Issues surrounding “power transitions”—the relationship between a rising state and a declining great power (often the hegemon)—are an important topic for both international relations theory and contemporary policy. Theoretically, power transitions are related to research on rising powers, and the conditions under which great powers are in peace or conflict with one another. This topic is also crucial for contemporary policymakers, because whether a rising China will challenge and eventually go to war with the United States has implications for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Significant research examines the propensity of states experiencing a power transition to go to war. In contrast, the four books in this review expand substantially on power transition research, examining different and understudied aspects to the power transition dynamic. Combined, they highlight important avenues for future research while generating important—though imperfect—insights into current policy concerns.
The books themselves can be summarized briefly. Joshua Shifrinson's Rising Titans, Falling Giants focuses on the strategies that rising powers adopt in dealing with the declining hegemon. Rightly questioning the notion that rising states are prone to challenge declining states, Shifrinson notes that rising powers are not always predatory but at times adopt moderate or even supportive policies. This choice depends on the declining state's strategic value to the rising power as well as the decliner's military posture.
Paul MacDonald and Joseph Parent's Twilight of the Titans, on the other hand, analyzes strategies of declining states. Where several studies suggest decliners rarely retrench and do so at their peril, MacDonald and Parent show that declining great powers engage in rational calculations that lead to retrenchment. Moreover, they underscore that retrenchment can pay by enabling a declining state to recover its geopolitical strength.
Taking a constructivist approach, Stacie Goddard's When Right Makes Might explores how great powers infer the intentions of rising powers. Many analysts emphasize the importance of material capabilities in this process. Goddard, however, highlights that how rising powers justify their goals and behavior—what she terms the rising state's “legitimation strategy”—is equally if not more important. All things being equal, the more rising states can legitimate their behavior by reference to existing notions of international order, the more declining states are apt to infer benign (or at least neutral) intentions.
Tackling the question of power transition head-on, Kori Schake's Safe Passage provides rich background on the transition from British to American hegemony in the Western hemisphere. Again challenging strict material accounts of power transition, her work emphasizes the importance of domestic democratic institutions and ideologies in facilitating the most peaceful transition on record.
The four books explore important and, in many cases, novel themes in the broader literature on power transition: rising power strategies, policies adopted by the declining hegemon, and historical examples of power transition. They are rich and diverse in theoretical approaches. Usefully, they also move beyond the country-specific focus that sometimes characterizes studies on grand strategy and great power politics (e.g., Gaddis Reference Gaddis1982; Goldstein Reference Goldstein2005; Samuels Reference Samuels2007; Edel Reference Edel2014; Brands Reference Brands2014). Instead, all four adopt an interactive approach to the strategies of rising and declining powers. That is, each underscores that policies adopted by great powers are not merely a result of factors internal to the great powers themselves, but rather the product of the interplay between their own capabilities and the policies or characteristics of other states. In this sense, these books provide more nuanced analyses than the power transition literature, part of which “assigns” blame to either the rising or the declining power for initiating great-power conflicts. Finally, each of the projects makes important historiographical contributions to our understanding of prior power transitions that do much to expand the empirical record of the phenomena.
Still, it important to ask: how well do these projects shed light on the contemporary US–China dynamic? As importantly, to what extent does the US–China relationship today support or challenge the conclusions of the different projects, and what avenues for further research come out of this assessment? No review can do justice to these foundational questions. Still, the remainder of this essay focuses on four overarching themes connecting the four books theoretically while addressing current US–China relations.
First and foremost, before we move on to discuss rising and declining powers, how can analysts best conceptualize “rise” and “decline”? Do states correctly perceive that they or their adversaries are rising or declining? Are their perceptions grounded in material reality? Second, from a signaling perspective, what are the consequences of rising power and declining states’ strategies? For example, what does a rising power's supportive strategy signal to the declining state or other actors in the system? How would a rising power or the allies of the declining state interpret the declining state's retrenchment strategy?
