Smith - Power in the changing global order: the US, Russia and China

Introduction: Power in the Changing Global Order

The purpose and plan of this book

This book is about international power. The topic has been discussed extensively, but thus far with some significant limitations as far as the world politics and international relations literature is concerned. The main one has arisen from a noticeable disinclination on the part of international relations scholars to explore in depth what the idea of power actually means. Analysts working in the field have often seemed more comfortable thinking and writing about who has power and what they do with it, rather than about the core issue of what it is.

The discussions that follow in this brief introduction will address this limitation in more detail. Chapters 1 and 2 will follow on from this by developing an approach to the understanding of power in the international arena. This will then form the conceptual basis for analysing the power of the three states under consideration in this book. Because of the relative absence of relevant work in the world politics and international relations fields, much of the analysis in these opening chapters will draw upon the work of scholars working within the fields of sociology and philosophy.

Having developed a working understanding of power, in subsequent chapters of the book I will test and explore its utility in helping to construct and inform assessments of the power of the contemporary United States, Russia and China. The overall aim here is not to offer a comprehensive introductory guide to power and power relations in the contemporary world per se . Hence, relatively little will be said about other states (or groupings of states), such as India, Japan or the European Union, that may be considered significant powers in their own right. By the same token, there will be little discussion of supposedly emerging powers such as Brazil or South Africa.

The three states under consideration here have been chosen on the basis that they represent distinct and important case studies of key aspects of international power in the contemporary world (defined here as the period since the ending of the Cold War in 198991). Analysis of their particular characteristics, features and actions therefore affords the opportunity to develop a nuanced assessment of key distinctive features of power in the modern international arena.

After 1945, the United States became the central actor in an international system based on structures, norms and processes of what has been called liberal hegemony, which will be analysed in chapter 3. The US has remained, by common consent, a if not indeed the pivotal international power since the end of the Cold War. Accordingly, the post-Cold War US will receive substantial analytical attention in this book.

Analysts have generally defined the United States status since the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 with reference to the existence of a unipolar world order. The premises of the unipolar concept will be introduced and examined in chapter 3. Chapter 4 will then assess the extent to which the real world order of the 1990s was indeed marked by American unipolarity. During that decade, debates and controversies first arose (and have continued since) over whether the US was accumulating too much power in the absence of an effective system balancer of the kind that the Soviet Union had been during the Cold War.

These debates reached a new intensity after the turn of the millennium. This was a development fuelled largely by the George W. Bush administrations alleged misuse of the USs unipolar status in ways that, according to some, ultimately damaged its international power. The controversies and debates surrounding the initial Bush approach to American power will be examined in chapter 5. There is strong evidence to suggest that the Bush administration recognized the damage that was being done by its early approach to the conduct of international relations, and that it learned from its mistakes and altered its course in significant ways during its second term in office from early 2005. In order to offer a fully rounded assessment of this controversial presidency, this evidence will be examined and discussed in chapter 6.