Emerging Powers in an Age of Disorder

Randall Schweller THE DRAMATIC RISE OF CHINA AND INDIA AMONG OTHERS HAS SET THE STAGE for a fundamental rethinking of world politics in an age of the waning dominance of US power as a force for remaking the world in its own image. While Pax Americana is not yet teetering on the edge of collapse, the consensus opinion is that the relative decline of the United States is probably irreversible and its unipolar moment will soon give way to something new. A to multi-polarity is one way of describing this shift. It tells us that several great powers will emerge to challenge US primacy. That is all. The more important question is: What sort of global order will emerge on the other side of the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity? Will it be one of peace and plenty or and scarcity? On this issue, experts are divided into two camps, pessimists and optimists. Pessimists believe that the coming multipolar world--like the one that held sway over international politics from 1648 to 1945--will be permeated by problems of insecurity, rivalry, arms races, nationalism, and fierce competition for scarce resources. (1) Embedding their arguments in examinations of historical power shifts, such as those provoked by the rise of Napoleonic France or the unification of Germany in 1871, they predict that the United States and China will soon engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war. This conflict forecast is grounded in the assumption that history unfolds in repeating cycles of global war that destroy the old international order and replace it with a new one. Consistent with the time's metaphor of history, time has no direction; apparent motions are merely stages of ever-present and never-changing cycles. The future, therefore, will resemble the past. In contrast, optimists see a smooth evolutionary transition from unipolarity to multipolarity, as the great powers, old and new, find ways to build and jointly manage a new global architecture that preserves the essential features of the existing liberal order. (2) For them, multipolarity implies multilateralism. Embracing principles and practices of restraint, accommodation, reciprocity, and cooperation, the great powers will work in concert to establish mutually acknowledged roles and responsibilities to comanage an evolving but stable international order that benefits all of them. The return of multipolarity will usher in a new age of liberal peace, prosperity, and progress built on the rule of law. Swords will be beaten into ploughshares, and a harmony of interests will reign among the states and peoples of the world. It is a vision of concert, grounded in the assumption that history moves forward in a progressive direction--one consistent with the time's arrow metaphor of historical direction. (3) I argue that the prediction of great-power is overly pessimistic, whereas the expectation of a great-power concert is too hopeful. Fears that China's rise will incite war with the United States are unwarranted. The destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the benefits of economic globalization have made war among the great powers unthinkable. The cycle of hegemonic war and change has been replaced by a perpetual peace, just as liberals claim. Ironically, this is precisely why optimists are too sanguine about the future. International order--particularly one that is legitimate, efficient, and dynamic--requires periodic global wars, roughly every 100 years or so. Otherwise, inertia and decay set in. Hegel pointed this out in 1821: War is not to be regarded as an absolute evil. Just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from foulness which would be the result of a long calm, so also corruption in nations would be the result of prolonged, let alone 'perpetual,' peace.4 Whether domestic or international, political systems undisturbed by war cannot cleanse and renew themselves; like still seas, they become foul. …