The phenomenon of the rise and decline of great powers has been a major preoccupation of IR scholarship for a long time. It has now become a more intense pursuit with the rise of China and the potential of US hegemony losing steam in the foreseeable future. The debate in realist IR theory has focused on the causes and consequences of changes in the material capabilities of major powers and the efforts at power grabbing by states in a highly competitive international environment. From this viewpoint, the changing distribution of power generates systemic pressures that often pit one power against the other. Major wars are the most consequential result of this conflictual strategic interaction among the great powers. More concretely, the power transition dynamic is the result of dramatic changes in the aggregate military and economic capability differentials among the leading actors of an era and in the willingness of powers to exploit or balance or contain the increasing power of others. To some power cycle theorists (e.g., Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? 2017) it is declining power that initiates conflict. Even then, the grand strategies of the rising and declining great powers are critical to understanding the level and extent of conflict among the leading actors of an era.

Joshua Shifrinson’s well-written book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts, is one of the rare theoretical treatments of the grand strategies of rising powers toward declining powers. The general impression in the extant literature on power transition is that rising powers have an interest in seeing declining powers weaken even further to reinforce their power position. Theorists from A. F. K. Organski (World Politics, 1958) to John Mearsheimer (2001) largely see a one-way process taking place, with rising powers attempting to unseat their rivals as soon as they achieve material dominance. There is little room for peaceful accommodation of a declining power in this deadly competition for dominance and hegemony. However, as Shifrinson shows, this is not always the case. Some declining powers are valuable to the rising powers, and historically, the behavioral patterns of rising powers showed variations in their treatment of their near peers. This is largely because, in some cases, keeping the latter alive as powerful actors has helped further the capability gradient of the rising powers themselves.

In his book, Shifrinson develops an explanation for this variation in behavior based on what he calls “predation theory,” which states that “rising states engage in the most intensive and brutal kinds of predation only if a rising state concludes that a declining state simultaneously (1) can give the riser little or no help in opposing other great power threats, and (2) lacks military options to keep the riser in check” (p. 3). In the opposite situations, a rising power can “adopt supportive strategies the more they can use the declining state to counter other threats” (p. 3), especially those coming from other great powers. He tests his theory with the aid of two substantive case studies: the US and Soviet responses to Britain’s decline immediately after the end of World War II and the US strategy toward the Soviet Union after the demise of the Cold War. Other historical cases are brought in as illustrations in the concluding chapter. The book contains a list of all declining great powers from 1816 to 1913. In addition, Shifrinson lists several government officials he interviewed, which is part of the comparative case study method he adopted, one based on the extensive use of primary and secondary data through archival research and interviews. The concluding chapter summarizes the theoretical and empirical conclusions and extrapolates some of the findings for China-US relations.

This book is an important addition to the research on the rising power phenomenon and it shows that grand strategies of leading actors matter significantly to the creation of a stable or unstable international order. The largely system-driven calculations behind these strategies are central to understanding the differing policies of rising and declining powers. The book offers a parsimonious discussion of the micro-foundations of the power transition phenomenon that have not received adequate attention in IR theory. Why and how particular strategies are developed by rising powers toward their peer competitors are central to understanding the power transition dynamic more accurately. Further, the book unravels the myth that rising powers are uniformly interested in the destruction of declining powers and that war is also inevitable in that process. The strategic choices are more nuanced and often do not follow a straight line of incessant pressures on the decliner to concede.

The book is rooted in realist IR and is to a great extent a nuanced articulation of the offensive realist logic, inherent in the works of John Mearsheimer (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001; The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities, 2018). However, one challenge that all realist theories (especially that of the offensive variety) face is their tendency to extrapolate general patterns largely from European great power and Cold War superpower behavior and then attribute those as the behavioral patterns of all states at all times. The contextual changes in the current and emerging international orders are not taken sufficiently into consideration in these accounts. For instance, European great powers did not have deepened economic globalization or economic interdependence when they engaged in violent rivalries, as we experience today. The Anglo-German case (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) may be an exception. The Cold War rivals, the United States and the USSR, had hardly any economic relationship of significance as both engaged in forceful containment strategies. Moreover, for European great powers, control of territory was deemed to be essential for their dominance and economic prosperity. Even though spheres of influence matter, the contemporary great powers have shown less proclivity to conquer land, as a territorial integrity norm seems to have taken hold in the international arena, despite some exceptions like Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

In this context, a puzzle that needs an explanation is the behavior of China and the United States toward each other. Their fate seems intertwined, and it is evident that the reluctance to do too much predation may be the result of the economic interdependence they have built over two decades. Although one can see some elements of predation in China’s foreign policy, China is also contributing to global public goods and US economic well-being because of the interdependence it has built and the supply chains that keep the global economy floating. In many respects, the rising power in this equation—China—has adopted an indirect strategy, avoiding direct or frontal confrontation with the United States. It is also difficult to see who is acting as a rising and a declining power in this dynamic relationship. The eagerness with which both sides attempted to solve the trade disputes in 2020, despite the bravado of higher tariffs and trade restrictions by the Trump administration, shows how difficult it is to pursue predation when you are mutually interdependent. Despite periodic tensions, especially during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic crisis, a total break in relations is unlikely to happen. Thus, one might ask Shifrinson: Is this twenty-first-century power transition fundamentally different from those that preceded it, or will history repeat itself in this case?

Critically important for answering this and similar questions, it would seem, is to examine the grand strategies of the declining powers and the action–reaction process, as well as the security dilemma that these challenges can pose to the rising power itself. A declining great power can compensate for some of its capability deficiency by focusing on its core strengths to stop the predatory policies of the powerful challenger. Today Russia has declined in a relative sense, but Moscow under Vladimir Putin has managed to keep its great power status through (1) its possession of a large arsenal of nuclear and conventional weapons and (2) Moscow’s active diplomacy and coercive strategy in its immediate region, as well as in spheres of influence such as the Middle East. It has prevented the United States and the West in general from the further expansion of NATO to the former republics beyond a few cases, for instance. This dimension of the declining power’s grand strategy needs greater articulation if we wish to get a fuller understanding of the two-way process involved in this phenomenon. Shifrinson pays only limited attention to the declining power’s strategy and gives almost full credit to the rising power in the power competition. Granted, this can be justified as a way to focus on the most critical dimension of the two-way puzzle for practical research reasons. However, it takes two to tango, and a joint exploration of the policies of the two sides would have been preferred so as to gain a fuller perspective on the strategic choices of states undergoing power transitions.

Judging from historical experience, one thing is clear: the manner in which power transitions occur matters for international peace and security. This book provokes one to think about the different dimensions of this phenomenon, which is a testament to what it offers us as a menu for further research. Overall, Rising Titans, Falling Giants is a great read and a must for anyone interested in the rising power phenomenon, as well as the grand strategies of the rising and declining powers going through the power transition process in the modern intranational system. The emerging international order will be determined by the particular grand strategies that the rising and declining powers adopt, and this book offers clues concerning what motivates them to devise a given strategy.