Third, what does a power transition in itself entail? Are there particular periods amid a transition that are especially fraught? In any case, how do we conceptualize the full spectrum of policies—militarized and non-militarized—that rising and declining states can adopt as power changes hands? Finally, regarding the propensity for rising and declining states to end up in conflict, how might the current international system—with its high-levels of economic interdependence anchored by intricate supply and production chains—generate different dynamics from historical systems? Does the current system reduce the likelihood of a conflict-prone power transition? Relatedly, how can or should analysts define peace and war in an era prevalent with gray-zone and quasi-militarized actions? In what follows I elaborate on each of these four points.
MEASURING “RISE” AND “DECLINE”
Before discussing and debating about power transition, it is necessary to reexamine how to measure power, especially regarding rising and declining powers. Shifrinson's Rising Titans and MacDonald and Parent's Twilight of the Titans meticulously define and measure what it means for a state to be on the rise or in decline. MacDonald and Parent define decline as a decrease in “ordinal rank among the great powers,” which should be sustained for at least five years (p. 5). Relatedly, Shifrinson argues that “decline occurs whenever a state begins to lose capabilities especially economic capabilities, relative to one or more other states in such fashion as to indicate that the losses reflect a fundamental shift in strength” (p. 14). Consistent with standard treatments of great power capabilities, both studies then use cross-national GDP data as the primary measure of relative decline (though Shifrinson includes an array of additional measures in individual case studies).
Measured by GDP, it is clear that China is on the rise. But does this mean that the United States is in decline relative to China? This question is not a mere definitional one but has policy implications. If both countries believe that one is rising and the other is declining, they might take actions they otherwise might not have taken. For example, China might adopt predatory policies, and the United States may prefer retrenchment, as indicated by Rising Titans and Twilight of the Titans.
It is true that GDP is a useful measure for cross-national and temporal comparisons of power, yet recent works suggest that the picture might be more complicated. First, how important is overall economic output (as measured by GDP) as an indicator of power? Michael Beckley, for instance, measures power as a result of net output minus net input (Beckley Reference Beckley2018). In this sense, although China has the world's second-largest GDP, it also wastes large amounts of input in generating the GDP. That is, it is necessary to conceptualize power in more complex and fluid terms in the contemporary world. China might not be rising in a faster pace if we use measures other than GDP.
Moreover, given China's massive population, an aging society, and numerous domestic socioeconomic issues, it remains uncertain to what extent will China be able to translate its economic growth into military (or even economic) capabilities, both in the contemporary world and over time. Indeed, as Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli suggest, imitation, reverse engineering, and cyber espionage have significant limitations, and it will be very difficult for China to erode US military-technological superiority (Gilli and Gilli Reference Gilli and Gilli2019). In the economic realm, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman note that global economic networks lend asymmetric advantages to the United States in the financial messaging and transactions, which suggests that it will be very difficult for China to translate its new wealth into influence and coercive power (Farrell and Newman Reference Farrell and Newman2019). Similarly, it will be nearly impossible for the Chinese currency to assume the status of the US dollar in the short term, despite the Chinese government's effort in internationalizing the RMB. Of course, this does not mean that GDP is irrelevant, but rather that we might need to take into consideration other kinds of indicators, including GDP per capita, human capital, quality of the labor force, and the education system of a given state.
Given the many problems that China is facing, one might reasonably wonder why academics and policymakers alike are already worried about a US–China power transition and the threats from a rising China? While material reality—such as capability and GDP growth—matter, Goddard's When Right Makes Might may provide an alternative explanation. That is, it is not necessarily capabilities that dictate what it means to be in decline or what strategies great powers will adopt, but rather how rising powers legitimize their behavior and how hegemons perceive such legitimation strategies. For example, in addition to China's assertive behavior in the South China Sea and the security ramifications of Huawei products, China, in fact, does not adopt legitimation strategies that would resonate with other great powers in the system. China's assertion of “historical rights” in the South China Sea is vague and creates uncertainty about the nature and scope of China's aims regarding the South China Sea. Its public relations regarding Huawei is also far from ideal.
