The Peril of Peaking Powers

The Peril of
Peaking Powers

Michael Beckley

Economic Slowdowns and Implications
for China’s Next Decade

When and why do
rising powers expand aggressively abroad? From ancient times to the present,
ascendant powers have taken up arms to enlarge their empires and reorder
the world.1 Yet such violent revisionism poses a puzzle: If a rising power is
proªting from the existing order and gaining ground on its rivals, why
would it disrupt that progress with a reckless ªt of expansion?2 Why would it
not continue to amass power quietly and overtake its competitors without
ªring a shot? Such a country presumably could follow Chinese leader Deng
Xiaoping’s maxim to “hide its capabilities and bide its time.”3

Scholars have long studied the paradox of rising power aggression, yet

Michael Beckley is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, Nonresident Senior Fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute, and Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research
Institut.

This study was supported by grants from the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Wilson
Centre. Previous versions were presented at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
at Harvard Kennedy School, the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth
Collège, and the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. For helpful com-
ments, the author thanks the participants at those venues, the anonymous reviewers, and Dale
Copeland, Jonathan Markowitz, Lucas Myers, Kori Schake, and especially Hal Brands, OMS
helped develop some of the ideas in a series of collaborative projects. For excellent research assis-
tance, the author thanks Evan Abramsky, Sophie Ann Bryant, Emily Carr, Connor Fiddler, Daniel
Fu, Victoria Liu, and Linda Zhang. An online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/
DVN/PDYVY2.

1. UN. F. K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968); UN. F. K. Organski and Jacek
Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Robert Gilpin, War and Change
in World Politics (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 1981); Jacek Kugler and Douglas Lemke,
éd., Parity and War: Evaluations and Extension of the War Ledger (Ann-Arbor: Université du Michigan
Presse, 1996); Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
(Boston: Houghton Mifºin, 2017).
2. John R. Oneal, Indra de Soysa, and Yong-Hee Park, “But Power and Wealth Are Satisfying: UN
Reply to Lemke and Reed,” Journal of Conºict Resolution 42, Non. 4 (Août 1998): 517–520, https://
doi.org/10.1177/0022002798042004; Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 2000), 3, 13–15, 20; Jack S. Levy, “Declining Power and the Preventive
Motivation for War,” World Politics 40, Non. 1 (Octobre 1987): 84, https://doi.org/10.2307/2010195;
Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent, Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrench-
ment (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2018), 15.
3. Taoguang yanghui captures the spirit of a twenty-four-character admonition credited to Deng
Xiaoping. See Dingding Chen and Jianwei Wang, “Lying Low No More? China’s New Thinking on
the Tao Guang Yang Hui Strategy,” China: An International Journal 9, Non. 2 (Septembre 2011): 195–216,
doi.org/10.1142/S0219747211000136.

International Security, Vol. 48, Non. 1 (Été 2023), 7–46, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00463
© 2023 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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International Security 48:1 8

existing answers fall short. One theory holds that rising powers become bel-
ligerent because declining powers inevitably wage cold or hot wars against
them.4 Recent research, cependant, shows that declining powers more often re-
trench and accommodate rising powers than try to crush them.5 A second
prominent theory holds that rising powers expand violently when they be-
come “dissatisªed” with the existing order.6 Yet that explanation raises the
question of why an ascendant power would become dissatisªed in the ªrst
place.7 Many studies skirt this issue by measuring dissatisfaction with indica-
tors of conºict, such as whether a rising power is embroiled in a rivalry or an
arms race;8 has formed alliances against other great powers;9 or espouses a dif-
ferent ideology, regime type, or set of preferences from the dominant state.10
Cette approche, cependant, yields a circular argument: dissatisªed states engage
in conºict, and states engaged in conºict are dissatisªed.11 The question thus

