Though much has been written in the last decade on “rising powers,” especially Brazil, Russia, India, and China—the BRICs, this book aims to stand out from the crowd by bringing together scholars who work on emerging powers together with scholars who write on the perspective of established powers.

The book opens with three chapters on the established powers. In chapter 2, Norma C. Noonan writes on the global leadership of the United States, providing a brief overview of U.S. relations with China, Russia, the European Union, Japan, India, and Brazil. In chapter 3, Mary Troy Johnston argues that Europe is best thought of as an emerging power itself, echoing Andrew Moravcsik's argument from a similarly themed edited volume, Rising States, Rising Institutions (Brookings Institution Press, 2010). In chapter 4, David Fouse argues that China's growing power has pushed Japan toward a more realistic foreign policy, which aims to strengthen ties with other emerging powers, such as India, Russia, and Brazil, to balance China. He concludes that “whereas only two decades ago Japan was exploring paths to establish its own global leadership, today its focus is primarily on ways of staying relevant” (p. 87), raising interesting—but for now unanswered—questions about how Japan will react to these developments in the long term.

The next four chapters are on BRICs. In chapter 5, Suisheng Zhao attempts to explain Chinese reluctance to take “its rightful place” by embracing “a global leadership role and international responsibility as a great power confronting problems such as climate change, genocide, and nuclear proliferation” (p. 101). Zhao argues that notwithstanding the raised expectations of the international community, Beijing remains “obsessed by its . . . core interests” (p. 103), but has not yet considered such interests in the context of a broader vision. This finding is in line with a number of recent interesting books attempting to explain the puzzling aspects of Chinese foreign policy, such as William A. Callahan's China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Zheng Wang's Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (Columbia University Press, 2012). In chapter 6, Vidya Nadkarni examines the factors that make India's rise possible, and argues that the main challenge India faces is from negotiating the opposing pulls its feels from the United States and China on various issues. In chapter 7, Tatiana Shakleina argues that Russia is not like the other “rising powers” in the sense that its main challenge “is to preserve and consolidate its great power potential” whereas other rising powers “either never played the role of a global actor (Brazil, India) or played such a role in the past” (p. 163). Shakleina later goes on to assess Russia as coming second only to the United States in terms of “power characteristics among the five acknowledged great powers,” that is, the United States, China, India, Brazil, and Russia, according to Shakleina (p. 179, table 1). Though many will disagree with her characterizations in this chapter, some of her reminders, such as the fact that “Russia remains the second mightiest military power in the world” (p. 176) may be necessary correctives to a growing consensus in the West that is unnecessarily dismissive of Russian power. Finally, in chapter 8, Joao Augusto de Castro Neves argues that though Brazil has always believed that its great power role was inevitable, the strategy that Brazil will follow in the near future remains uncertain.

The case studies are bookended by an introduction (by Vidya Nadkarni) and a conclusion (by Vidya Nadkarni and Norma C. Noonan) that succinctly summarize the major themes of the book. Overall, though there is not much that is new here for country specialists, the volume accomplishes what it sets out to do expertly, and there is something to be said for having these country overviews all in one volume. It is true that there is hardly any theorizing about what constitutes a great or rising power. There is also an uncritical acceptance that Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill's 2001 BRIC designation should continue to shape academic research agendas, and hardly any concern about whether it makes sense to group countries in this manner. On the one hand, this designation has captured the imaginations of audiences around the world, including in the countries so designated, who have since begun convening official summits amongst themselves. On the other hand, the official BRICS organization now includes South Africa as well, which is not a country discussed in this volume. Many analysts object to Russia's inclusion in this group, and yet others question whether China should be grouped with any other countries at all. It is not that such objections could not be overcome, but going along with O'Neill's designation so uncritically does seem a bit odd from an academic perspective. At the same time, it could be argued that similar problems plague much of the growing scholarship on “rising powers” and perhaps are best seen as growing pains. Such criticisms aside, this book will serve very well as an introduction for someone who is broadly interested in “rising powers” but does not quite know where to start.