Overseas News section. 26. Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. Escalating Efforts to Bomb Taliban Caves,” New York Times, November 6, 2001:A1. 27. Lee Siew Hua, “World Economy Will Rebound: G-7,” Straits Times (Singapore), October 8, 2001:4. 28. Paul Blustein, “G-7 Leaders Vow to Aid Global Economy,” Washington Post, October 7, 2001:A18. 29. Suzanne Kapner, “Britain Joins Group of 7 in Rate Cuts,” New York Times (web edition), September 19, 2001:Business section.

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Index

Afghanistan: alliance to combat terrorism, 132; response to U.S. force, 136; Russian response to U.S. efforts, 139; U.S. policy on international terrorism, 147 Africa: spread of Islamic fundamentalism, 150(n18) Air India flight, 149(n3) Albania, 109–110 Alksnis, Viktor, 139 Al-Qaida, 125, 130, 131–135, 147 Amnesty International, 9 Anarchy, 7, 15, 36 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, 110, 112 APEC. See Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Council Arab governments: resistance to bin Laden’s fundamentalism, 146; response to Palestinian-linked terrorists, 135–136 Argentina’s bailout, 122(n5) ASEAN states, 137 Asian Development Bank (ADB), 94, 113 Asian economic crisis, 94 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (APEC), 89–90, 132 Assistance programs, 68 Austria: post–Napoleonic order, 23–26 Balance-of-power system: relational strength and, 40; security regime, 27

Baltic states, 117 Bin Laden, Osama, 146, 150(n17) Biochemical weapons proliferation, 149(n8) Bipolarity, 83–84; Cold War order’s transcendance of, 102–107; demise of, 1–2; GEC Regression of Wars, Crises, and Events During the Cold War, 105(table); new Islamic/SinicWestern, 4; relational strength as measure of, 74–76; role in new world order, 86; stability of global order based on, 18, 20; U.S.-Soviet balance of power, 31–32, 34(n5) Brazil, 55(n11) Bretton Woods institutions, 22, 30, 91, 106. See also International Monetary Fund; World Bank Britain: combating international terrorism, 147; Comparison of British and U.S. Military Share of Relational Strength, 109(fig.); Comparison of British and U.S. Relational Economic Strength, 108(fig.); measuring state strength in terms of domestic, relational, and structural dimensions, 43–53; post–Napoleonic order, 23–26; post–World War I order, 27–28; relational strength, 107–108; Relational Strength Measures For Britain and the United States, 108(fig.). See also United Kingdom

161

162

Index

Budgetary transparency, 55(n13) Building blocks, of global order, 19(table) Bulgaria, 117 Bush, George W., 125, 143 Bush administration, 110–112, 122(n5), 147 Campaign contributions, 112 Central Asia, 149(n9) CFSP. See Common Foreign and Security Policy China, People’s Republic of: Asian Development Bank, 113; Estimates of Chinese Defense Spending Minus Chinese Autonomy Values, and Deflated by System Size, in Constant Units, 1961–1995, 70(fig.); Estimates of Chinese GDP in Yuan, and Deflated by Annual Inflation Estimates, 1960–1997, 64(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); impact on U.S. economic policy, 55(n14); integration into global antiterrorism regime, 140; measuring state strength in terms of domestic, relational, and structural dimensions, 43–53, 55(n12); partial integration into WTO, 118; post–Cold War estimates of structural strength, 69–71; post–Cold War increase in domestic strength, 63–65; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); relational strength, 75; response to U.S. hegemony, 3; role in combating international terrorism, 133; U.S.Sino bipolarity scenario, 83–84; West-South divisions of global terrorism regime, 144; World Bank Estimates of Chinese General Government Expenditures in Constant 1995 U.S. Dollars, 1960–1997, 64(fig.) Coalitions: anti-terrorism activities, 149(n8); development of new polarities, 4 Coercion, for integration, 22

