War and Change in World Politics

Robert Gilpin

Princeton University Press, 1981; Pages: 272

Realist examination of the consequences of change in the underlying distribution of power in the international system. Hegemonic powers arrange the system to their advantage, however due to diminishing returns, rising costs, diffusion of power to rivals, and decline in polity, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain the status quo. If the challenger is not accommodated, a hegemonic war ensues and the system is rearranged by the victor.

An international system is established by actors in order to advance particular sets of political, economic, or other interests. The interests that are favored by this arrangement reflect the relative powers of actors involved. Over time, the interests and the balance of power change as a result of economic, technological, or other developments. Actors who benefit most from a change will seek to alter the system to favor their interests (p.9).
Framework for understanding change:
- An international system is stable if no state believes it is profitable to attempt to change it.
- A state will attempt to change the system is the expected benefits exceed the expected costs.
- A state will seek to change the system through territorial, political, and economic expansion until the marginal costs of further change are equal to or greater than the marginal benefits.
- Once an equilibrium is reached, the tendency is for economic costs of maintaining the status quo to rise faster than the economic capacity to support it.
- If the disequilibrium is not resolved, the system will be changed and a new equilibrium reflecting the redistribution of power will be established (p.11).
States do not seek to maximize power or welfare, but will endeavor to find some optimum combination of both objectives, and the amount sought will depend on income and cost (p.20). They pursue three general objectives: (i) conquest of territory; (ii) increase their influence over the behavior of others; (iii) control or at least exercise influence over the world economy (p.24).
Types of structure: (i) hegemonic or imperial; (ii) bipolar; (iii) multipolar (Gilpin calls it the balance of power, which it isn't according to Waltz), (p.29).
Type of change: (i) systems - change in the nature of the actors that compose a system; (ii) systemic - change in the form of control or governance of a system; and (iii) interaction - change in the regular interactions or processes among the entities in a system (p.40). Change can be either incremental or revolutionary (p.45).
Stability and change - the material environment and the international balance of power create incentives or disincentives for states to attempt to change the system: (i) environmental factors - transportation and communication (p.56), military technology (p.59), and economic (especially the law on diminishing returns, p.78); (ii) structure of the system - differential growth of power (p.95) and Waltz's theory; and (iii) domestic - structuring property rights so that private rate of return is close to the social rate, like North and Thomas (p.103).
Growth and expansion - three developments replaced the cycle of empires with a succession of hegemonies: (i) the triumph of the nation-state (p.116); (ii) the advent of sustained economic growth (p.123); and (iii) the creation of a world market economy (p.127).
Among the countervailing forces that limit expansion are (i) loss-of-strength gradient, (ii) generation of opposing power, (iii) economic, technical and other factors determine the optimal size for political entities, (iv) tendency toward political disintegration and fragmentation of society (p.149).
Equilibrium and decline - internal factors: (i) structural changes in the economy, (ii) tendency for most efficient military techniques to rise in cost, (iii) tendency for public and private consumption to grow faster than GNP as society becomes more affluent, (iv) stagnation and cessation of innovation, (v) corrupting influence of affluence (p.159); and external factors - (i) increase in the costs of political dominance, and (ii) loss of economic and technological leadership (p.168).
War and change - there are three types of response to declining fortunes: (i) eliminate the reason for increasing costs; (ii) expand to a more secure and less costly defensive perimeter; (iii) reduce international commitments (p.191). The most direct method of retrenchment is unilateral abandonment of commitments, the second is to enter into alliances or seek rapprochement with less threatening powers, and the third is to make concessions to a rising power and seek to appease its ambitions (p.193).
Throughout history the primary means of resolving the disequilibrium between the structure of the international system and the distribution of power has been war, hegemonic war. It (i) involves a direct contest between the dominant power and the rising challenger, (ii) is an unlimited conflict because it challenges the legitimacy of the system, (iii) is characterized by unlimited means employed and by the general scope of warfare (p.200).
Preconditions: (i) the intensification of conflicts among states is a consequence of the ``closing in'' of space and opportunities, (ii) perception that a fundamental historical change is taking place and the fear of great powers that time is beginning to work against it and it should settle matters through preemptive war, (iii) the course of events begins to escape human control (p.202)
Continuity - even though the world has profoundly changed, there is little evidence that the human race has solved the problems associated with international political change, especially the problem of war (p.213).
Nuclear weapons: (i) primary purpose is deterrence of another great war; (ii) provide the nuclear state with a guarantee of its independence and physical integrity; and (iii) their possession largely determines the rank in the international hierarchy of prestige (are these really true?), (p.212). The thesis that nuclear weapons have made hegemonic war an impossibility remains inconclusive (p.218).
Interdependence: its growth and the prospect for mutual gain have not eliminated competition and mutual distrust among nations (p.221).
Global society: transnational and international actors have broken the monopoly of the state in the management of the international system. Eras of arrested growth, diminishing returns, and market constriction have been associated with conflict, not to transcendence of narrow loyalties (p.224).
The bipolar system - five types of developments tend to destabilize bipolar systems and trigger hegemonic conflict: (i) danger that one of the pair will fail to play its balancing role; (ii) danger that a rise of a third party will upset the balance; (iii) danger of polarization of the international system as a whole into two hostile camps; (iv) danger of entanglement of the major powers in the ambitions and difficulties of minor allies; and (v) danger of loss of control over economic, political, and social developments (p.237).

@BOOK{gilpin-81:war,
    TITLE     = {War and Change in World Politics},
    AUTHOR    = {Robert Gilpin},
    YEAR      = {1981},
    PUBLISHER = {Princeton University Press},
    ADDRESS   = {Princeton},
    ISBN      = {0-521-27376-5},
    NOTE      = {Pp. 272}
}