…because the alternative to intelligent political action is not only poverty-creating misery but the potential loss of our civilisation and the possible death of much of mankind.
This is the longest article I have put up on Medium. Sorry about that, but I think this subject is so significant that I want to refer to some of the supporting evidence, so that any reader can check out what I am saying and hopefully could come up with better answers.
The short-short guide to power transition theory is on Wikipedia athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_transition_theory. The best and most detailed recent article on this subject may be at
The most thorough recent book about all this may be David P Rapkin and William R Thompson, Transition Scenarios — China and the United States in the Twenty-First Century, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013.
It is clear from all these studies that major war is a now losing game to all concerned, if the situation is considered rationally. But in all of these documents one factor is missing — the animal mentality and faulty judgement of the leader of the challenging nation, and that has been the major causative factor in previous world wars. The ultimate reason for a war is the flawed judgement by a national leader, and there is no evidence human nature has changed in that respect, although the risks in future are larger than ever before, and could be lessened.
We are no longer ignorant about about the circumstances that lead to world war. Three generations of researchers have extensively and intensively investigated the circumstances leading to major war and have reported their findings. Perhaps the major ten books about this topic are:
1-3 Lewis Fry Richardson, Generalized Foreign Politics (1939), Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1950).
9 R M Tammen, J Kugler, D Lemke, A S Stam III, C alsharabati, M A Abdollahian, B Efird, and A F K Organski, Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century, CQ Press, 2000.
10 David P Rapkin and William R Thompson, Transition Scenarios — China and the United States in the Twenty-First Century, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013.
Given the vast extent of the literature on the subject, any summary is inevitably incomplete. M Taylor Fravel lists 151 sources covering six pages for his 22-page article. Rapkin and Thompson provide 37 pages of explanatory notes in their 261 page book. The interested reader is invited to follow the detail about this issue into whatever depth he or she desires via the above books and their references. Rapkin and Thompson also explore these issues through a multitude of credible scenarios.
There are two main strands in the study of the causes of war — the discursive and the statistical. Previous to the modern period, authors such as Thucydides (c460 BC — c395) in The History of the Peloponnesian War and British politicians like Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933) could suggest reasons for the outbreak and the causes of war but statistical methods offering proof of their conjectures were absent from their discussions because statistical analysis is an historically recent development. The modern period began with Lewis Fry Richardson who wrote three books [Generalized Foreign Politics (1939), Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1950)] in which he tried to establish a mathematics of conflict. In 1958 Abraham Kenneth Fimo Organski published World Politics in which he proposed that world wars are most likely to occur when the previous hegemonic leader is surpassed in economic power by a contender. His proposition (which he proved statistically and his intellectual successors extensively confirmed) completely demolished the previously held belief that power parity, or a balance of power, prevented major wars, and demonstrated that far from being preventative, power parity between leading military powers made major wars most likely.
But war is not inevitable (although the record of history shows that, without due political intervention, it can occur as a natural part of a power transition cycle) and peace is possible if timely political action creates the circumstances that clearly make war a losing game to its initiators.
There are many other possible observations about power contention during a potential power transition period. Perhaps the most pertinent of these are that
- the leader in the contender nation, knowing and perhaps even feeling their nation’s growing economic strength, over-estimates the country’s economic and political reach while under-estimating the residual military power and the strength of the alliances of the declining nation, and is impatient for the contender’s rising national power to be exercised and recognised, and
- the leader of the hegemonic power, knowing its recent history of political and economic dominance, and the international resources allied to its interests, similarly and complacently over-estimates their country’s future capability and under-estimates the probability of future conflict with the contender.
There is one further issue. The so-called “Phoenix Factor” — the observed rapid recovery of the defeated nation to its previous economic power after the war — is only possible if nearly all of the population in the defeated nation survives the war. That economic recovery cannot occur if most of the people in a region or country have been massacred. We can see this has happened in the only pre-industrial equivalent to the atom bomb, in the almost complete destruction by the Mongols of virtually the whole population of North West and North China (in the “land within the passes - Shensi and Kansu - which in Han and T’ang times had been the centre of Chinese civilisation.” see “China — A Short Cultural History, C P Fitzgerald, 1935-86, p 422). Perhaps Professor Fitzgerald (1902-1992) puts this point most eloquently with regard to the population massacre after the Mongol victory over the Northern Chinese state of Hsia:
“According to the Chinese history not more than one hundredth part of the population survived, the countryside was covered with human bones, the cities left desolate. The north-west [of China — the previous province/state of Hsia] has never recovered from this disaster. Many of the border cities were never reoccupied, and have been invaded by the drifting sands of the [Taklimakan] desert. The irrigation works fell into decay for lack of attention, and the country reverted to steppe.”