4. Par exemple, see Gilpin, War and Change; Levy, “Declining Power and the Preventive Motiva-
tion for War”; Copeland, The Origins of Major War, 15–16, 21, 37; Dale C. Copeland, Economic Inter-
dependence and War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2015); Nuno P. Monteiro and
Alexandre Debs, “An Economic Theory of War,” Journal of Politics 82, Non. 1 (Janvier 2020): 255–268,
https://doi.org/10.1086/705814.
5. MacDonald and Parent, Twilight of the Titans; Kori Schake, Safe Passage: The Transition from British
to American Hegemony (Cambridge, MA: Presse universitaire de Harvard, 2017); Joshua R. Itzkowitz
Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Ithaca, New York: Cornell
Presse universitaire, 2018); Steven E. Lobell, The Challenge of Hegemony: Grand Strategy, Trade, and Do-
mestic Politics (Ann-Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); David M. Edelstein, Over the Hori-
zon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017);
Brandon K. Yoder, “Retrenchment as a Screening Mechanism: Power Shifts, Strategic With-
drawal, and Credible Signals,” American Journal of Political Science 63, Non. 1 (Janvier 2019): 130–145,
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12395; Kyle Haynes, “Decline and Devolution: The Sources of Strate-
gic Military Retrenchment,” International Studies Quarterly 59, Non. 3 (Septembre 2015): 490–502,
https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12146.
6. Par exemple, see Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, 19–23, 39; William R. Thompson, Sur
Global War: Historical-Structural Approaches to World Politics (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1988), 14–15.
7. Oneal, De Soysa, and Park, “But Power and Wealth Are Satisfying.”
8. On rivalry, see Daniel S. Geller, “Power Differentials and War in Rival Dyads,” International
Studies Quarterly 37, Non. 2 (Juin 1993): 173–193, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600767. On arms races,
see Suzanne Werner and Jacek Kugler, “Power Transitions and Military Buildups: Resolving the
Relationship between Arms Buildups and War,” in Kugler and Lemke, Parity and War, 187–207.
9. Woosang Kim, “Alliance Transitions and Great Power War,” American Journal of Political Science
35, Non. 4 (1991): 833–850, https://doi.org/10.2307/2111496.
10. On ideology, see Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 2005). On regime type, see Douglas Lemke and Suzanne Werner,
“Power Parity, Commitment to Change, and War,” International Studies Quarterly 40, Non. 2 (Juin
1996): 235–260. On divergent preferences, see Michelle Benson, “Status Quo Preferences and Dis-
putes Short of War,” International Interactions 33, Non. 3 (Été 2007): 271–288, https://est ce que je.org/
10.1080/03050620701449058.
11. Choon-Nam Kang and Douglas M. Gibbler, “An Assessment of the Validity of Empirical Mea-

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 9

remains: When and why do some rising powers upend the international or-
ders that enabled their ascents?

This article highlights one factor that might compel a rising state to expand
aggressively abroad: slowing economic growth. Rising powers sometimes suf-
fer severe and sustained economic growth slowdowns. These slumps may not
immediately alter the balance of power, but they raise the specter of future de-
cline in the minds of a rising power’s rulers. The fear that the country’s mo-
ment in the sun is about to end, that its strategic window of opportunity is
starting to close, and that its regime will not be able to deliver the goods that it
has promised the people, can incite aggression and expansion that a nation
more optimistic about its economic prospects might avoid. Given China’s
slowing growth today, this is a dynamic worth worrying about.12

Existing studies provide valuable insights into this topic, especially the
ªnding that great powers often become belligerent when they fear future de-
cline.13 Few works, cependant, explicitly examine rising power growth slow-

sures of State Satisfaction with the Systemic Status Quo,” European Journal of International Relations
19, Non. 4 (2012): 695–719, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066112436702; Steve Chan, Weixing Hu, et
Kai He, “Discerning States’ Revisionist and Status Quo Orientations: Comparing China and the
U.S.,” European Journal of International Relations 25, Non. 2 (2019): 613–640, https://doi.org/10.1177/
1354066118804622.
12. During the 2010s, China’s economic growth rates dropped by roughly half, productivity
turned negative, and debt ballooned more than eight-fold. On these points, see Michael Beckley
and Hal Brands, “The End of China’s Rise: Beijing Is Running Out of Time to Remake the World,»
Foreign Affairs, Octobre 1, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-10-01/end-
chinas-rise. Long-term growth projections for China vary, but most predict a continued slowdown
in the 2020s. For recent discussion of various projections, see Roland Rajah and Alyssa Leng, “Re-
vising Down the Rise of China,” Lowy Institute, Mars 14, 2022, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/
publications/revising-down-rise-china; Lingling Wei, “IMF Tempers Its Medium-Term Economic
Growth Forecast for China,” Wall Street Journal, Février 3, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/
imf-tempers-its-medium-term-economic-growth-forecast-for-china-11675437545; Robin Wiggles-
worth, “The Implications of China’s Mid-Income Trap,” Financial Times, Février 27, 2023, https://
www.ft.com/content/a998c1bc-7632-47c1-baba-6ccd6aaef96e.
13. For examples, see Copeland, The Origins of Major War; Gilpin, War and Change, 186–210; Levy,
“Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War”; Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War:
Power and the Roots of Conºict (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 35–104. For recent appli-
cations to China, see Hal Brands, “Danger: Falling Powers,” American Interest, Octobre 24, 2018,
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/10/24/danger-falling-powers/; Michael Beckley,
“The United States Should Fear a Faltering China: Beijing’s Assertiveness Betrays Its Despera-
tion,” Foreign Affairs, Octobre 28, 2019, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-10-
28/united-states-should-fear-faltering-china; Dale C. Copeland, “Grappling with the Rise of
Chine: A New Model for Thinking about Sino-American Relations,” in Nicole Peterson, éd.,
Chinese Strategic Intentions: A Deep Dive into China’s Worldwide Activities (Washington, CC: U.S. De-
partment of Defense, Décembre 2019), 1–6; Andrej Krickovic and Chang Zhang, “Fears of Falling
Short versus Anxieties of Decline: Explaining Russia and China’s Approach to Status-Seeking,»
Chinese Journal of International Politics 13, Non. 2 (Été 2020): 219–251, https://est ce que je.org/10.1093/
cjip/poaa006; Daniel W. Drezner, “The Perils of Pessimism: Why Anxious Nations Are Dangerous

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International Security 48:1 10

downs.14 This oversight is problematic because “peaking powers,” meaning
great powers whose economic ascents have slowed but not yet stopped, might
be the most dangerous kind of country; an era of rapid growth has equipped
them with the means to shake up the world, and then a severe slowdown
motivates them to move aggressively.

