Do tough neighborhoods breed big powers? Richard Gowan
August 24, 2010 | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America | 6 comments
Are emerging great powers like Old Etonians or street-fighters? Or, to be a bit more literal, should we expect great powers to emerge out of privileged, prosperous backgrounds with lots of resources and few natural enemies? Or will they punch their way out of tough, highly conflictual regions? If you look at the first decades twentieth century, the U.S. obviously benefited from having a benign neighborhood, while Germany’s rise was complicated by the ring of unfriendly powers around it.
Looking at the world today, strategists get very excited by the potential for Sino-Indian rivalry to constrain one or both of those powers. (Brazil is, by contrast, the Old Etonian amongst the BRICs, with no serious long-term rivals in its region.) Over on his blog “Polaris”, Dhruva Jaishankar highlights how this worries Indian policy-makers:
One of the few points of consensus at a conference on India I helped organise in February was that India would find it difficult to escape its region unless it were able to establish peaceful relations with (and stability within) the countries in its immediate neighbourhood, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The feeling was that India would be tethered by disputes with these smaller states, and adversely affected by the instability spilling over from them. This would, in turn, compromise India’s great power ambitions. A similar logic underlies Pakistan’s longstanding policy of attempting to destabilise India through asymmetric and unconventional means.
But Dhruva can think of quite a few big powers that came out of tough neighborhoods:
Exhibit A. Europe. For much of modern history, the only powers capable of global reach were located in Europe: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, France, and subsequently Germany and Italy. The close proximity of these states to one another, and the presence of strong second-tier states in their immediate vicinities, meant that at no time were the fates of these countries secure at home. This did not stop any of them from seeking conquests and projecting power on multiple continents.
Exhibit B. Japan. The rise of Japan in the late 19th century after the Meiji Restoration coincided with unstable politics at home and in the region. Nine years into the new era, the Japanese ruling oligarchy had to crush the Satsuma Rebellion in the south. Japan went on to fight wars against China and Russia, and annexed Korea and Formosa (Taiwan). In the midst of almost continuous regional conflict, Japan was accorded all the trappings of a great power, including seats at the League of Nations and the Washington Naval Conference.Exhibit C. China. The growth of China is a remarkable story, but once again it has come despite—not because—of its political relationships with its neighbours. Certainly, China has not had a significant conflict since 1979 and it has settled many of its land boundary disputes. However, it continues to have uneasy relations with almost all its neighbours, including a sizeable dispute with its largest regional competitor, India. It also has one of the most unstable states in the world—North Korea—immediately bordering it. And the military presence of the world’s preeminent power in its region severely limits its actions. None of this has stopped China’s rise.
As Dhruva recognizes, this doesn’t mean that India – or indeed China – can ignore bad stuff on its borders. But it’s an interesting reminder that, while Western strategists worry about the erosion of the liberal order, today’s rising powers may be able to tolerate a pretty high degree of disorder as they assert themselves…
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Do you think that growing up in a tough neighbourhood makes you grow faster and stronger? Insecurity means that you spend resources on securing yourself, with positive externalities. For example China's military might desire secure access of the Malacca straits to maintain supplies should war break out, develop a blue water navy to secure this which not only secures energy supplies for military logic, but has a knock on effect for trade and commerce in general? What about the employment of the world's first and second largest armies (China and India) due to mutual fear: a massive waste of manpower and labour or, perhaps (I'm no economist!) a legitimate form of Keynesian macroeconomic spending with knock on effects for the domestic economy? The US became a true power after getting involved in a rather rough neighbourhood…
So perhaps Dhruva's assumption – " The growth of China is a remarkable story, but once again it has come despite—not because—of its political relationships with its neighbours" – is misplaced… ? Perhaps the kid who gets bullied in his street, and works out, gets buff and learns kung-fu, ends up as the powerful investment banker (I don't why I chose this profession) who walks all over the clever, well bred but ultimately easily intimidated academic who grew up in the soft embrace of the suburbs?
i think there's a 'u' in neighborhood …
Not in the US, there isn't.
I do think that's exactly right that growing up in a rough neighbourhood can better prepare you for the big time. It does not conflict with my larger observation that India does not need to normalise relations with its neighbors in order to project power externally (although it may help).
The problem, though, is how to explain some of the outliers: the Old Etonians with a knack for pugilism. Specifically, the United States should have been rather satisfied with itself in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so how does one explain its Wilsonian tendencies during WWI, or its remarkable ability to develop a strong military capable of external intervention? America's strong isolationist streak, by contrast, would conform to the general principle, as would the recent evolution of a 'post-heroic' Europe. Brazil, the Old Etonian among the current generation of rising powers, will be interesting to observe in the coming decades. Will it remain satisfied being the preeminent power in Latin America, or will it assume more far-flung challenges as its latent power increases?
On your last point, I think that there already signs of Brazil taking on longer-range challenges, but through pacific means like increased aid to Africa.
Of course, it's worth pointing out that countries that leave local disputes unresolved – or conflicts unfinished – may see their global power unrvel in the end. Spain did jolly well building up its American empire in the early modern era, but could never quite deal with England, the Netherlands, etc.
In the 1930s, British strategy was torn as it became clear that London could not deal with Hitler in Europe and defend the Empire at the same time – once Britain was cornered by the Germans in 1940-41, Japan swept down on Singapore… but then the Japanese were trying to spread their power before they had dealt with the endless war in China….
The strategic lesson might well be: "Look the the horizon – but watch your back!"
This is an excellent exchange. Richard – I think your remark that countries that cannot solve local disputes may see their power unravel is spot on. It is telling that countries that have grown up in tough neighborhoods and have managed to emerge as great powers have had constant problems staying that way, for the simple fact that they are much more likely to have to deal with local security dilemmas and balancing alliances. Rarely is there a country that has grown up under such conditions and managed to become a great power or even anything close to a regional hegemon who wasn't eventually beaten back.
Dhruva – On your question of what explains the outlier examples, I think, when talking about the US, it was precisely the lack of a regional peer competitor that enabled it the space to act according to Wilsonian principles. Free of external constraints stemming from concerns over a local balance of power it was able to wield its might using economic or ideological logics, as opposed to being driven by security-related concerns.
So, if you permit me a debatable generalization I think it might be something like this: Great powers can emerge from either type of neighborhood, and after doing so if they behave like ‘street fighters’ (as most great powers eventually do at some point) the sources of this pugilistic behavior might be different. If you came out of a relatively benign region your foreign policy might be more subject to domestic forces, be they cultural, ideological, or economic. But if you came of age in a tough neighborhood your elites will have been more deeply conditioned by that experience, be more likely to have to continue to look over your shoulder, and will thus also be more likely to form foreign policy according to a hard security logic.