An atomic war would more closely resemble the aftermath of a Mongol massacre rather than any previous world war. The “Phoenix Factor” would not occur where atomic weaponry has destroyed the previous population. The devastation would be immense and could be permanent, with a geological fingerprint similar to the Chixulub event.
At the highest political level, the world is now entering a period of contending states. Distinguished political scientists — Abraham Fimo Organski in 1958, Organski and Kugler in 1980, have discussed the situation and more recently Siccama and others in the multiply authored book Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century (CQ Press, 2000) which proffers some solutions about how to avoid a Sino-American war. Some of the key observations are best quoted in full: For example, the first paragraph of the final Chapter 8 states
“Power Transition theory is one of the most powerful intellectual tools for policy makers to understand the dynamics of world politics in this century.”
“The Theory has three unique characteristics. It has a strong empirical base that has been subjected to rigorous testing against two centuries’ worth of data. Its theoretical description of the world is consistent with real political events and policies. And it provides insights insights into the future that can guide policymakers in their international management roles.
“With breadth and versatility, Power Transition accounts equally well for both world wars, the Cold War and the post-Cold War Era. It is applicable to the prenuclear and nuclear ages. It merges economic and security factors into one argument. It is a general theory of world politics that forms the basis of a grand strategy.”
“The future structure of the global heirarchy will be determined largely by the continued economic expansion of the great powers. As endogenous growth fosters convergence in the growth of per capita economic output, the size of a nation’s population will ultimately set the limit on the size of its economy. “
One suggestion from Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century is to alter the voting structure of the UN Security Council to reflect the actual economic and military power of its members. That would be a great step forward but the UN (like the League of Nations before it) has always lacked any significant military force to enforce its resolutions except when these were supported by the preponderant power. But suppose the preponderant power was outvoted in the Security Council — what would happen then? In this context it is important to remember that the UN was set up as as an adjunct to the Security Council, where the real power rests with the preponderant power.
That suggestion may not be fully realistic. In an ideal world China would become part of a reformed but world-wide successor to NATO but the rise of China to great power status is probably far too recent for the Chinese leaders to agree to to be bound by a majority decision within the Security Council. Chinese leaders appear to believe, with some justification, that time is on their side, so why would they always obey the recommendations of that Council? Why would Chinese leaders accept a democratically based vote modulated by national power in the Security Council when China is not a democracy?
One of the reasons World Wars have happened in the past is precisely because the leaders of great powers have used international organisations for their own objectives and disregard these organisations when it suits their purposes. American leaders have often done exactly that. The League of Nations (1919-1946) was founded after the end of the First World War with the major objectives of preventing war and peacefully settling international disputes. Although the League had many successes in settling some international disputes between minor powers in the 1920s and early 1930s it could not resolve issues involving a major power on one side. As Benito Mussolini commented, “The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.” As conflicts increased in the 1930s, the League proved itself quite unequal to dealing with them, as was demonstrated by the 1931 Manchurian Incident followed by the withdrawal of Japan from the League and Japan’s greater occupation of Manchuria, by the 1932-35 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Gran Chaco region, by the 1935 Italian invasion of Abyssinia, by the 1936 Spanish Civil War, and by the Second Sino-Japanese war started in 1937, and by the failure of the league to halt the military build up in Germany, Italy and Japan prior to World War 2. Germany withdrew from the league in 1937. Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations
The main reason for the failure of the League of Nations is perhaps best encapsulated in 1920s comments by the then British Foreign Minister Sir Eyre Crow (1864-1925) who criticised proposals for the League of Nations to operate through boycotts and blockades because “It is all a question of military preponderance.” Quite so — research during the last sixty years has completely validated that insightful comment.
If the preponderant power was outvoted in the Security Council or the UN, it could walk out or (possibly worse) just ignore the UN resolutions, and then do whatever its power permits.
It is a pity that the preponderant power has always acted as if its own interests were the only ones that mattered but this seems to be hardwired into human nature. There is still no adequate response to the Athenian defense of that behaviour, which does not necessarily happen because of wickedness on the part of the contender but because, as the Athenians (according to Thucydides) reportedly told the Melians,
“Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do.”
History tells us that the leader of the nation with preponderant power is not, in the last analysis, prepared to surrender to reason. Even worse, the leader of a rising state often interprets peace-making mediation, and the backing away from conflict of a previous hegemonic state, as evidence of weakness, and supposes that the challenged state will always back away because the dangers of war are so certain and its outcome is never guaranteed. That never happens. If a declining state is repeatedly challenged war does result. Chinese leaders please note.
The world needs a preponderant power larger than the USA during the atomic age in order to ensure the survival of most of mankind.