Goddard convincingly argues that when rising powers are unable to legitimate their behavior to both domestic and international audiences, and when hegemons face institutional vulnerability, hegemons tend to assume the worst of the rising power's intention. For Goddard, institutional vulnerability is “whether the great power is likely to believe that the norms and principles of order favored by the great powers are weak, under attack, and vulnerable to being overturned” (p. 33). This argument fits well with current US–China trade friction. China's economic rise has, by some measures, been ongoing for decades, but it was only after 2016 that the US reacted harshly to Chinese economic practices with an all-out trade war.Footnote 1 Consistent with Goddard's thesis, this change might be explained by virtue of China's growing economic nationalism and the United States’ own inward turn in domestic affairs in the Trump administration; China walked back its legitimation efforts, just as the United States felt increasingly vulnerable at home. That is, the norms surrounding liberal internationalism might be chipped away by populism both in the United States and abroad. It is in this context that we see a growing consensus in Washington across the political spectrum calling for tougher measures towards China.
Nevertheless, Goddard's When Right Makes Might could expand further on the interaction between rising and declining states. In other words, greater US institutional vulnerability contributes to China's decreased capability to appeal to both domestic and international audiences, precisely because the tariffs imposed by President Trump dampened the voices of liberal Chinese officials and scholars, making them illegitimate domestically. This suggests that there can be both positive and negative feedback loops between the domestic institutions of a declining hegemon and the domestic politics of a rising power. These issues merit additional attention.
SIGNALS AND STRATEGIES OF RISING AND DECLINING STATES
Goddard's work is important for another reason: it reminds us that strategies are interpreted and acted upon by external audiences. Moreover, the strategies adopted by rising and declining states also serve as signals, whether these states intend to do so or not. MacDonald and Parent convincingly prove that in the majority of historical cases, relative decline causes states to retrench proportionally, defined as “an intentional reduction in the overall cost of a state's foreign policy” (p. 8).
Interestingly, rising states sometimes adopt policies and strategies strikingly similar to the retrenchment policy of the declining state. As Shifrinson notes in his book—the first to systematically study the policies of rising states—rising powers can adopt predatory or supportive goals vis-à-vis the declining state. When having supportive goals, rising states “seek to slow or prevent additional loss to a declining state's power position and sustain the decliner as a great power” (p. 18). In the contemporary world, we have seen supportive aims manifest themselves in Deng Xiaoping's grand strategy of “hiding one's strength and abiding one's time” (taoguang yanghui), which is essentially a strategy of retrenchment from the Mao-era expansion in foreign policy behavior (for example, the Korean War, the Sino-Indian border war, and the Sino-Soviet border conflict).
These are all clear, powerful theoretical claims. It is worth noting, however, that when applying the studies by Shifrinson, and MacDonald and Parent, to the contemporary US–China dynamic, the definition of retrenchment, predation, and supportive strategies, as well as the signaling effect become much more complicated.
First, what does retrenchment mean in the contemporary era? Could a declining state retrench in one realm but not others? MacDonald and Parent note that retrenchment includes “reducing military spending, restructuring military forces, and forming institutions” domestically, and “redeploying forces, defusing flashpoints, and redistributing burdens” internationally (p. 24). This characterization of retrenchment zooms in on the military aspect and seems to fit with, for instance, the second term of the Obama administration. But the Obama administration did not retrench from the economic realm. As Farrell and Newman note, the United States still dominates the global financial messaging network. Similarly, despite the heated debate about Huawei and 5G networks, the United States is still leading in the technological sector, by and large. It might, therefore, be worth dissecting the specific aspects of retrenchment and ask: what is the most significant indicator of retrenchment?
Second and relatedly, how do rising states and other states perceive the decliner's retrenchment policy? MacDonald and Parent suggest that retrenchment might lead to less provocative defense. Such a policy, however, might—as Shifrinson's work shows—result in the opposite signaling effects as perceived by rising powers. For example, China took the US withdrawal from the Subic Bay in the Philippines in the 1990s as a sign that the United States was not committed to defending the Philippines, and thus engaged in militarized coercion in the South China Sea (Zhang Reference Zhang2019). Likewise, China viewed the moderate US response towards the Ukraine crisis as a sign that the Obama administration was overstretched and not resolved (Zhang Reference Zhang2018). As Shifrinson rightly notes, the decliner's military posture “shapes the assertiveness of the rising state's predatory or supportive efforts” (p. 24). Given that a military posture involves both capability and signaling, should retrenchment be categorized as verbal versus behavioral retrenchment?
