Fateful Transitions. Daniel M. Kliman

Чтение книги онлайн.

      This challenge to the commercial peace has not gone unanswered. In an early survey of the simultaneous interaction between trade and conflict, Soo Yeon Kim determines that the strongest line of cause and effect runs from commerce to peace.⁵¹ Oneal, Russett, and Berbaum likewise demonstrate that while a two-way relationship characterizes trade and conflict, a dispute between states will only depress bilateral commerce for a short period. Controlling for several factors that might influence trade flows, they also find that alliances have no impact on commerce between states.⁵² Last, Havard Hegre, Oneal, and Russett uncover methodological flaws in the two recent studies negating the commercial peace. They “show that the pacific benefit of interdependence is apparent when the influences of size and proximity on interstate conflict are explicitly considered.”⁵³

      A subset of the literature on trade and peace explores how economic interdependence interfaces with domestic politics to shape a state’s strategic choices. Paul Papayoanou maintains that extensive economic ties with a rival power will hinder a state’s capacity to hedge or contain. Groups that directly benefit from commerce with the rival power will be reluctant to view it as hostile and oppose the adoption of confrontational policies. In addition, political leaders will fear the consequences of a more assertive strategy—that the rival power will sever commercial relations, resulting in painful economic dislocation at home. Papayoanou argues that democracies are more vulnerable to both of these dynamics because they accord all interests a voice in the making of foreign policy.⁵⁴ Kevin Narizny advances a related argument. Sectors dependent on an external power for their economic livelihood will champion a foreign policy of accommodation while sectors that compete with that power in third markets will prefer more hardline approaches. Sectors reliant on trade and investment with a multitude of foreign partners will advocate international law and institution building but stand ready to oppose aggressors that threaten regional or global stability. The balance of these sectors within a state’s ruling political coalition will dictate its strategic choices.⁵⁵

      The commercial peace scholarship thus offers another vantage point for understanding how democratic leaders formulate strategy during power transitions. Trade and investment linkages may impose comparatively greater constraints on the rising state if its economy remains smaller than the democratic power’s. Yet if trade with the rising state constitutes a sizeable percentage of the democratic power’s national wealth, or if other types of economic entanglements exist, the potential loss of valuable commercial relations and the prospect of domestic blowback may overhang democratic leaders as they decide whether to appease, integrate, hedge, or contain. Except for the onset of the Cold War, all the case studies in this book feature nonnegligible economic ties between the democratic power and the ascendant state. Although the limited number of power transitions in the book provides an insufficient basis for broader claims about the role of economic interdependence, the analysis of multiple cases allows for a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between commercial ties and foreign policy.

       Ordering of the Book

      The remainder of the book offers an analytical framework and supporting historical evidence that, in turn, illuminate the geopolitics of the twenty-first century. Chapter 2 explains how regime type frames power shifts and sets the stage for how democratic states respond to the emergence of other powers. The next five chapters cover a period of time stretching from the late nineteenth century to the present. Chapter 3 explores the British responses to the simultaneous rise of the United States and Imperial Germany. Chapter 4 looks at Great Britain’s approach to the resurgence of Germany during the 1930s. Chapter 5 focuses on how the United States in the 1940s managed the rise of the Soviet Union. Chapters 6 and 7 respectively examine how the United States and Japan have responded to the growth of Chinese power. Chapter 8 discusses the scholarly and policy implications of the book’s main findings.