Abstract
Changing national capabilities looms large as an explanatory variable in accounts of war and peace. Theories of imperial overstretch, power transition, and long cycles have tried to show the consequences of these changes at the unit, dyadic and systemic levels of analysis (e.g., Kennedy 1987; Modelski 1987; Organski 1958). These changes, whether ongoing or anticipated, have been invoked to account for the rise and fall of great powers, the occurrence of hegemonic war, and the acceptance of imperial retrenchment and even capitulation. Thus, for example, Britain’s accommodation of rising American power after 1895 and imperial and Nazi Germany’s aggression against Russia/the Soviet Union have been explained, respectively, by the opposing motivations to appease and to wage a preventive war against a rising competitor (Copeland 2000; Friedberg 1988; Rock 2000). More recently, some scholars have emphasized the USSR’s material decline as the chief cause for the end of the cold war on Western terms (e.g., Lebow and Risse-Kappen 1995; Wohlforth 2003). For other analysts, China’s rapid economic growth has engendered concerns about a potential conflict with the United States if current trends augur an impending parity between the two states and even perhaps the overtaking of the latter by the former (e.g., Brown et al. 2000; Johnston and Ross 1999; Tammen et al. 2000).
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Chan, S., Tessman, B.F. (2009). Relative Decline: Why Does It Induce War or Sustain Peace?. In: Thompson, W.R. (eds) Systemic Transitions. The Evolutionary Processes in World Politics series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618381_2
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