Cohen, William, 3, 98(n2) Cold War: code of conduct between rival blocs, 20; Cold War and post–Cold War domestic strength of major powers, 57–65; crisis management between the two powers, 23; demarcation of new world order, 126; GEC Regression of Wars, Crises, and Events During the Cold War, 105(table); as peacekeeping force, 29–30; unpredicted end of, 1–2, 13(n1), 14(n2); U.S. relational and structural strength, 49. See also Post–Cold War order Collective-security regime, 27 COMECON. See Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 109 Concert of Europe, 25, 26, 32, 34(n9), 101 Condominium concept, 139–140 Congress of Vienna, 22, 25, 26, 34(n9) Constancy assumption, 35–36 Constitutional world order, 4 Constructivism, 10–11 Cooperative relations: balancing state strength with multilateral cooperation, 101–102; role in new world order architecture, 82 Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation (COMECON), 22, 30–31, 34(n5) Creeping incrementalism: as architectural strategy, 86–90, 97–98; balancing state strength and multilateral cooperation, 101–102; incompatibility with new world order, 119–122; partial integration and, 116 Crises: Asian economic crises, 94; Event Count Regressions of War and Crises and Structural Strength and Relational Strength, 50(table); GEC Regression of Wars, Crises, and Events During the Cold War, 105(table); interstate crises, 80, 104; measuring relational and structural strength, 49–51 Crisis management: as building block of world order, 16–17; essential role in world order, 23; post–Napoleonic

Index

order, 26; as sign of system stability, 104 Cuba, 139 Delors, Jacques, 113–114 Democratic community: as future world order, 4–5 Democratization: impact on domestic strength, 57–58 Dissatisfaction, with the order, 17 Dixon, Peter, 148 Domestic politics: affecting Bush’s foreign policy, 112; declining state strength as a result of, 38–39; domestic strength and external strength, 114–116; domestic strength and political strength, 42 Domestic resources, 45–46, 73(fig.) Domestic security: post–Napoleonic order, 24–25; Russia’s domestic obstacles to combating international terrorism, 138–140; terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, 129–130 Domestic strength, 42–43; assessing state strength in terms of, 43–53; Data Sources for State Strength Variables, 52–53; Estimates of Real USSR/Russian GDP in Constant 1988 Dollars, 1963–1998, 58(fig.); Estimates of USSR/Russia “State” Expenditures as a Percentage of Gross Social Product (until 1985) and GDP (from 1991), 1965–1997, 59(fig.); versus external strength, 107–116; index of, 57–65; of major powers, 57–65; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); relationship with structural strength, 73–74; role in new world order construction, 81; time, structural strength, and, 74–75, 75(fig.) Domestic structure, 8 Drug trafficking, financing international terrorism, 128, 147–148 Economic capability: balancing state strength and multilateral cooperation, 101–102; Comparison of British and U.S. Relational

163

Economic Strength, 108(fig.); current status of state strength, 39–40; defining bipolarity, 35; domestic strength and, 42; imbalancedstrength problem, 107–109; increasing global inequality gap, 119–121; institutionalized group hegemony, 94; measuring relational strength, 43–44; post–Cold War decline in Soviet domestic strength, 58–60; Top 10 Percent of World’s Richest Countries’ Share of Global GNP, 1965–1999, 120(fig.); of the United States, 39, 54(n6); West-South divisions of global terrorism regime, 144 Economic growth: maintaining structural strength, 68 Economic infrastructure: Britain’s post–Napoleonic capabilities, 24–25; as building block of world order, 16; as cooperative arrangement among powers, 21–22; post–World War I order, 27–28; post–World War II order, 30–31 Economic issues: costs of midrange antiterrorist policy, 138; as dimension of world order, 11; funding international terrorism, 128; global response to terrorist attacks against the United States, 148; political costs of combating international terrorism, 133–134 Economic regime: post–Cold War continuation of multilateral management, 89–90; West-South divisions of global terrorism, 143–144 Egypt, 142 Energy sources, under worst-case scenario of global terrorism, 142–144 Environmental issues: destruction of Kyoto protocols, 111; growing inequality gap, 121 Estonia, 117 European Coal and Steel Community, 2 European Monetary Union (EMU), 113 European Union (EU): comparing state and economic strength to U.S. capabilities, 109–110; response to U.S. unilateralism, 113; U.S.-European bipolarity scenario, 84–85; U.S.