In this sense, the decliner might be faced with a signaling dilemma: it wants to retrench to ensure strategic solvency, yet retrenchment in certain areas might be viewed by the rising state as a sign of weakness. Furthermore, retrenchment, be it in the military, economic, or diplomatic realms, may send negative signals to the decliner's allies. Coupled with the rising state's perception that the decliner is weak and unresolved, such signals may have the unintended consequence of leading to greater regional instability. Applied to contemporary debates, retrenchment may therefore not necessarily lead to a peaceful Asia-Pacific—instead, retrenchment might well prompt greater Chinese aggrandizement in the South and East China Seas and/or Taiwan.
Third, and similar to the decliner's strategy, the rising power's strategy towards a declining state may also be complicated and full of tension. Shifrinson denotes four strategies a rising power may adopt: relegation, weakening, strengthening, and bolstering, with the first two being predatory and the latter supportive strategies vis-à-vis the decliner. Yet in the case of contemporary Chinese foreign policy, one is able to see all four strategies present at the same time, depending on particular areas. For example, Joel Wuthnow and colleagues suggest that in terms of international institutions, China sometimes tries to weaken, observe, maintain, or revolutionize based on different institutions (Wuthnow, Li, and Qi Reference Wuthnow, Li and Qi2012). By the same token, China may support the US role in the international economic system while simultaneously attempting to weaken US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
This suggests that, like declining states, rising powers also face signaling dilemmas. At root, rising states need to signal benign intentions while also signaling resolve. This is in line with Goddard's concept of multivocality, that is, the rising power's ability to signal benign intentions to its great power rivals while satisfying an increasingly nationalistic domestic public. Xiaoyu Pu's work on status signaling, for instance, indicates that China sends conflictual signals about its status in the world (Pu Reference Pu2019). My own research also suggests that China uses coercion to signal resolve, but also worries about the economic and geopolitical repercussions, and sometimes ends up with a goldilocks choice: non-militarized coercion (Zhang Reference Zhang2018). Rising states may therefore adopt policies towards declining states for reasons not entirely related to Shifrinson's core claims—they may be predatory in some areas and supportive in others, for reasons other than the strategic utility and military threats posed by the decliner itself.
Therefore, the implications of MacDonald and Parent's and Shifrinson's books might suggest that the relations between rising and declining powers face numerous signaling issues. A potential US retrenchment may be perceived by rising powers as weak, whereas a rising China may be sending conflicting signals, thereby adding to the misperceptions and tension during a power transition. As Goddard rightly points out, whether rising powers’ signals can be aptly received by the hegemon have much to do with the domestic politics of both the rising power and the hegemon. Applied to the current US–China relationship, for example, the Chinese hard-liners’ attacks on liberal and reform-minded Chinese reduced China's ability to be mutivocal, whereas threats of populism in the United States heightened the perceptions that liberal values are under attack, both at home and abroad. Such signaling failures could potentially increase the probability of conflicts between a rising power and the hegemon. Below, I further expand on the factors increasing or decreasing the likelihood of great power conflicts.
POWER TRANSITION AND THE DIFFERENT FACETS OF STATECRAFT
Related to the preceding, it is necessary to acknowledge the different facets of statecraft that rising and declining states employ. MacDonald and Parent's Twilight of the Titans and Shifrinson's Rising Titans elegantly specify the different strategies decliners and rising powers may adopt. Along the way, they offer useful analyses of the different domains in which decliners can retrench, and the varying components (e.g., economic, military, diplomatic) of rising state strategy. Despite this refinement, however, one has the sense from their case studies that—like many realist projects—their particular interests are on issues relating to the threat or use of force, including rising and declining state military capabilities and posture.
These issues are certainly critical but, as analysts such as former Ambassador Chas Freeman note, strategy and statecraft in practice are more multidimensional, including diplomatic and economic in addition to military issues (Freeman Reference Freeman1997). This is especially the case in the current US–China dynamic, as both countries are practicing non-military statecraft, especially China, with its Belt and Road initiative as well as economic coercion. Even the United States in the Trump administration still engages in economic statecraft, be it carrots or sticks. Without directly challenging the strategies or issues presented in Rising Titans and Twilight of the Titans, this diverse spectrum of statecraft complicates the clear-cut typologies of rising and declining state strategy and the tools used to get there as presented in the works.