To address this shortcoming, I analyze every case over the past 150 years in
which a fast-growing great power experienced a severe and sustained eco-
nomic growth slowdown. This analysis yields two main results.

D'abord, the most common reaction to slowing growth is mercantilist expan-
sion: the use of state power to carve out economic spheres of inºuence. Most of
the rising powers that stagnated over the past 150 years tried to revive their
fortunes by restricting foreign access to their domestic markets while investing
heavily overseas to generate demand for their exports and secure critical re-
sources. To protect their far-ºung assets, they developed military power-
projection forces and deployed them along key trade routes. In most cases,
these attempts to forge empires fueled great power competition. In some
cases, they triggered major wars.

Deuxième, two main factors shape the extent to which a rising power resorts to
mercantilist expansion during an economic slowdown: (1) the rising power’s
regime type, et (2) its prospects for future trade. Over the previous century
and a half, the most aggressive mercantilist expanders were stagnating autoc-
racies confronted by growing international protectionism. In contrast, peaking
powers with democratic institutions, easy access to foreign markets, or both
expanded less aggressively and employed a more mixed set of mercantilist
and market-based strategies. In these more moderate cases, democratic institu-
tions served as shock absorbers for aggressive urges, and good trade prospects

Nations,” Foreign Affairs 101, Non. 4 (July/August 2022): 34–43, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ar-
ticles/world/2022-06-21/perils-pessimism-anxious-nations; Hal Brands and Michael Beckley,
Danger Zone: The Coming Conºict with China (New York: W. W. Norton, 2022).
14. Most studies focus on economic decline, usually operationalized as a drop in a great power’s
share of world gross domestic product (PIB) or ordinal GDP rank, rather than rising power
growth slowdowns. Partial exceptions include studies by Charles F. Doran showing that states be-
come more warlike at various inºection points in their power trajectories, including the transition
from rising at an increasing rate to rising at a decreasing rate. See Doran, The Politics of Assimila-
tion: Hegemony and Its Aftermath (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971); Charles F. Doran and Wes
Parsons, “War and the Cycle of Relative Power,” American Political Science Review 74, Non. 4 (Decem-
ber 1980): 947–965, https://doi.org/10.2307/1954315. Dans une étude récente, Susan Sample shows that
when two states are experiencing a power transition, differential growth rates increase the likeli-
hood of conºict between them. See Susan G. Sample, “Power, Wealth, and Satisfaction: When Do
Power Transitions Lead to Conºict?,” Journal of Conºict Resolution 62, Non. 9 (Octobre 2018): 1905–
1931, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002717707238.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 11

provided opportunities to prosper through peaceful commerce rather than
through conquest or the creation of exclusive economic zones.

These ªndings have important implications for international relations schol-
arship and U.S. foreign policy. For scholars, they amend classic theories of
great power expansion and war.15 Academics have long studied these subjects,
but many works rest on questionable assumptions: countries are either rising
or declining; those on the upswing expand while those on the downswing re-
trench or launch preventive wars; and conºict is most likely when a rising
challenger catches up to an established superpower. The results of this study,
cependant, suggest that these assumptions do not always hold. Great powers
can rise and fall simultaneously; they may build up their militaries or expand
their spheres of inºuence even as their economies stagnate. Mercantilist ex-
pansion, not retrenchment or preventive war, is the most common response
to peaking power. Le plus important, great power conºict can occur even when
power transitions do not. Peaking powers have lashed out when they realized
that they would not catch their rivals or achieve their grand ambitions—unless
they took drastic action. These peaking power dynamics help explain some
of the most consequential geopolitical events of the past 150 années, y compris
the surge of U.S. imperialism in the late nineteenth century, the outbreak of
World War II, and Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and intervention in east-
ern Ukraine. They therefore should be incorporated into theories of great
power expansion and conºict.

