Customer Reviews

Power Transitions: Strategies For the 21st Century

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What is the current threat to world peace? What will the post Cold War-system look like in the 21st century? Who will follow the United States as the next world power? Power Transitions answers these provocative questions revolutionizing academic analysis and merging it with hands on policy. This book is a must-not only for graduate and undergraduate students in political science-it is an academic book that is approachable for everyone (especially international business executives) who wants to understand the current state of the world. Power Transitions intriguingly predicts China's rise to world dominance in carefully documented terms. India is predicted to be the power to dominate China. These statements are not alarmist statements, but scientifically derived predictions of prestigious academics, providing practical political solutions for these potentially dire events. The Department Chair of the National War College, Ronald Tammen, joined forces with Jacek Kugler, a distinguished professor from Claremont Graduate University, Alan Stam from Yale, and a hand-full of brilliant young analysts from various institutions to compile a new theory and a new perspective for a new age.

I read this book a while ago while I was in Prof Tammen's Power Transitions course at Portland State University. I personally think that the theory is for the most part sound but the most important thing that can be derived from the book is a WORKING model or framework that can enable political leaders a rational method to make sound policy choices.

The problem with the Power Transition Theory (and many other similar theories) is that it attempts to provide an all-encompassing explanation of wars and conflicts. The theory is very elegant and interesting, but cannot reach beyond general statements that are of very little explanatory value. For example, the claim that a state will challenge the dominant power when it reaches parity or overtakes that power is very trivial. Anyone even remotely familiar with world history would agree that probably that is a necessary condition (though there are certainly many exceptions) for a war between world powers or between any other pair or group of competing states. If that can be supported by additional studies, that's nice, but we still don't go beyond generalities.

And yet, the authors continue forwarding such claims as: "the conflict between Iran and Iraq was the result of Iraq's overtaking of Iran in the wake of the 1980 collapse of the Iranian political regime." They should know better and recognize that even if the so-called 'overtaking' played a role in the Iraq's attack on Iran, this was just a matter of timing in taking advantage of the presumed Iran's weakness, but it was not the real cause of the conflict. Further, concluding from the actual strength of the two states and the poor performance of Iraq in the war one would even question if there was 'overtaking' in the first place. The authors engage here in a circular reasoning: 'Overtaking' occurred because Iraq attacked Iran; Iraq attacked Iran because 'overtaking' occurred. As many theories of this kind, Power Transition theory struggles with a serious dilemma. In its general form it cannot really explain anything, but the soonest it goes beyond the generalities, it encounters a whole gamut of explanations that deem the theory irrelevant. One solution of the authors is to add a variable of "dissatisfaction of states involved in powers' competition." But this is a simple "backdoor" attempt at incorporating other factors playing a role in international relations. To say that a state is satisfied or dissatisfied necessitates asking another question: why are they satisfied (or dissatisfied)? But once we start searching for answers we discover that we don't need the Power Transition theory anymore. There are other more convincing explanations of wars and conflicts.

And if we don't search for the answers, we will fall into the trap of another "circular reasoning' argument. When a war happened, there must have been 'overtaking' and 'dissatisfaction,' but if a war didn't erupt then there was no 'overtaking' or both states were 'satisfied' with the overtaking. That's certainly very convenient way to explain wars, except that it does not explain anything. And since it cannot explain the past, the "predictions" for the future are in the realm of speculations no different from any educated journalist.

In short, the book presents many new and interesting points, but the new are not necessarily that interesting, and the interesting are not new. The authors frequently remind us that "Power Transition theory is a powerful predictor of war," that it is "unrivaled in scope," that it "anticipates the characteristics of conflict," but there is no real evidence that it does or it is any of these.

Mariusz Ozminkowski, Pasadena, California