In this sense, Schake's Safe Passage and Goddard's When Right Makes Might help broaden the scope of statecraft. What Goddard terms legitimation, for instance, can readily be seen as a form of rhetorical statecraft with contemporary applications: China's current attempts to justify its behavior in the South China Sea, Belt and Road Initiative, and Huawei illustrate the phenomenon. Although not described as statecraft explicitly, Schake's Safe Passage similarly underscores that statecraft often contains cultural and domestic institutional dimensions; we see this, for instance, in the Japanese government's promotion of the “democratic security diamond”—a proposed strategic alliance of like-minded Indo-Pacific countries. China's use of its Confucius Institute to promote Chinese values and culture is also one example of cultural statecraft. In short, it is not necessarily what rising powers or decliners do that matters, but rather how they justify their behavior.
CONFLICT PROPENSITY
If the works differ on what aspects of statecraft merit sustained attention, they converge on one issue: they are broadly quiet on when, how, and why power transitions increase the likelihood of great power conflict. To be sure, all works highlight conditions under which great power tensions may spike. Still, where most research in the power transition literature emphasize the conflict propensity of power transitions, the projects here largely avoid the issue. The closest discussion comes in Schake's Safe Passage, which argues that the absence of “a common set of governing principles for their own societies and their international behavior,” can make a power transition dangerous and conflict-prone (p. 38); needless to say, this argument suggests that trouble is ahead for contemporary US–China relations.
Given the centrality of debates over war and peace to power transition concerns, one would have liked further engagement on these issues. And here, the projects would have been strengthened by more robustly considering the role of economic globalization on the chance of war; this becomes clearest relative to Schake's work, but applies to the other project as well. At the same time, given that great power competition can erupt short of overt conflict, the projects suggest importance of more robustly theorizing what “peace” and “war” look like in the contemporary world, as well as the periods in which “peace” and “war” are more or less likely to obtain.
GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS AND THE CURRENT INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Despite signaling failure and the incompatibility of domestic institutions, however, the current US–China relations and its future trajectory might not be as pessimistic as Schake's work would suggest. The current international economic system, especially the intricate global supply and production chains, might provide an important dampening factor to great power conflicts. Of course, this dampening effect is contingent on the continuity of the US–China economic relationship instead of an economic decoupling.
The current international economic system is drastically different from those of previous eras because of the intricate global supply and production networks. The international economy was not as connected in previous power transitions as in the contemporary US–China relationship. The connection between the British and US economies was far smaller in the 1900s than that of US–China economic relations. Ongoing US–China trade frictions serve as a good indication of how both sides would be hurt when economic relations are affected.
As such, despite domestic ideational and institutional differences, US–China relations may not be as conflict-prone as some might have predicted. As Stephen Brooks notes, globalization and multinational companies make territorial expansion more costly and less effective than in the past, thereby reducing the propensity of great power conflicts (Brooks Reference Brooks2005). Important here are China's incentives to avoid conflict as, despite its growth, China may be the more vulnerable party in the US–Chinese relationship at present (Farrell and Newman Reference Farrell and Newman2019). Other research suggests that Chinese officials are highly concerned about losing markets, technology, and foreign direct investment from the United States (Zhang Reference Zhang2018). Furthermore, Chinese officials explicitly argue that Chinese actions towards the United States since the early 1990s have been constrained by concerns with China's potential losses: despite, for instance, repeated opposition to US arms sales to Taiwan, China never carried through on its oft-mooted threat to impose sanctions. Add to this that Chinese exports often depend on imported high-technology products from the US and its allies, and China's vulnerabilities to supply chains and globalization are clear.
To be sure, China may eventually emerge as a modern, high-technology, economy oriented towards domestic-consumption that would not be vulnerable to these vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, given the difficulty associated with catching up with the United States technologically and the myriad domestic socioeconomic issues that China is currently facing, it is hard to imagine that China could be free from vulnerability vis-à-vis the US economy in the next several decades.
Therefore, the current international economic system could serve as a dampening factor in reducing great power conflicts. In this sense, the “commonality” that Schake discusses could be “common interests” in the current US–China dynamic. It also suggests that the “strategic value” of a declining power to a rising power, as noted in Shifrinson's Rising Titans, could also include economic values of the United States, from China's perspective. That is, China, at times, adopts supportive policies towards the United States precisely out of economic interests.