This study also recasts the timing and nature of China’s threat to the United
États. In foreign policy circles, Sino-American competition is often character-
ized as a “100-year marathon,” a “long game,” or a “new Cold War” in which
both sides have decades to marshal their resources and rally international co-
alitions.16 Yet the sharpest phase of that competition could be more like a

15. For several of many seminal works, see Copeland, The Origins of Major War; Gilpin, War and
Changement; Levy, “Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War”; Organski and Kugler,
The War Ledger; Van Evera, Causes of War; Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and Inter-
national Ambition (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991); Robert Powell, “Uncertainty,
Shifting Power, and Appeasement,” American Political Science Review 90, Non. 4 (Décembre 1996):
749–764, https://doi.org/10.2307/2945840; James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,»
Organisation internationale 49, Non. 3 (Été 1995): 379–414, https://doi.org/10.1017/S00208183
00033324.
16. Par exemple, see Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Re-
place America as the Global Superpower (New York: St. Martin’s, 2016); Rush Doshi, The Long Game:
China’s Grand Strategy to Displace the American Order (Oxford: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2021);
Michael Brown, Eric Chewning, and Pavneet Singh, “Preparing the United States for the Super-
power Marathon with China” (Washington, CC: Brookings Institution, Avril 2020), https://www
.brookings.edu/research/preparing-the-united-states-for-the-superpower-marathon-with-china/.

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International Security 48:1 12

sprint in the 2020s, because China has entered a perilous period: it has ac-
quired the means to disrupt the existing order, but slowing growth is narrow-
ing its window to act. As a brutal dictatorship facing rising international
protectionism, China is a high-risk case for an aggressive response, and its bel-
ligerent and expansionist behavior since its growth started to slow in the 2010s
could be just a preview of what is to come if its economy stagnates in the years
ahead. The United States obviously needs a long-term strategy to manage
its relationship with China throughout this century. But it also needs a near-
term strategy to blunt a potential surge of Chinese aggression in the 2020s.

This article proceeds in three main sections. D'abord, I discuss the relationship
between rising powers’ growth slowdowns and mercantilist expansion. Sec-
ond, I analyze cases over the past 150 years in which a rising power experi-
enced a severe and sustained economic slowdown. The conclusion discusses
this article’s contribution to international relations theory and implications for
U.S. foreign policy.

How Rising Powers Respond to Slowing Growth

This article focuses on rising powers that experience severe and sustained eco-
nomic slowdowns, or what I call “peaking powers.” These are cases in which
a great power’s economy has grown substantially faster than the global aver-
age for many years, followed by another extended period in which its growth
rates plummet. Growth slowdowns can occur for many reasons, including re-
source exhaustion, market saturation, demographic decline, corruption, ou
simple regression to the mean.17 Regardless of the exact cause, the basic prob-
lem is that a country’s economic engine has run out of steam, and quick ªxes,
such as stimulus spending or minor economic reform, have failed to restart
steady growth.

I focus on severe and sustained slowdowns, rather than short-term crises,
because extended slumps are especially threatening to a great power and its
leaders. If a country’s growth rate dips for a few quarters, then its leaders can

17. Gilpin, War and Change, 156–185; Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War, 30–32; Mancur
Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagºation, and Social Rigidities (New Ha-
ven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984); Lant Pritchett and Lawrence H. Summers, “Asiaphoria
Meets Regression to the Mean,” Working Paper no. 20573 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of
Recherche économique [NBER], Octobre 2014); Ruchir Sharma, “The Demographics of Stagnation:
Why People Matter for Economic Growth,” Foreign Affairs 95, Non. 2 (March/April 2016): 18–24,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2016-02-15/demographics-stagnation.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 13

reasonably hope that the downturn will pass quickly or that they can jump-
start the economy with stimulus spending or minor reforms. If growth rates
decline year after year, cependant, then tangible signs of economic malaise will
accumulate (par exemple., stagnant wages, shuttered factories), hope will fade, et
leaders will realize that they face a fundamental choice: accept the “new nor-
mal” of sluggish growth or take decisive action to turn the tide.

peaking powers are proactive

Great powers are unlikely to choose the ªrst option—doing nothing—because
that would be geopolitically risky, domestically unpopular, and psychologi-
cally painful. For starters, a severe growth slowdown, if left unchecked, may
cause the country to fall behind rivals economically and militarily. Great
power competition is typically ªerce, so signiªcant slippage in a nation’s
growth rate can undermine its security.18 That may be especially true for a
peaking power, because its rapid ascent has likely alarmed its rivals, et le
subsequent slowing growth gives those enemies a chance to pounce. Even if ri-
vals espouse friendly intentions, they may be unable to convince the peaking
power that they will refrain from exploiting its economic woes in the future,
a classic commitment problem.19 As a window of vulnerability opens for the
peaking power, windows of opportunity to rekindle its rise or achieve his-
toric aims start to close.20 Faced with impending stagnation and foreign preda-
tion, a peaking power is apt to try to beat back unfavorable trends by any
means necessary.21

Domestic political factors accentuate this temptation. During an extended
economic boom, many segments of a society become accustomed to an ex-
panding pie: businesses to swelling proªts, government agencies to growing
budgets, ordinary citizens to improving living standards, and all of the above

18. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conºict from
1500 à 2000 (New York: Vintage, 1989); John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
(2001; New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 55–138.
19. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War”; Robert Powell, “War as a Commitment Problem,»
Organisation internationale 60, Non. 1 (Hiver 2006): 169–203, https://doi.org/10.1017/S00208183060
60061; Sebastian Rosato, “The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers,” International Security 39,
Non. 3 (Hiver 2014/15): 48–88, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00190.
20. Thomas J. Christensen, “Windows and War: Changes in the International System and China’s
Decision to Use Force,” in Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross, éd., New Approaches to
China’s Foreign Relations: Essays in Honor of Allen S. Whiting (Stanford, Californie: Université de Stanford
Presse, 2006), 50–85.
21. Copeland, The Origins of Major War; Gilpin, War and Change, 186–210; Brands, “Danger”; Levy,
“Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War”; Van Evera, Causes of War, 35–104.

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International Security 48:1 14

to greater international power and prestige. Leaders of rising powers usually
feed these ambitions, promising the citizens that they will be rewarded with
national rejuvenation and historical greatness if they continue to support the
regime.22 Slowing growth dashes those ambitions and tarnishes the govern-
ment’s legitimacy.23 Leaders struggle to fund the patronage networks that sus-
tain their rule or satisfy societal demands on pocketbook issues, such as job
security and social services. Fearful of unrest, they become determined, même
desperate, to revitalize the economy and contain political opposition.24

Psychological factors further incline leaders to be proactive during a slow-
down. Psychologists have shown that humans are often willing to gamble
recklessly to avoid losses.25 When confronted by negative trends, people tend
to exaggerate the risks of inaction while overestimating their ability to turn
things around with bold moves. This combustible combination—threat in-
loss aversion, and overconªdence in one’s own capabilities—is
ºation,
pervasive in world politics. It seems particularly applicable to the leaders
of a peaking power because an era of rapid growth has inºated their
egos and given them something to lose. A protracted slowdown thus threatens
héritage, and perhaps even their lives.26 Retrench-
their power, historical
ment and austerity might be the rational responses to slowing growth, mais
rulers can become irrationally addicted to rising power and arrogant about
their capacity to control events.27 Rather than meekly adapting to harder eco-

22. Snyder, Myths of Empire, 3–6, 14–19, 31–54; Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism
and War,” International Security 18, Non. 4 (Spring 1994): 30–33, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539176.
23. Bruce Gilley, “The Determinants of State Legitimacy: Results for 72 Countries,” International
Political Science Review 27, Non. 1 (Janvier 2006): 47–71, https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512106058634;
Steven E. Finkel, Edward N. Muller, and Mitchell A. Seligson, “Economic Crisis, Incumbent Per-
formance and Regime Support: A Comparison of Longitudinal Data from West Germany and
Costa Rica,” British Journal of Political Science 19, Non. 3 (1989): 329, https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0007123400005512; Ora John Reuter and Jennifer Gandhi, “Economic Performance and Elite De-
fection from Hegemonic Parties,” British Journal of Political Science 41, Non. 1 (2011): 83–110, https://
doi.org/10.1017/S0007123410000293.
24. Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dic-
tator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2022).
25. Robert Jervis, “Political Implications of Loss Aversion,” Political Psychology 13, Non. 2 (Juin
1992): 187–204, https://doi.org/10.2307/3791678.
26. Dominic D. P.. Johnson and Dominic Tierney, “Bad World: The Negativity Bias in International
Politique,” International Security 43, Non. 3 (Hiver 2018/19): 96–140, https://est ce que je.org/10.1162/
isec_a_00336.
27. Dominic D. P.. Johnson, Overconªdence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions (Cam-
bridge, MA: Presse universitaire de Harvard, 2004); Van Evera, Causes of War, 14–34; Robert Jervis, Per-
ception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976),
356–381.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 15

nomic times,
new policies.28

they may gamble for resurrection by adopting ambitious

peaking powers expand abroad

En théorie, a peaking power could rely solely on domestic remedies to restart its
rise. Par exemple, it could invest more heavily in education, infrastructure,
and research and development (R.&D) to boost productivity; provide citizens
with social services (par exemple., healthcare and pensions) to buy loyalty and stimulate
consumer spending; and modernize its military and security forces to ward off
enemies. To free up resources for investment, a peaking power could cut inter-
national commitments.29

In practice, cependant, peaking powers are unlikely to hunker down at
home.30 Domestic investment is expensive, could take years to boost the na-
tion’s wealth and power, and usually requires raising taxes, which could incite
unrest and further drag down growth. Retrenchment, meanwhile, might not
save much money: soldiers brought home from overseas still need to be paid
and housed—or they can be ªred, but slashing the enlisted ranks and the de-
fense budget would reduce employment and possibly growth, aussi, at least in
the short term. Le plus important, retrenchment risks reducing the country’s in-
ternational inºuence, emboldening foreign rivals, and pushing the peaking
power into full-blown decline.31

