The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (107 page)

A
fter a five-hundred-year survey of the rise and fall of the Great Powers within the international system, there is a case for concluding with a substantial final section on
theory
and
methodology
, in which the author would engage the proliferating theories upon “war and the cycle of relative power,”
¹
“global wars, public debts, and the long cycle,”
²
“the size and duration of empires,”
³
and the various other attempts
⁴
by political scientists to make some sense of the whole and—usually—to suggest implications for the future. But this is not a work of political science, even if it hopes to have offered a large body of detailed facts and commentaries to those scholars in that discipline who are investigating the larger patterns of war and change in the international order.

This section will also not attempt to offer a conclusive summary of where we stand now, for that would contradict one of the chief messages of this book, which is that the international system is subject to constant changes, not only those caused by the day-to-day actions of statesmen and the ebb and flow of political and military events, but also those caused by the deeper transformations in the foundations of world power, which in time make their way through to the surface.

Nevertheless, it is proper to offer a few general observations before closing this study. It has been argued throughout the book that so far as the international system is concerned, wealth and power, or economic strength and military strength, are always relative and should be seen as such. Since they are relative, and since all societies are subject to the inexorable tendency to change, then the international balances can
never
be still, and it is a folly of statesmanship to assume that they ever would be. Given the anarchic and competitive nature of rivalries between nations, the history of international affairs over the past five centuries has all too frequently been a history of warfare, or at least of preparation for warfare—both of which consume resources which societies might use for other “goods,” whether public or private. Whatever the stage of economic and scientific development reached,
each century has therefore witnessed a debate about the extent to which national wealth ought to be used for military purposes. It has also recorded a debate about how best to enhance national prosperity, not only because of the individual benefits which increased wealth brings, but also because of the recognition that economic growth, productivity, flourishing finances, will all affect a Great Power’s relative prospects if another international conflict occurs. Indeed, the outcome of all of the major, lengthy wars among the Great Powers which have been surveyed here repeatedly points to the crucial influences of productive economic forces—both during the struggle itself, and during those periods
between
wars when differentiated growth rates cause the various Powers to become relatively stronger or weaker. To a large degree, the outcome of the great coalition wars of the period 1500–1945 confirms the shifts which have been taking place, over a longer period, at the economic level. The new territorial order established at the end of each war thus reflects the redistribution of power which has been taking place within the international system. The coming of peace, however, does not stop this process of continual change; and the differentiated pace of economic growth among the Great Powers ensures that they will go on, rising and falling, relative to each other.

Whether the existence of “rising” and “falling” Powers in an anarchical world order must always lead to war is not certain. Most of the historical literature assumed that “war” and “the Great Power system” go hand in hand. Mackinder, one of the founding fathers of neomer-cantilist and geopolitical thought, held that “the great wars of history … are the outcome, direct or indirect, of the unequal growth of nations.”
⁵
But did this pattern cease in 1945? It may indeed be the case that the advent of nuclear weapons, with their built-in threat to turn any exchange of fire into mutual devastation, has finally checked the habit of resorting to armed conflict in response to secular shifts in the Great Power balances, leaving only indirect, small-scale, “surrogate” wars. However, it might also be the case that the mutual apprehensions of nuclear weapons merely ensure that future conflicts, if they occur between the Great Powers, would remain conventional—although even they would be dreadfully bloody affairs, given modern battlefield weaponry.

Obviously, no one knows the answer to such critical questions. Those who assume that mankind would not be so foolish as to become involved in another ruinously expensive Great Power war perhaps need reminding that that belief was also widely held for much of the nineteenth century; and, indeed, Norman Angell’s book
The Great Illusion
, which became an international bestseller with its argument that war would be economically disastrous to both victors and vanquished, appeared as late as 1910, as the European general staffs were quietly finalizing their war plans.

Whatever the likelihood of nuclear or conventional clashes between the major states, it is clear that important transformations in the balances
are
occurring, and will continue, probably at a faster pace than before. What is more, they are occurring at the two separate but interacting levels of economic production and strategic power. Unless the trends of the past two decades alter (but why should they?), the
pattern
of world politics looks roughly as follows:

First
, there will be a shift, both in shares of total world product and total world military spending, from the five largest concentrations of strength to many more nations; but that will be a gradual process, and no other state is likely to join the present “pentarchy” of the United States, the USSR, China, Japan, and the EEC in the near future.

Secondly
, the global productive balances between these five have already begun to tilt in certain directions: away from Russia and the United States, away also from the EEC, to Japan and China. This does not make for a
balanced
five-sided arrangement in economic terms, for the United States and the EEC have roughly the same productive and trading muscle (though the former gains immensely by being a military state); the USSR and Japan are also roughly equal (though Japan is growing the faster), with each having only around two-thirds of the productive power of the previous two; and the PRC is still a long way behind, but growing fastest of all.

