Power Competition In The Era Without Great Power Wars: Behavioral Principles And Interactive Mechanisms

The pursuit of power by great powers and the competition for supremacybetween rising powers and hegemonic powers is a central topic of internationalpolitics. However, the currently existing relevant literature is insufficient inaddressing and explaining the interaction between hegemonic powers and risingpowers in the post-Cold War era. While this perplexes our understanding ofcontemporary great power relations, it also serves as a turning point in theoreticalinnovation. Using the puzzling experience of the post-Cold War years as abreakthrough, this paper draws on the thought of social evolution and classifies themodern international system into two time-dependent categories,“the era withfrequent wars” before1945and “the era without great power wars” since then, andsets up “exchange of interests” as the core concept of the theory of great powercompetition in the era without great power wars. It furthermore describes andexplains the logic behind the actions of hegemonic powers and rising powers andtheir interaction mechanisms in the latter era.The core theoretical proposition of this paper rests on five implicit assumptions,which are:1) The pursuit of power is the principal motivation of great powers.2)Power refers to the ability to influence others to comply with one’s wishes.3) Theemergence of nuclear weapons in1945has since made the costs of war unacceptablefor great powers.4) The presence and strengthening of norms regarding sovereigntyhave removed annexation of territory as a normal policy option for great powers.5)Small countries prefer the provision of benefits over the use of coercive force. Basedupon such assumptions above, this paper poses and proves two logicallyinterconnected theoretical propositions: First, the core means of great powercompetition in peacetime is exchange of interests. Second, the processes andoutcomes of great power competition in our era are similar to the processes andoutcomes of oligopolistic competition in a market system.The normative implication of the first theoretical proposition is that, in the erawithout great power wars, great powers should provide benefits to small countries, while in the empirical level, the proposition predicts that, as small countries’behavioral autonomy increases, great powers are more likely to resort to the strategyof interest exchange. The second theoretical proposition is a logical deduction fromthe first. On the basis of the second proposition, this paper classifies great powercompetition in the ear without great power wars into two types:“the simultaneouscompetition model” and “the pursuit model”, in terms of the number of great powerswhich are capable of bidding the global leadership. The great powers’ actions and theoutcomes of their interactions under the two models can be approximatively capturedand described by two microeconomic models, the Gounod Model and the StackelbergModel, respectively. This paper contributes to an increased understanding ofpost-Second World War great power political relations and more effective strategicformulation and planning for modern rising powers.