164

Index

Share of World and Major EU Nations’ Military Expenditures (1995, 2000), 85(fig.) Expansion, NATO, 89 External capabilities, 44; bolstering domestic strength, 54(n9); impact on structural and domestic strength, 73–74; institutionalized group hegemony, 92; Japan’s military spending, 68; measuring structural strength, 44; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.) Fatalities: Islamic fundamentalism in Africa, 150(n18); terrorism, 129, 149(n3) Financial Action Task Force (FATF), 147 Financial institutions: Asian Development Bank (ADB), 94, 113; East Asia’s growing dissatisfaction with, 122(n6); G-7 response to the Asian economic crisis, 94 Foreign policy activity, of individual states, 104; French foreign policy and structural strength, 68–69; impact on system stability, 104 France: combating international terrorism, 147; Domestic Strength Index, 1960–1996, 61(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); measuring state strength in terms of domestic, relational, and structural dimensions, 43–53; post–Cold War increase in domestic strength, 61; post–Cold War structural strength, 68–69; post–Napoleonic order, 26; post–World War I order, 27; post–World War II order, 29; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); relational strength, 75; response to U.S. hegemony, 3; U.S. Share of World and Major EU Nations’ Military Expenditures (1995, 2000), 85(fig.)

G-7 countries: addressing incrementalism, 121–122; Comparisons of G-7, U.S., and G-6 Shares, of GNP of World GNP, 1965–1997, 93(fig.); concerted efforts to combat international terrorism, 147–148; G-7, U.S., and G-6 Share of Global GNP, 1965–1997, 93(fig.); imbalancedstrength problem, 107; institutionalized group hegemony, 90–97; response to U.S. unilateralism, 113; Russian participation in, 117–118; system status–state strength correlation, 95–97 Gas pipeline, 90 GATR. See Global antiterrorism regime General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO): China’s partial integration into, 118; contributing to the North-South divide, 150(n19); as example of building block to world order, 16–17; major power support of, 89; multilateral character of Cold War order, 106; rules and norms, 22, 31 Germany: combating international terrorism, 147; Domestic Strength Index, 1960–1996, 61(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); measuring state strength in terms of domestic, relational, and structural dimensions, 43–53; post–Cold War decline in structural strength, 67–68; post–Cold War increase in domestic strength, 60–61; post–unification integration, 90; post–World War I order, 27, 28; post–World War II order, 29; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); relational strength, 73–74; Structural Strength Index, 1960–1996, 67(fig.); undermining post–Napoleonic order, 26; U.S. Share of World and Major EU Nations’ Military Expenditures (1995, 2000), 85(fig.) Gini coefficient, 120

Index

Global antiterrorism regime (GATR), 137–140 Global architecture: balancing state strength and multilateral cooperation, 101–102; Basic Building Blocks, Manifestations, and Mechanisms of Three World Orders, 19(table); competence, 37; creeping incrementalism versus new architecture, 86–90; foundation and structure of, 15–18. See also Crisis management; Economic infrastructure; Integration process; Security regime; State strength Globalization: impact on sovereignty, 38; as impetus for new world order, 4; increasing domestic political pressures, 114–115; increasing global inequality, 119–121; under international terrorism regime, 144; measuring structural strength in light of, 44 Global reach measures, 43 Global structural arrangements, 7–8 Greenpeace, 9 Gross Social Product (USSR/Russia), 59(fig.) Group hegemony, 79; balancing state strength and multilateral cooperation, 101–107; imbalanced-strength problem, 107; institutionalized group hegemony, 90–97; partial integration and, 116 Haifa bombings, 136 Hamas, 134, 135 Hegemonic stability theory, 103 Hegemony: bolstering domestic strength through external resources, 54(n9); Britain’s post–Napoleonic, 24; distribution of power influencing global order, 18, 20; role in new world order, 86; structural strength and, 41; U.S. hegemony, 2–5, 30–32; U.S.-led group hegemony combating international terrorism, 147; U.S. move toward hegemony without supporting structure, 110–113; viability in new world order, 82–83. See also Group hegemony; Unipolarity