Political changes, if they are to work, must work with the grain of the nature of mankind, and the alteration of voting rights would work and does work democratically within the preponderant power but not in an external League of Nations or UN where voting power is not aligned with actual economic or military capability and where that League or UN lacks preponderant capability. Any proposal to avoid a future atomic war should operate within the framework of how preponderant power actually behaves.
One of the suggestions in Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century (CQ Press, 2000) p191 is for the creation of a US-led superbloc. That suggestion is perhaps the only feasible way to avoid major conflict.
Based upon the additional research of Rapkin and Thomson (2003) the most dangerous period when war is most probable is when the contender’s power is between 20% less and 20% more powerful than the previous hegemonic leader. That situation occurs during the next decade, when the Chinese economy will surpass the USA economy in real purchasing power and the probability of a major war reaches a maximum during the dangerous transitional power parity period from 2014 to 2023.
Because the challenger to the previous hegemonic power ignores the alliances of that declining power, it is essential to create a new federal state by uniting as many democratic countries as possible in a federal union in order to create a preponderant power that could maintain that position for the foreseeable future.
Preponderant power can be created in a series of steps. An economic federation between the US and the EU can stabilise the next two decades and is urgently required, because according to the O&K argument, the challenger only pays attention to the economic strength of the previous hegemonic leader and does not take due (or any) account of alliances. Many other democratic nations could join that economic federation as the benefits of doing so became clear. The ultimate objective would be to create a continuously preponderant power, leading ultimately to the hyperstate — a federal union eventually consisting of more than 50% of the population and over 50% of the GDP of the world.
Under all previous and existing political systems, it is the leader of a country that decides upon the steps leading up to, and committing his country to, major war. If it was possible to delegate the consideration of the decision to go to war to a second-tier group, that would be a highly effective way to reduce war probabilities.
In 1902 the British Cabinet decided that Britain would never, under any future circumstances, ever go to war with the USA. The basic requirement for a federal and perhaps economic union is that each of its members would promise that they would never under any future circumstances go to war with any other member state, and that a free trade zone (with limited exceptions) would exist between all member states, and that there could be the eventual aim of political union. As the nations within the federation converged in due course to a common prosperity level, the free movement of capital and people could increasingly come into force. EU leaders and administrators already have considerable experience of that process during the last few decades.
An incomplete list of the seven countries that could form the initial core of the embryo federation — that is, the major countries that would agree, due to their historical experience, that they would never, under any future circumstances, ever go to war with one another, in my perhaps faulty judgement, would probably be
There are probably dozens of other states that would join such a confederation if one was proposed or existed, and I apologise in advance to the many nations that might wish to join such a state (such as Japan or Mexico).
The 2013 GDP of such an economic union would be about $40.81 trillion, about 46.7% of the $87.3 tr. GDP of the world in 2013. (All data from the CIA world “Factbook”). That statistic shows how readily another preponderant power could be formed if the political will and the necessary intelligence were present.
That embryo federation would be a preponderant power for generations even if it did not continue to expand and consequently the big event of nuclear war would go away for decades. By 2025, for example, China’s GDP, currently $13.39 tr., might be about $34tr. but I estimate that the GDP of the hyperstate would be at least $55 tr., if the Federation was then still composed of the original seven members and Shimomuran economics was adopted. The hyperstate would initially have an industrial output of $9.61 tr. with about 25% of the world’s land area within it. That hyperstate should offer membership to Brazil, China, Russia and Mexico within a few years or so and should also offer membership to all the nations in Africa, Asia and South America..
The hyperstate would probably sooner or later incorporate nearly all of the major innovation zones in the world. Because the limits of long term economic development are determined by three main factors — by population, by the scale of the national physical resources and by invention and innovation — the hyperstate would enjoy a position of preponderant power for at least the first half of the 21st century, and probably well beyond then.
Eventually China — the current potential contender to the American hegemony — would see that joining the hyperstate was a great idea. For if a world empire should come into being through the hyperstate, as a previous Chinese Emperor remarked with regard to isolationist provinces, what has China done, that it should be denied the benefits of empire?
This essay is not a criticism of Chinese policies, nor an attempt to contain the future influence of China, but it is essential at this nexus that the current Chinese challenge (and the potential future Indian challenge to China) leads to a cultural merging of the strands of Asian and Western civilisations without the intervention of major wars. The ancient and honourable civilisation of China is one of the world’s greatest cultures but it is crucially important at this juncture that the challenge of China is modulated to operate within a peaceful framework. The interests of China would not be well served by the continuation of the current drift towards conflict which could destroy hundreds of millions of lives. Nor would the interests of India be served by any atomic wars.
