The United States overtook Britain as the world’s leading economic power in the 1870s. But it took another seven decades and two world wars for the United States to take its place as the world’s most powerful state. Meanwhile, it took Great Britain about the same amount of time to retrench from its erstwhile dominant position. Emerging economically and financially exhausted from two world wars, the 1956 Suez Crisis and the retreat from East of Suez in the late sixties marked the symbolic end of Britain’s global great power position.
Great powers often rise and decline with lags. What explains these lags? Robert Gilpin laid out the economic reasons for the rise and fall of hegemonic states in his masterly War and Change in World Politics (1981). Paul Kennedy examined the historical record in detail in his equally masterly Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987). Both scholars ultimately linked the rise/ fall to a strengthening/ weakening economic base. As their economies strengthen, states are able to expand their power until they face imperial overstretch. More often than not, they then fail to adjust their international position and suffer relegation, often in the wake of great power war.
The afterglow hypothesis offers one explanation as to why great powers fail to adjust in a timely manner to the changing international distribution of power. It posits that the forces that drove a state to international dominance were locked into domestic institutions that subsequently prevent timely adjustment during the decline phase (Brawley 1999, Krasner 1982). It is tempting to propose the “foreglow hypothesis”. Rising states similarly need to overcome interests embedded in domestic institutions before they end up exercising international power commensurate with their potential. In other words, afterglow helps explain why declining powers adjust too late (or not at all). Foreglow helps explain why rising powers lag in converting potential into actual power.
The “glow” hypotheses put a particular emphasis on the role of domestic institutions, including bureaucracies. Various institutional and bureaucratic actors are closely tied to the international position of the hegemonic state. For example, the Bank of England pushed for Britain to re-join the gold standard after WWI (supported the City of London). The Imperial Defence Staff was not surprisingly reluctant to dismantle the British Empire and retreat from its global position. Domestic interests were closely tied to Britain’s international position. Eisenhower would have called it the military-industrial complex. Similarly, domestic institutions may slow down a state’s rise. During the 19th century, the slave-owning South and the North were often at loggerheads over US territorial expansion, particularly in the Caribbean. Lacking a sufficient congressional majority, the US government was on occasion unable to push forward with territorial annexations. It is not only domestic institutions and interests that help slow down adjustment and ascendancy.
By the same token, economically powerful states may need to create the tools to exercise power in first place. “Trading states” like Germany and Japan may have significant military potential due to their advanced economy and indigenous technology. They simply have not endowed themselves with the military tools to exercise greater power. Japan’s pacificist constitution and former prime minister Abe’s unsuccessful attempts to change it is an obvious example. The US, for example, did not have anything resembling a modern navy until well into the last quarter of the 19th century, even though it had already overtaken Britain economically.
Declining states – already feeling vulnerable – may be reluctant to retrench in an attempt to preserve their credibility and their reputation. Given that there is always uncertainty about the real balance of power as well as the willingness of adversaries to incur costs, declining states are tempted to maintain their commitments and thus fail to adjust. They may also hope that weakness proves temporary if they manage to hold out long enough. If a residual of uncertainty attaches to the balance of power, it may be rational to take a gamble and not adjust, not least because adjusting rather than standing one’s ground may also encourage adversaries to push even harder. This may have been the calculation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 when it risked a war with Russia following the assassination of the archduke.
By comparison, a rising power may not feel any urgent need to exercise its power, particularly if it involves uncertain costs and risks. Rising powers, unless they are challenged, may simply decide to stay the proverbial course. Things are bound to move its way. US policymakers frequently took this view with regard to various annexation targets during the second half of the nineteenth century. Not feeling vulnerable like a declining state, a rising state feels a much more limited need to “up-adjust”. With their reputation rising, the need to prove It is arguably also less urgent.
Cognitive biases like the endowment effect, loss aversion and the sunk cost effect may also make it harder for a declining state to adjust its position. The endowment effect leads decision-makers to overvalue what they own. Loss aversion and sunk costs make them reluctant to cut their losses (if they have already occurred any) and, if anything, to double down. Incidentally, this may be why strategic adjustment typically involves a new government or even a new political regime. A new leadership is less invested in the status quo and, acting more rationally, is more willing to accept already incurred losses. By comparison, the rising state is not faced with losses but rather with foregone gains if it does not exercise its increasing power. It is psychologically easier to forego gains than incur losses. No wonder that rising and declining states respond in very asymmetric ways to a changing balance of power.
Domestic decision-makers in declining states have also little incentive to retrench in terms of personal-political interests. Few political careers and few historical legacies are built on retrenchment and successfully managing decline. Maybe some historical legacies are, but political careers are not. Charles de Gaulle oversaw Algerian independence and Gorbachev the dismantlement of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. Both statesmen faced coup attempts. After all, a rational, forward-looking policy of retrenchment is easily exploited by domestic opponents, who play the nationalist and jingoistic card. By comparison, political leaders in rising states have substantially more room for maneuver, even if they, too, are sometimes forced to fend off domestic forces that demanding more aggressive policies. Against their will, McKinley was forced into the Spanish-American War and Bismarck was forced into annexing Alsace-Lorraine. (Probably urban myths; but myths are very illustrative.)
Culture, elite socialization and ideas may affect both retrenchment and expansion. Narratives may make it difficult for political leaders in rising powers to resist calls for a more hawkish foreign policy. Germany’s stab-in-the-back legend after WWI, France’s revisionism after the Franco-Prussian war with respect to French Alsace-Lorraine or contemporary China’s discourse about the century of humiliation victimhood make it more difficult for policymakers to resist exercising power. By the same token, post-WWI French pacifism and US discourse about the need to avoid foreign entanglement may have unduly constrained the two countries’ rise, or at least more forceful foreign policies during the inter-war period. Culture, history and memory may matter. How much they matter relative to material interests is a historical or policy question. Elite socialization and elite change can also constrain or accelerate a state’s shift towards more forceful policies. After Bismarck stepped down, a new generation of policymakers took over Imperial Germany’s foreign policy. The political outlook of post-war German and Japanese elites, having suffered catastrophic defeat, was completely different from that of their predecessors. No doubt, material factors mattered. But this does not mean that elite turnover is irrelevant.
None of this is meant to suggest that systemic-level factors do not matter. Domestic factors in so far as they mediate international pressure for adjustment – whether retrenchment or expansion – are important. Rising powers may generally be less constrained than declining powers in terms of their strategic position, the need to defend the status quo and room for strategic maneuver. Nonetheless, rising states when faced with security competition or threats to its “vital” interests may also quickly become subject to very similar systemic pressures than declining states do. It may not be the shifting balance of power that affects a rising state’s foreign policy as much as the balance of (perceived) threat (Walt 1985). In other words, the distribution of power and the balance of threat do matter, too. And a thorough understanding of a state’s rise and fall, including why states typically fail to adjust in a timely matter, require an analysis of both domestic and international variables.