Looking Up: Rising States and Great Power Decline since 1945

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Will a rising China challenge the interests and security of a declining United States? If so, when and under what circumstances? This project offers a theory to explain when and why rising states challenge declining great powers rather than pursue strategies of accommodation and restraint. It then tests this argument by looking at moments of precipitous relative decline—when a declining state begins to rapidly lose its relative standing among the great powers—drawing particularly from post-1945 U.S. foreign policy and the declines of the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. The results suggest that rising states can, counterintuitively, be discouraged from directly challenging declining states for a significant period of time, and thus that much of the concern over a rising China is overblown.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.