Abstract
According to Paul Kennedy, the international standing of a great power depends on a delicate balance between its military expenditure and economic capability. He posits that military overstretch and a relative political decline are the constant twin threats facing powers whose ambitions and military commitments exceed the capacity of their economic resource base. Does the evolution of the US-China relationship during the Obama era confirm the Kennedy thesis that no great power can exercise its dominance permanently?
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Notes
- 1.
William T. R. Fox defined a superpower in 1944 as a “great power plus great mobility of power”. In other words, the ability to project power globally was a defining feature of a superpower and distinguished that actor from great powers that could only extend their power in the region in which they were located.
- 2.
Until the battle of Mogadishu in October 1993, the US had followed a ‘new world order’ or ‘assertive multilateralism’ approach to international security in the post-Cold War era based on a partnership between the power of the US and the authority of the UN. But after the Somalia debacle that stance gave way to a more traditional, state-centred national security approach that ruled out US involvement in UN peace operations in civil conflicts unless American national interests were considered to be directly at stake. That approached intensified during the first nine months of the Republican administration of President George W. Bush when there was a clear strengthening of unilateralist tendencies in US foreign policy and essentially resurfaced some three months after 9/11.
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Patman, R.G., Ferner, T.G. (2018). Paul Kennedy’s Conception of Great Power Rivalry and US-China Relations in the Obama Era. In: Fröhlich, S., Loewen, H. (eds) The Changing East Asian Security Landscape . Edition ZfAS. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-18894-8_5
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