Even if a peaking power could afford—ªnancially, politically, et
strategically—to ramp up internal investment during a severe growth slow-
down, it may lack the raw materials and productive outlets needed to turn ad-
ditional spending into real wealth. The country may have already depleted its
natural resources. Perhaps its population of workers and consumers has
started to shrink. Maybe most of the country’s useful bridges, roads, et
buildings have already been built. Or perhaps the nation’s political institutions
have been captured by corrupt rent-seekers. Protracted growth slowdowns
sont, almost by deªnition, the result of diminishing returns on investment, le

28. Donne la vie. Welch, Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
Presse universitaire, 2005); Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Balancing Risks: Great Power Intervention in the Periph-
ery (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2004).
29. MacDonald and Parent, Twilight of the Titans.
30. Gilpin, War and Change, 188–197; Copeland, The Origins of Major War, 41.
31. Robert Gilpin, “The Theory of Hegemonic War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, Non. 4
(Spring 1988): 601–603, https://doi.org/10.2307/204816; Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout,
“The Dilemma of Rising Demands and Insufªcient Resources,” World Politics 20, Non. 4 (Juillet 1968):
661, https://doi.org/10.2307/2009688.

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International Security 48:1 16

exhaustion of critical inputs, or both.32 These structural problems cannot be
solved simply by injecting money into the economy.

Innovation is the ideal solution for stagnation, but it is also difªcult and
risky. Most R&D projects fail to produce technological breakthroughs. Sus-
tained innovation typically requires a host of intangible assets that govern-
ments cannot easily mandate into existence, such as brilliant scientists and
entrepreneurs, open ºows of information, secure property rights, and venture-
some consumers willing to pay premiums for cutting-edge products.33 Innova-
tion also involves “creative destruction”—the replacement of established
methods with new ones—which is inherently disruptive. Businesses may have
to overhaul their operations; workers may have to upgrade their skills or ªnd
new jobs; investors may have to place bets on unproven ªrms and technolo-
gies; and political leaders may have to weather ªerce opposition from en-
trenched interests. These aspects of innovation can be politically destabilizing
during the best of economic times, let alone during a severe slowdown.34

Given the limitations and risks of internal reform, peaking powers may in-
stead expand abroad to reshape their geopolitical environments and rejuve-
nate their economies with infusions of foreign resources. By “ªnding new
markets for old products,” a peaking power can stimulate its industries and
render other countries more dependent on its goods and services—all without
fundamentally altering its domestic economic model.35 It can “weaponize in-
terdependence” by taking control of international chokepoints, such as major
sea lanes or communications nodes, and then browbeat countries into conces-
sions by conditioning their access to those chokepoints.36 It can attract allies by

32. Pritchett and Summers, “Asiaphoria Meets Regression to the Mean”; Olson, The Rise and De-
cline of Nations; Sharma, “The Demographics of Stagnation”; Barry Eichengreen, Donghyun Park,
and Kwanho Shin, “When Fast Growing Economies Slow Down: International Evidence and Im-
plications for China,” Asian Economic Papers 11, Non. 1 (Winter/Spring 2012): 42–87, https://
doi.org/10.3386/w16919.
33. Arnold S. Kling and Nick Schultz, From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities,
and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity (New York: Encounter Books, 2009); Amar Bhidé, The Venture-
some Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World (Princeton, New Jersey: Prince-
ton University Press, 2008); Jeffrey Ding, “The Rise and Fall of Great Technologies and Powers”
(unpublished manuscript, Octobre 2022).
34. Jonathan N. Markowitz, Perils of Plenty: Arctic Resource Competition and the Return of the Great
Game (Oxford: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2020), 24–36.
35. Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Foreign Di-
rect Investment (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 70.
36. Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Eco-
nomic Networks Shape State Coercion,” International Security 44, Non. 1 (Été 2019): 42–79,
https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00351.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 17

doling out aid and loans;37 and if economic inducements fail, a peaking power
can send out its military to kill enemies, seize territory, plunder resources, et
extract tribute.38

Expansion, cependant, is also costly and risky.39 To exploit foreign markets
and tap overseas resources, a great power may need to develop globe-girdling
supply lines complete with ports, airªelds, railways, and communications net-
works—plus military forces to protect them. The ªscal costs of such a buildout
can be enormous. En outre, expansion may trigger blowback. Rival nations
might militarize and ally against the expanding power.40 Saboteurs of all
stripes—nationalist movements, tribal insurgents, religious extremists, crimi-
nal gangs, and foreign spies—may chip away at the expansionist power’s em-
pire by destroying or stealing its overseas assets, kidnapping or killing its
citizens abroad, or all of the above.41

Declining powers typically retrench to avoid these costs of expansion.42
Fiscally strapped and strategically overstretched, the last thing that they want
are more foreign entanglements. Rising powers, on the other hand, do not
need to engage in aggressive expansion. With economic and geopolitical
trends already going their way, they can allow their spheres of inºuence to
grow naturally and gradually, engaging in what scholars call “involuntary” or
“automatic” expansion, rather than manually pumping money and military
forces into foreign lands.43 Other countries may stand aside or even welcome
contact with a rising power, because they are enthralled by the proªts to be

