I. A Disrupted System
Where the contact between two or more political units is sufficient as to make their decisions strategically dependent on those of the other’s, a political system exists.[1] Anarchy, insecurity, and a continuous struggle for supremacy are the main features of this system. In such an environment, political units have to make decisions, in order to prevail and survive in the never-ending war of politics.[2]
Power within a political system is always comparative. One’s position in the distribution of power in the system results from the comparison with the other players’ power. Therefore, such a game is one of zero-sum outcomes; the gains in power by one of the players forcefully results in the loss of it by the others. Thus, when a political unit increases its capacities in such a way that produces a change in the distribution of power, it disturbs the current dynamics and positions in the system and, consequently, the entire political system. This is the problem that a rising power presents to the other great powers. Change brings uncertainty.
Before such a situation, the beneficiaries of the former status quo respond by trying to eliminate or, at least, to control the disruptive stimulus in the system, in order to maintain their beneficial positions in the current distribution of power. The higher the risk of an important, future change in the hierarchy of power in the system, the more violent and strong the response by those who fear it will be. Thus, respond the great powers to the disruption posed by the rise of a new great power in the political system.
In such an adverse environment, the disruptive power, desiring to maintain its newly acquired position in the distribution of power, follows a strategy of power assertion before the other great powers. By implementing policies of prestige —which make the arisen power appear as a consummated peer not worth to be challenged because of the high cost this action would carry— and tactics of balancing the others’ responses by establishing alliances with another great power, the disruptive unit of the political system seeks to assert its position before its equals, in order to, in the future, continue to increase its power.
[1] See: Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 9.
[2] “Power is war; war by other means,” says Foucault, reverting Clausewitz’s argument that war is “politics by other means.” Defender la sociedad. Curso en el Collège de France (1975-1976), translated to Spanish by Horacio Pons, 6th reprint (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2014), p. 28.