165

Herz, John, 39 Human rights policy, 55(n14) Human rights regimes, 115 Ideology: as dimension of world order, 12; global terrorism as, 141–146 IGOs. See Intergovernmental organizations Imbalanced-strength problem, 107–116; Aggregate Relational Strength Measures For Britain and the United States, 108(fig.); Comparison of British and U.S. Military Share of Relational Strength, 109(fig.); Comparison of British and U.S. Relational Economic Strength, 108(fig.) Incentives, to combat terrorism, 138 Incrementalism, 147–148. See also Creeping incrementalism India, 55(n11), 80, 134 Indonesia, 55(n11), 94 Inequality gap, 119–121, 120(fig.), 123(n14) Inflation control, 94 Information economies, 119 Institutionalized group hegemony. See Group hegemony Institutional mechanisms, for global architecture, 17, 133 Integration process: as building block of world order, 16; China’s integration into WTO, 99(n13); Germany and the post–World War I order, 28; integration of the vanquished, 34(n11); mechanisms for integration, 22; partial integration, 102, 116–119; post–Cold War integration/containment efforts, 90; post–Napoleonic success, 26; post–World War II Soviet Union, 31; Russia’s partial integration into SHAPE, 122(n9); of states into antiterrorist regime, 138; West-South divisions of global terrorism regime, 144 Interdependence, contributing to decline in state strength, 38–39 Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), 10 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 30, 31, 94, 113

166

Index

International relations: role in new world order construction, 81 International system: characteristics that threaten architectural stability, 101–102; measuring state strength in terms of, 44–45; system status–state strength correlation, 95–97 International terrorism. See Terrorism Interstate crises, 80, 104 Interwar period: absence of U.S. global leadership, 7–8 Iran, 119 Iraq, 119 Islamic cultures, 4; appeal of terrorists to, 130; global terrorism as ideology, 141–146; spreading through subSaharan Africa, 150(n18) Isolationism, as U.S. stance in post–World War I order, 28 Israel, 133, 134. See also PalestinianIsraeli conflict Italy: post–World War I order, 28 Japan: Asian Development Bank, 113; combating international terrorism, 147; continuity of Western security infrastructure, 89; Domestic Strength Index, 1960–1966 and 1971–1996, 60(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); measuring state strength in terms of domestic, relational, and structural dimensions, 43–53; post–Cold War increase in domestic strength, 60; post–Cold War increase in structural strength, 68; post–World War II order, 29; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); relational strength, 73, 75; Structural Strength Index, 1960–1997, 69(fig.) Jerusalem bombings, 136 Kashmir, 134 Korzeniewicz and Moran study, 120, 123(n14) Kyoto protocols, 110, 111 Latvia, 117 Leadership: equating with state

strength, 36; GEC Regression of Wars, Crises, and Events During the Cold War, 105(table); global architecture in bipolar regime, 103–104; political strength of, 46; relational strength as a measure of, 40–41; structural strength as a measure of, 41–42; U.S. weakening of state strength, 37–38 League Covenant, 27 League of Nations, 22, 23, 27 Libya, 119 Lithuania, 117 Long-cycle theory: Cold War architecture, 103; importance of state strength in global architectural construction, 35; relational strength and, 41 Macedonia, 109–110 Marshall Plan, 31, 106 Mechanistic process, 36 Mexico: response to Afghanistan invasion, 149(n6) Middle East states, combating international terrorism, 133 Midrange scenario, of anti-terrorist policy, 135–141 Military capability: balancing state strength and multilateral cooperation, 101–102; Comparison of British and U.S. Military Share of Relational Strength, 109(fig.); defining bipolarity, 35; GEC Regression of Wars, Crises, and Events During the Cold War, 105(table); global antiterrorism regime, 137; Japan’s increased military spending, 68; measuring relational strength, 43–44; national missile defense issue, 111–112; U.S.-China bipolarity, 84; West-South divisions of global terrorism regime, 144. See also Structural strength index Military distribution, 11; collective military action under UN charter, 29; post–Napoleonic Britain, 24 Military-political relationships, 11 Military spending: Estimates of Soviet/Russian Military Spending, 71–72, 71(fig.); Estimates of USSR/Russian Military Spending as