Thirdly
, in military terms there still exists a bipolar world, in that only the United States and the USSR have the capacity to ensure each other’s destruction—and the destruction of any other country. Nevertheless, that bipolarity may be being slowly eroded, both at the
nuclear
level, either because such weapons are unusable under most circumstances, or because China, France, and Britain are each acquiring massive additions to their own nuclear arsenals; and at the
conventional
level, because of the steady buildup of Chinese strength, plus the growing realization that a West German-French (with, possibly, British and Italian) agglomeration of land, sea, and air forces would be an extremely large combination of power, if those nations really could work together effectively. For domestic-political reasons, that is not likely to happen in the near future; but the very fact that such a potential exists places a further uncertainty over the “bipolar” system, at least at the conventional level. By contrast, no one is at present suggesting that Japan will transform itself into a great military Power; yet all acquainted with the pattern of “war and change in world politics” would find it unsurprising if, one day, a different political leadership in Tokyo decided to turn its economic strength into a larger degree of military strength.

If Japan did decide to become a more active military presence in world affairs, it would presumably be because it felt it could no longer preserve its interests by acting simply as a “trading state”;
⁶
in strengthening
its armed forces, it would therefore be hoping to enhance its power and influence internationally to an extent that could not be achieved by nonmilitary measures. Yet the history of the past five hundred years of international rivalry demonstrates that military “security” alone is never enough. It may, over the shorter term, deter or defeat rival states (and that, for most political leaders and their publics, is perfectly satisfactory). But if, by such victories, the nation over-extends itself geographically and strategically; if, even at a less imperial level, it chooses to devote a large proportion of its total income to “protection,” leaving less for “productive investment,” it is likely to find its economic output slowing down, with dire implications for its long-term capacity to maintain both its citizens’ consumption demands and its international position.
⁷
Already this is happening in the case of the USSR, the United States, and Britain; and it is significant that both China and West Germany are struggling to avoid an excessive investment in military spending, both suspecting that it would affect their long-term growth prospects.

We therefore return to the conundrum which has exercised strategists and economists and political leaders from classicaltimes onward. To be a Great Power—by definition, a state capable of holding its own against any other nation
⁸
—demands a flourishing economic base. In List’s words, “War or the very possibility of war makes the establishment of a manufacturing power an indispensable requirement for a nation of the first rank.… ”
⁹
Yet by going to war, or by devoting a large share of the nation’s “manufacturing power” to expenditures upon “unproductive” armaments, one runs the risk of eroding the national economic base, especially vis-à-vis states which are concentrating a greater share of their income upon productive investment for long-term growth.

All of this was fully recognized by the classical writers on political economy. Those who followed Adam Smith’s preferences inclined to keep defense expenditures low; those sympathetic to List’s notion of
Nationaloekonomie
wanted to see the state possess greater instruments of force. All of them, if they were honest, admitted that it was really a matter of choice, and a difficult choice at that.
¹⁰
Ideally, of course, “profit” and “power” should go hand in hand. Far too often, however, statesmen found themselves confronted with the usual dilemma: between buying military security, at a time of real or perceived danger, which then became a burden upon the national economy; or keeping defense expenditures low, but finding one’s interests sometimes threatened by the actions of other states.
¹¹

The present large Powers in the international system are thus compelled to grapple with the twin challenges which have confronted all their predecessors: first, with the uneven pattern of economic growth, which causes some of them to become wealthier (and, usually,
stronger), relative to others; and second, with the competitive and occasionally dangerous scene abroad, which forces them to choose between a more immediate military security and a longer-term economic security.
No
general rule will provide the decision-makers of the time with a universally applicable course of action. If they neglect to provide adequate military defenses, they may be unable to respond if a rival Power takes advantage of them; if they spend too much on armaments—or, more usually, upon maintaining at growing cost the military obligations they had assumed in a previous period—they are likely to overstrain themselves, like an old man attempting to work beyond his natural strength. None of this is made easier by the “law of the increasing cost of war.”
¹²
Even if, to take the most often cited example, one actually can prevent the entire U.S. Air Force budget from being consumed by the production of a
single
aircraft in the year 2020, the cost escalation of modern weaponry is an alarming tendency for all governments—and their taxpayers.

Each of today’s large Powers—the United States, the USSR, China, Japan, and (putatively) the EEC—is therefore left grappling with the age-old dilemmas of rise and fall, with the shifting pace of productive growth, with technological innovation, with changes in the international scene, with the spiraling cost of weapons, with alterations in the power balances. Those are not developments which can be controlled by any one state, or individual. To paraphrase Bismarck’s famous remark, all of these Powers are traveling on “the stream of Time,” which they can “neither create nor direct,” but upon which they can “steer with more or less skill and experience.”
¹³
How they emerge from that voyage depends, to a large degree, upon the wisdom of the governments in Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, Peking, and the various European capitals. The above analysis has tried to suggest what the prospects are likely to be for each of those polities and, in consequence, for the Great Power system as a whole. But that still leaves an awful lot depending upon the “skill and experience” with which they manage to sail on “the stream of Time.”