37. David Baldwin, Economic Statecraft: New Edition (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
2020).
38. Peter Liberman, Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies (Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998).
39. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 488–540; Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics,
156–185; Snyder, Myths of Empire.
40. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979); Stephen M.
Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987); Mearsheimer, Tragedy of
Great Power Politics.
41. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metro-
politan Books, 2000).
42. MacDonald and Parent, Twilight of the Titans.
43. Fareed Zakaria, “Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay,” International Security 17,
Non. 1 (Été 1992): 188, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539162; Eric J. Labs, “Beyond Victory: Offen-
sive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims,” Security Studies 6, Non. 4 (Été 1997): 12, https://
doi.org/10.1080/09636419708429321; Colin Elman, “Horses for Courses: Why Not Neorealist The-
ories of Foreign Policy?,” Security Studies 6, Non. 1 (Autumn 1996): 28–29, https://doi.org/10.1080/
09636419608429297; Nicholas D. Anderson, “Push and Pull on the Periphery: Inadvertent Expan-
sion in World Politics,” International Security 47, Non. 3 (Hiver 2022/23): 136–173, https://est ce que je.org/
10.1162/isec_a_00454.

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International Security 48:1 18

made in its market, want to recruit it as an ally, or are simply scared of picking
a ªght with an emerging superpower.44 Rising powers, donc, often take a
peaceful and patient approach to achieving their interests and garner inºuence
merely by ºaunting their vibrant economies.45

Peaking powers, by contrast, have the means and the motive to expand ag-
gressively.46 They are more capable than declining powers, because they have
just reaped bonanzas of rapid growth, yet they are more eager to expand than
rising powers, because their slowing economies portend dark futures of stag-
nation and internal unrest. Whereas a declining power might need to retrench
to stay solvent, and a rising power can afford to wait for better days ahead, un
peaking power may feel it has to secure its vital interests now or miss its mo-
ment forever. Beset by slowing growth, but still armed with formidable capa-
bilities, leaders of peaking powers may prefer to step on toes abroad rather
than impose belt-tightening at home. Some may even welcome a degree of in-
ternational conºict, because demonizing foreign rivals can potentially rally the
nation behind the ruling regime.47

peaking powers become more mercantilist

Peaking powers may not strike out on all fronts in a mad frenzy, but they are
likely to expand abroad in calculated ways that maximize beneªts and mini-
mize costs. Ce faisant, they have a spectrum of options from which to choose.
On one end of the spectrum are various forms of liberal expansion, the most
extreme of which involves opening up to free trade and investment and letting
private actors take the lead in generating national wealth and power. If a peak-
ing power can “create an empire of trade rather than one of colonies,” it can
proªt from foreign resources while avoiding ruinous protectionism and costly
military conºicts.48

44. Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Proªt: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” Inter-
national Security 19, Non. 1 (Été 1994): 72–107, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539149.
45. Oneal, de Soysa, and Park, “But Power and Wealth Are Satisfying”; Copeland, The Origins of
Major War, 3, 13–15, 20; Levy, “Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War,» 84; Mac-
Donald and Parent, Twilight of the Titans, 15.
46. Copeland, The Origins of Major War, 4–7.
47. Frederick Solt, “Diversionary Nationalism: Economic Inequality and the Formation of Na-
tional Pride,” Journal of Politics 73, Non. 3 (Juillet 2011): 821–830, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381611
00048X; Michael C. Desch, “War and Strong States, Peace and Weak States?,” International Organi-
zation 50, Non. 2 (Spring 1996): 237–268, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300028551; Pål Røren,
“The Belligerent Bear: Russia, Status Orders, and War,” International Security 47, Non. 4 (Spring
2023): 7–49, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00458.
48. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, 137.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 19

On the other end of the spectrum are various forms of mercantilist expan-
sion, which use the iron ªst of state power to forge privileged economic
zones.49 The most extreme type of mercantilism is conquest, which is essen-
tially vertical integration by force. Slightly less extreme is colonialism, lequel
involves asserting control over foreign lands without fully nationalizing them.
Less extreme still is imperialism, which entails colluding with oppressive for-
eign rulers to gain special access to their nations’ markets and resources. Même
less extreme, but far more common, are forms of state capitalism and strategic
trade, which involve nurturing domestic industries with subsidies and trade
barriers while using various foreign policy inducements (par exemple., aide, loans,
bribes, arms sales, technology transfers) to gain secure and cheap access to raw
materials and captive consumer markets abroad.