Index

a Function of GDP, 1960–1997, 72(fig.) Minimalist scenario, of response to terrorism, 131–135, 147 Missile defense, 110, 111–112, 139–140 Moussa, Amir, 135, 146 Multilateral institutionalism, 9; balancing state strength with multilateral cooperation, 101–102; combating international terrorism, 132; declining state strength as a result of, 38–39; versus institutionalized group hegemony, 90–94; neorealistic view of, 14(n13); post–Cold War growth in, 9–10; post–World War I order, 27; post–World War II order, 29–32 Multipolarity, 3–4; relational strength as measure of, 74–76; role in new world order, 86; stability of global order based on, 18, 20; viability in new world order, 83 NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Association Napoleonic era, 21. See also Post–Napoleonic order Narcotics trafficking, financing international terrorism, 128, 147–148 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Naval capabilities, 24; post–Napoleonic Britain, 26; post–World War II order, 29; U.S. post–World War I capabilities, 27 Nazi propaganda, 28 Neoliberal institutionalism, 6 Neorealism: importance of state strength in global architectural construction, 35; mechanistic process, 36; multilateral institutions, 14(n13); role of structural arrangements in international politics, 7–8; unidimensional assumption of state strength, 37. See also Structural neorealism New international economic order, 146 New world order: controversy over nature of, 2–5; foundation and structure of, 16; role of conflict in, 79–80; threats to, 101–122. See also Creeping incrementalism; Group hegemony

167

NGOs. See Nongovernmental organizations Nigeria: spread of Islamic fundamentalism, 150(n18) Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 9 Nonstate actors: post–Cold War growth in numbers, 9; role in international terrorism, 127–128 Norms. See Rules and norms North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), 89, 143 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 2, 22; Cold War stability and peace, 29–30; combating international terrorism, 132; multilateral character of Cold War order, 106; partial integration at SHAPE, 117; post–Cold War continuation of, 88–90; post–World War II order, 31; response to terrorist attacks on the United States, 147; Russia’s partial integration, 122(n9); U.S.-European bipolarity scenario, 85 North Korea, 119 North-South divide, 119–122, 150(n19) Nuclear capabilities, 128–129, 137 OECD. See Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Oil prices, 142–143, 142(fig.) Oil resources, 150(n17) Old order, peaceful demise of, 1–7 OPEC. See Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Order, characteristics and identification of, 15–18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 114 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 146, 150(n17) Organized crime, 9 Overreach in spending, 45–46, 52–53 Pakistan: continuing conflict with India, 80; international terrorism and, 134; potential for escalating global terrorism, 141–142; U.S. presence in Central Asia, 149(n9) Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 134 Palestinian-Israeli conflict: continuation

168

Index

of, 80; international terrorism and, 134, 135–136, 141–142; terrorism versus national liberation, 149(n7) Partial integration, 116–119 Pentagon attack, 129 People’s Republic of China. See China, People’s Republic of PFLP. See Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Physicians Without Borders, 9 Political strength, 46, 52–53 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), 134, 135, 149(n7) Population growth, 46 Post–Cold War order: Cold War order providing foundations for new international order, 101–102; lack of planning and preparation for, 80; need for post–Cold War architecture to transcend Cold War order, 102–107 Post–Napoleonic order, 22, 23–26 Post–World War I order, 20, 27–28 Post–World War II order, 29–32; demarcation line with new world order, 126; integration process, 22; relational strength of major powers, 74–76; strong foundation of, 20; U.S.-Soviet balance of power, 34(n5) Poverty: increasing global inequality under globalization, 119–121 Powell, Colin, 136 Power, distribution of: as key to new world order, 5–6; importance in achieving stability, 18, 20–21; multipolar global architecture, 33(n4); post–World War I order, 27–28; relational strength and balance versus preponderance of power, 40–41 Power structure, 19(table). See also Bipolarity; Hegemony; Multipolarity; Unipolarity Power transition theory, 41, 54(n2) PRC. See China, People’s Republic of Prussia: Post–Napoleonic order, 23–26 Quadruple Alliance (1915), 26 Reagan administration, 116 Realism: importance of state strength in

