Partnership or Predation? How Rising States Contend with Declining Great Powers

When and why do rising states prey upon or support declining powers? A rising state’s choice of policy toward a declining power depends on two factors: whether that power may be useful against challengers to the rising state, and the declining state’s military strength. Case study analysis of Britain’s decline in the late 1940s and the Soviet Union’s decline from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s illustrates how this argument outperforms explanations that focus instead on the role of economic interdependence and ideology in determining rising-state policy toward states in decline.