Power Vacuums in Great Power Politics: The Consequences of Retrenchment and Collapse

About

Speaker: Moritz Sebastian Graefrath,  Grand Strategy, Security, & Statecraft Fellow, International Security Program

Differing beliefs about how great powers react to the emergence of power vacuums in international politics play a central role in the current debate on U.S. grand strategy: on the one hand, those who believe that power vacuums are inevitably filled by adversaries seeking to expand their influence abroad tend to call for a more involved grand strategy; on the other hand, those who are more sanguine about the possible consequences of creating power vacuums tend to support calls for the United States to withdraw from some of its international commitments.

Yet, despite the frequency with which power vacuums occur in the current policy discourse, scholars of international politics have largely neglected to study them in a serious social scientific manner. The speaker seeks to rectify these omissions by providing the first systematic assessment of the role of power vacuums in great power politics. He does so by addressing a series of foundational questions. What are power vacuums? Why do great powers seek to assert authority in some power vacuums but not others? And what determines their choice of strategy when they decide to compete for it?

The answers to these questions help put current policy debates on a sound conceptual, theoretical, and empirical footing and further have important implications for understanding of international politics more broadly.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcoc-CprDMqGNUDYFVtQDRONPhLlXED9kwn

Contact

For more information, email the International Security Program Assistant at susan_lynch@harvard.edu.