global architectural construction, 35; role of structural arrangements in international politics, 7; unidimensional assumption of state strength, 37; views of new world order, 81–82 Regime set: as dimension of world order, 11 Relational strength, 40–41; assessing state strength in terms of, 43–53; Comparison of British and U.S. Military Share of Relational Strength, 109(fig.); Comparison of British and U.S. Relational Economic Strength, 108(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); Event Count Regressions of War and Crises and Structural Strength and Relational Strength, 50(table); global architectural construction without sufficient structural strength, 54(n3); of the major powers, 74–76; multipolarity and, 83; Regression of Status on Relational and Structural Strength, 50(table); role in institutionalized group hegemony, 97–98; role in new world order construction, 81; versus structural strength, 122(n3); U.S.-EU comparison, 85; U.S. hegemony without underlying structures, 107–116 Relative international autonomy (RIA) measurement, 44 Resource distributions, 11 RIA. See Relative international autonomy (RIA) measurement Rogue states, 119 Romania, 117 Rules and norms, 17, 41, 101–102 Rusk, Dean, 106 Russia: combating international terrorism, 147; domestic obstacles to combating international terrorism, 138–140; Estimates of Real USSR/Russian GDP in Constant 1988 Dollars, 1963–1998, 58(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); estimates of Soviet/Russian military spending, 71(fig.);

Index

Estimates of USSR/Russian Military Spending as a Function of GDP, 1960–1997, 72(fig.); Estimates of USSR/Russia “State” Expenditures as a Percentage of Gross Social Product (until 1985) and GDP (from 1991), 59(fig.); measuring state strength in terms of domestic, relational, and structural dimensions, 43–53, 55(n12); partial integration into SHAPE, 117, 122(n9); post–Cold War changes in structural strength, 71–72; post–Cold War decline in domestic strength, 58–60; post-dissolution integration, 90; post–Napoleonic order, 23–26; post–World War I order, 28; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); response to U.S. hegemony, 3–4; role in combating international terrorism, 133 Saudi Arabia, 142–143, 150(n17) Scholarship: differing views from various fields, 7–11 Scope of the problem: international terrorism, 127–130 Sea power, 36 Security infrastructure: post–Cold War continuation of Western infrastructure, 88–90; West-South divisions of global terrorism regime, 144 Security issues, 11, 129–130. See also Domestic security; Terrorism Security regime: as building block of world order, 16; as cooperative arrangement between powers, 21; post–Napoleonic order, 24–25; post–World War I order, 27–28 September 11, 129 SHAPE. See Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers of Europe Shebarshin, Leonid, 150(n16) Slovenia, 117 Societal pressures, 46 Solana, Javier, 109 South Korea, 94 Soviet Union: building new order on the remains of the Cold War order,