Do you think Barack Obama knows all this? Does the Chinese President, Xi Jinping? Does the Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang? Does Angela Merkel?
It is really nice to note that at a recent meeting both Barack Obama and Li Keqiang both said that they would never intend that their countries would ever go to war with one another. Of course, due to the 22nd amendment to the constitution of the United States, President Obama cannot ever stand again for the US Presidency. I doubt the wisdom of that 22nd amendment, because if it had been in force in 1937, the Allies would have lost the Second World War. I think it may take two terms before a US president becomes fully effective and just as that is happening he (or she, perhaps in the near future) is forever disbarred from that office. A different US president will face what happens during the next eight years.
The American people are among the most inventive and innovative in the world. Silicon Valley demonstrates that. But the mindset of most American economists — the Washington Consensus, all the garbage about the superiority of free markets, privatisation, and all the wrong intellectual justification for foisting on other countries a system which does not deliver adequate economic growth at home or abroad — is totally useless except as a system for exploiting people for the benefit of the already rich. If the USA does not adopt Shimomuran economics, it will become an industrial backwater, a bigger version of the UK, reducing in militarily capability and still powerful, but a failure as a successful industrial nation.
Many America-resident sociologists have been pre-eminent in analysing the war probabilities. But given that the combined research and intelligence of thousands of American economists have failed to notice Shimomuran economics then it would be expecting too much for Obama to have been briefed about the war probabilities around the present period of hegemonic transfer.
Dear students of Rethinking Economics, thank you for your most excellent and stimulating 2014 London Conference. If you have read these articles on this Medium site, then you understand more effective economics, and you know how to avoid the next World War better, than the current President of the United States. The world is not without its bizarre developments.
The recovery of land which was previously an integral part of the contender’s area is one of the least negotiable demands by a rising state. The major area which may become a sticking points in future Chinese demands for territory is the island of Taiwan, which the Chinese regard as a part of the historic area of China. Some negotiated settlement of this issue is preferable to an atomic war.(The heading photograph on this article is of Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.)
If the hyperstate is not created recurrent atomic wars are likely. After the first Sino-American atomic war, in the central forecast, India grows to parity with China by about 2035-40, and war probability increases again. The future of the world could be recurrent Asian wars for the prize of economic hegemony and preponderant power, in a kind of Asian replay of recent European history. This is the expectation set out in Chapter 8 of “Power Transitions Strategies for the 20th Century” which also proposes economic and military alliances to minimise the probability of war. The estimates of war and civilian deaths from another world war are astronomical — the lives of billions of people are at risk.
In one of his brief, brilliant stories, Steinbeck relates the “Short-Short Story of Mankind.” (See http://10lardan1i.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/short-short-story-of-mankind-john.html )
“Well, it went on from state to league and from league to nation. (A nation usually had some kind of natural boundary like an ocean or a mountain range or a river to keep it from spilling over.) It worked out fine until a bunch of jokers invented long-distance stuff like directed missiles and atom bombs. It got too dangerous to have separate nations just as it had been to have separate families.
“When people are finally faced with extinction, they have to do something about it. Now we’ve got the United Nations and elders are right in there fighting it the way they fought coming out of caves. But we don’t have much choice about it. It isn’t any goodness of heart and we may not want to go ahead but right from the cave time we’ve had to choose and so far we’ve never chosen extinction. It’d be kind of silly if we killed our selves off after all this time. If we do, we’re stupider than the cave people and I don’t think we are. I think we’re just exactly as stupid and that’s pretty bright in the long run.”
That is true of groups, but it does not seem to be true of leaders. If the power of the leader to go to war could be removed, and a ruling group established in the challenging nation, which always took into consideration the alliances of the previous hegemonic leader, then the probability of war would be greatly reduced.
1 The only sure and virtually certain way to continuing world peace (or at least a world where there is not another world war) is through key politicians forming the hyperstate, a federal union of countries that would ultimately contain more than half of the GDP and over half of the population of the world.
2 Such a state would be the ultimate preponderant power and would have no possibility of an economic equal, so the big event of atomic war would probably go away for decades and possibly centuries.
3 It is possible that the could be a peaceful transit to a new Chinese-led heirarchical international order without a world war but, on the basis of past events, such a transit is very improbable. And why would politicians risk the death of hundreds of millions of people when a better strategy is available?
4 It is also possible that India could successfully manoeuvre a power transit with China without a major war but that is only a minor possibility in the absence of the hyperstate.
5 Only the hyperstate can carry mankind through the dangerous power transitions of the 21st century without a high probability of nuclear war.
6 If any feasible way could be found to ensure that declaring war was the responsibility of a group rather than a single leader, then the probability of major war could be lessened.
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