HOW TO DEFINE PEACE?
Just because China and the United States can avoid a major war does not mean there will not be political conflicts or skirmishes of low magnitude. Schake's Safe Passage implicitly assumes a dichotomy between war (or conflict) and peace. Nevertheless, how do we define peace in an era of globalization and economic interdependence? The current literature on international political economy suggests that globalized production and supply chains reduce the likelihood of great power wars, yet such economic interconnectedness also provides states with tools other than war to advance their interests in a competitive world. States engage in diplomatic and economic sanctions. In the case of a rising China, it also uses gray-zone coercive measures—the use of civilian agencies to inflict damage on the target state—that stay below the level of military aggression (Zhang Reference Zhang2019). It is thus worth broadening the spectrum of war and peace to include, for instance, gray-zone conflict and economic frictions. MacDonald and Parent's Twilight of the Titans and Shifrinson's Rising Titans take us far in this direction, offering (as noted earlier) useful analyses of different ways in which decliners can retrench and the different components (e.g., economic, military, diplomatic) of rising state strategy. Building on their insights, future research may fruitfully expand these insights to develop a more nuanced spectrum of war and peace that may better apply to the contemporary world.
WHEN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS PERIOD?
Finally, it is worthwhile discussing the different periods of a power transition and the propensity of each to generate conflict between the rising state and the hegemon. All four works implicitly zoom in on periods when the rising state is reaching parity with the hegemon, has already surpassed it, or when power is changing hands in a deep and pervasive manner. This is consistent with other research in the power transition tradition.
It remains unclear, however, whether and why such periods should be especially conflict-prone. As Thomas Christensen observes, China can and had posed problems to the United States long before it started to “catch up” with the United States (Christensen Reference Christensen2001). Issues related to US weapons sales to Taiwan and Taiwanese leaders’ visit to the United States, for example, have been problematic in US–China relations, even back in the 1990s. Avery Goldstein notes the danger of nuclear escalation between China and the United States, despite China's small arsenal vis-à-vis the United States (Goldstein Reference Goldstein2013). In short, it is worth moving beyond the period when the rising power is nearing parity with or surpassing the hegemon to examine the foreign policy behavior of a rising power as well as its interactions with the hegemon when it is in the process of rising.
CONCLUSION
To summarize, all four books do a wonderful job of analyzing the issue of power transition as well as the strategies of rising and declining states. Each is empirically rich and theoretically innovative. Individually and collectively, the works challenge conventional wisdoms on the course of power transitions (e.g., MacDonald and Parent), highlight underappreciated factors affecting great power relations amid a power shift (e.g., Goddard; Schake), and direct attention to understudied aspects of power transitions themselves (e.g., Shifrinson). They do much to revitalize the study of great power politics during power transitions while providing greater nuances, novel theoretical framework, and rigorous empirical evidence than the existing literature on power transition.
The four books also leave us with interesting questions when we apply the implications of them to US–China relations: what is peace, what is war? What realms of Chinese foreign policy fall into the predatory category, and which policies are supportive of the United States? What would be the key indicators of US retrenchment? How does China view the signals sent from the United States and vice versa? That is, building on these four books, future research could examine 1) how rising and declining powers conceptualize war and peace and whether there are mismatching understandings between the rising power and the hegemon; 2) how to apply Shifrinson's framework to contemporary China, and under what conditions or periods would his framework apply; and 3) what explains different rising powers’ legitimation strategies and whether China and India adopt different strategies.
Although China and the United States differ greatly in their respective domestic institutions, their economic interconnectedness—against the backdrop of an intricate global production and supply chains—could serve as a positive factor in reducing the likelihood of conflicts. Nevertheless, as shown in the review, there are ample circumstances where both the rising state and declining power might misread the signals sent by one another: the decliner might view the rising state's supportive strategy as a sign of weakness, whereas the rising power may read the decliner's retrenchment as lacking resolve. It is quite possible that the current US–China power transition, if we can agree on how to define “rise” and “fall,” might be peaceful, but replete with conflicts below or besides great power war.