169

102–107; COMECON, 30–31; as eastern hegemon, 20; Estimates of Real USSR/Russian GDP in Constant 1988 Dollars, 1963–1998, 58(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); estimates of Soviet/Russian military spending, 71(fig.); Estimates of USSR/Russian Military Spending as a Function of GDP, 1960–1997, 72(fig.); Estimates of USSR/Russia “State” Expenditures as a Percentage of Gross Social Product (until 1985) and GDP (from 1991), 59(fig.); post–Cold War changes in structural strength, 71–72; post–Cold War decline in domestic strength, 58–60; post–World War II order, 29; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); relational strength, 75 Spearman’s rho correlation, 95, 96, 99(n14) State sponsored terrorism, 127–128, 132 State strength: balancing with multilateral cooperation, 101–102; as building block of world order, 16, 18; Cold War code of conduct, 20; concept and measurement of, 35–53; current status of, 38–40; Data Sources for State Strength Variables, 52–53; given a bipolar terrorism structure, 145; imbalanced-strength problem, 107–116; multidimensional character of, 40–42; neorealistic approach to, 5; post–Cold War order in terms of Cold War, 102–107; U.S. policymakers’ minimalist response to terrorism, 131–135; variations over time and systemic conditions, 35–36; waxing and waning among major powers, 35–36, 53(n1). See also Domestic strength; Relational strength; Structural strength Stockpile stewardship, 137 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 112 Strategy, U.S., 106

170

Index

Structural neorealism, 41, 54(n2). See also Neorealism Structural strength, 41–42; assessing state strength in terms of, 43–53; creeping incrementalism versus new architecture, 87; disparity with relational strength, 110; Event Count Regressions of War and Crises and Structural Strength and Relational Strength, 50(table); evolution of new world order, 80–81; France, 1964–1997, 70(fig.); global architectural construction without sufficient structural strength, 54(n3); of the major powers, 65–74; multipolarity and, 83; as obstacle to U.S. hegemony, 82–83; Regression of Status on Relational and Structural Strength, 50(table); Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); versus relational strength, 122(n3); role in institutionalized group hegemony, 97–98; role in new world order construction, 81; status inconsistency and, 56(n20); time, domestic strength and, 74–75, 75(fig.); U.S.EU comparison, 85; U.S. hegemony and, 82–83; various definitions of, 54(n7) Structural strength index, 65–74, 84; estimates of Chinese structural strength, 70(fig.); estimates of Soviet/Russian military spending, 71(fig.); Estimates of USSR/Russian Military Spending as a Function of GDP, 1960–1997, 72(fig.); France, 70(fig.); Germany, 67(fig.); Japan, 69(fig.); United Kingdom, 66(fig.); United States, 66(fig.) Suitcase bombs, 150(n15) Summers, Lawrence, 3 Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers of Europe (SHAPE), 117 Syria, 119, 149(n7) Systemic order, 15–16, 33(n1) Systemic status, 95–97 System size, 45 Taliban, 132 Tax extraction, 55(n16)

Technology: Chinese sale of military technology to “dissatisfied” states, 140; globalization increasing global inequality, 119; use in international terrorism, 128–129 Territoriality, 39 Terrorism, 83, 125, 129–130; Air India, 149(n3); Average Annual Frequency of International Terrorism by Decades, 1970–2000, 128(fig.); Frequency of International Terrorist Incidents, 1968–2000, 127(fig.); international response to U.S. unilateralism, 111–112; Projected Relationships Between State Strength, Types of Challenges, and Architectural Options, 131(table); prompting alteration to global architecture, 126–127; scope of the problem, 127–130; shifting domestic resources to external threats, 115–116; the United States as target prior to September 11, 148(n2); U.S. policymakers’ midrange response to, 135–141; U.S. policymakers’ minimalist response to, 131–135; U.S. policymakers’ worst-case response to, 141–146 Terrorist organizations, 130 Thailand, 94 Threats, to world order, 17 Trade regimes, 16–17, 25, 143–144 Turkey, 85 Uncertainty, related to terrorist attacks, 129–130 UN Charter, 29 Unidimensional assumption, of state strength, 37 Unilateralism, 110–112, 122(n5) Unipolarity, 74–76. See also Hegemony Unipolar moment, 4, 39, 74, 83–84 United Kingdom, 62; Domestic Strength Index, 1961–1995, 62(fig.); Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); post–Cold War decline in structural strength, 65–67; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); Structural

Index

Strength Index, 1950–1998, 66(fig.); U.S. Share of World and Major EU Nations’ Military Expenditures (1995, 2000), 85(fig.). See also Britain United Nations, 22; combating international terrorism, 132; multilateral character of Cold War order, 106; West/anti-West division, 123(n15) United States: Aggregate Relational Strength Measures For Britain and the United States, 108(fig.); building new order on the remains of the Cold War order, 102–107; Comparison of British and U.S. Military Share of Relational Strength, 109(fig.); Comparison of British and U.S. Relational Economic Strength, 108(fig.); Comparisons of G-7, U.S., and G-6 Shares, of GNP of World GNP, 1965–1997, 93(fig.); demarcation of new world order, 126; Domestic Strength Index, 1953–1998, 63(fig.); economic impact of growing international system, 55(n15); economic model, 54(n6); equating state strength with leadership, 36; Estimates of Shares of Great-Power Economic Capabilities, 1960–1999, 75(fig.); G7, U.S., and G-6 Share of Global GNP, 1965–1997, 93(fig.); GEC Regression of Wars, Crises, and Events During the Cold War, 105(table); imbalanced-strength problem, 107–109; measuring state strength in terms of domestic, relational, and structural dimensions, 43–53; post–Cold War decline in structural strength, 65; post–Cold War increase in domestic strength, 62–63; post–Cold War increase in state strength, 39; post–World War I order, 27–30; Regressions for Domestic and External Resources, and Resources with Time, for Major Powers, 1950–1996, 73(fig.); relational strength, 75; Structural Strength Index, 1950–1998, 66(fig.); terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, 129;

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U.S. Share of World and Major EU Nations’ Military Expenditures (1995, 2000), 85(fig.); weakening of state strength, 37–38; as Western hegemon, 20; West-South divisions of global terrorism regime, 144– 145 UN Security Council, 140 U.S. Defense Department, 129–130 U.S. National Security Council (NSC 68) document, 106 U.S. policymakers: minimalist approach, 147; response to international terrorism, 131–146; U.S. hegemony, 2–5 Uzbekistan, 139, 149(n14) Vienna, Congress of, 22, 25, 26, 34(n9) War, interstate: absence of U.S. global leadership during interwar period, 7–8; disturbance to system stability, 104; Event Count Regressions of War and Crises and Structural Strength and Relational Strength, 50(table); measuring relational and structural strength, 49–51; as preliminary to new world order, 16 Warsaw Pact, 22, 29–30 Weaponry: availability for international terrorism, 128–129 West/anti-West divide, 123(n15), 130, 149(n6), 150(n18) Wilson, Woodrow, 27, 80 World Bank, 30, 31, 94 World Bank Estimates of Chinese General Government Expenditures in Constant 1995 U.S. Dollars, 1960–1997, 64(fig.) World Trade Center, 129 World War I. See Post–World War I order World War II. See Post–World War II order WTO. See General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization Zeevi, Rehavam, 149(n7) Zorkaltsev, Viktor, 139

About the Book

lthough it has been more than a decade since the Cold War global structure collapsed, neither scholars nor policymakers have clearly identified its replacement. “What is the new world order,” ask Thomas Volgy and Alison Bailin; “and in the midst of declining state strength, who sustains it?” They find their answers in the system collectively constructed by the major powers. The authors consider both the nature of state strength and the changing capabilities of the states most likely to construct global architecture. Demonstrating that the traditional structures of global order— hegemony, bipolarity, and multipolarity—are inconsistent with existing and projected patterns of state strength, they present a provocative alternative model that reflects the “creeping incrementalism” of multilateral institutions and the “institutionalized group hegemony” of the G-7 states. In their final chapter, they explore the weaknesses of the present architectural arrangements and discuss alternative scenarios.

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Thomas J. Volgy is professor of political science at the University of Arizona and executive director of the International Studies Association. He has also served as mayor of Tucson, Arizona. His publications include Politics in the Trenches: Citizens, Politicians, and the Fate of Democracy and (with John Schwarz) The Forgotten Americans: Working Hard and Living Poor in the Land of Opportunity. Alison Bailin is currently doing research with the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto. She is the author of From Traditional to Group Hegemony: Liberal Economic Order and the Core-Periphery Gap (forthcoming). 173