In practice, most states use both markets and mercantilism and fall some-
where in the middle of this spectrum. Peaking powers, cependant, are likely to
become more mercantilist as their economies slump. Whereas rising powers
with ºourishing economies can conªdently engage in free trade, knowing that
their ªrms will prosper on a level playing ªeld, peaking powers with sputter-
ing industries may need to tilt the ªeld in their favor to avoid stagnation. À-
ward that end, subsidies and tariffs can help state-favored ªrms undercut
foreign prices and capture global market share. Espionage can boost indige-
nous innovation. Overseas lending and investment can incentivize other coun-
tries to buy more of the peaking power’s goods; and economic sanctions,
gunboat diplomacy, and conquest can pry open foreign markets or deny access
to competitors. These tools might be beyond the capacity of a declining power,
but they are likely to be attractive to a peaking power with a favorable but
ªnite window of strategic opportunity.

intervening variables: trade prospects and regime type

Peaking powers tend to engage in mercantilist expansion, but a tendency
is not an inevitability. The extent to which a peaking power engages in
mercantilist expansion depends on myriad factors, two of which are espe-
cially important.

49. On how economic interests can motivate various forms of mercantilist expansion, see Vladi-
mir I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1969);
J.. UN. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, 3rd ed. (Londres: Allen and Unwin, 1938); Liberman, Does Con-
quest Pay?; Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War; Jonathan N. Markowitz, Christopher J.
Fariss, and Blake McMahon, “Producing Goods and Projecting Power: How What You Make
Inºuences What You Take,” Journal of Conºict Resolution 63, Non. 6 (2018): 1368–1402, https://
doi.org/10.1177/0022002718789735.

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International Security 48:1 20

The ªrst factor is the peaking power’s prospects for trade and investment.50
How open are international markets? How secure are major trade routes? Comment
competitive are the peaking power’s products? If the international economy is
open, and the peaking power has desirable wares to sell, it can potentially re-
vitalize its economy by embracing free trade and investment. But if the peak-
ing power faces ªerce international protectionism, feeble foreign demand for
its goods, or insecure supply lines, then it may need to use mercantilist meth-
ods to push its way into foreign markets and obtain critical resources.

The second factor is the peaking power’s regime type. Autocratic peaking
powers are especially prone to mercantilism, because they tend to have higher
levels of state-ownership in their economies and cater to narrower and more
economically nationalist political coalitions than do democracies.51 Autocrats
rule primarily through patronage and coercion, both of which are expensive:
cronies have to be bribed; dissidents repressed.52 To stay in power, donc,
autocrats must control what Vladimir Lenin called the “commanding heights”
of the economy, meaning the vital industries—such as agriculture, energy,
transportation, construction, mining, heavy manufacturing, and banking—
that enable all the others.53 These industries provide a steady stream of de-
ployable wealth, perfect for running a patronage system.54 They produce hard
assets that hold their value even when seized through force and do not require
liberal institutions, such as private property rights or a vibrant middle class, à

50. Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War; Donne la vie. Lake, “Economic Openness and Great
Power Competition: Lessons for China and the United States,” Chinese Journal of Political Economy
11, Non. 3 (Autumn 2018): 237–270, https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/poy010; Monteiro and Debs, “An
Economic Theory of War.” I do not attempt to explain why some states, at some times, have better
trade prospects than others, but one likely factor is relative material power. All else equal, materi-
ally wealthy states are likely to have better trade prospects than materially weaker states, because
wealthy states are more likely to have competitive goods to sell on international markets and bar-
gaining leverage to extract concessions from trade partners. Materially wealthy states therefore
will generally have an easier time expanding their access to markets and resources abroad,
whereas poorer states with less to offer potential partners may have to use various elements of
state power to force their way into new markets—or ªnd a hegemonic benefactor to open markets
and trade routes for them.
51. Mark R. Brawley, Liberal Leadership: Great Powers and Their Challengers in Peace and War (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1993); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival
(Cambridge, MA: AVEC Presse, 2005), 129–172; Bueno de Mesquita and Smith, The Dictator’s Hand-
livre, 30–41; Markowitz, Perils of Plenty, 22–36.
52. Milan W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge
2012).
53. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle between Government
and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).
54. Markowitz, Perils of Plenty, 23–35.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 21

turn a proªt.55 Autocrats usually own these industries outright or control them
through proxies.56

Par conséquent, autocratic regimes often consist of a tight fusion of political and
industrial interests in which the state invests heavily in major companies,
and major companies have signiªcant sway in the government.57 These klep-
tocratic links, concentrated in industries prone to rent-seeking, incentivize
autocrats to shield national ªrms from foreign competition and help them ªnd
new resources and markets abroad when proªts dry up at home.58 Without
regular elections to hold them accountable, autocrats can concentrate the
beneªts of mercantilist expansion among a tight circle of elites while ofºoad-
ing many of the costs (par exemple., higher taxes to pay for subsidies and military
spending, higher prices as a result of tariffs, and military conscription) onto
the powerless masses.59

In contrast, it is dangerous for autocrats to support free trade and private en-
terprise, especially during an economic downturn. Liberalization would re-
quire them to reduce privileges for state-favored companies, which could
disrupt the regime’s patronage networks by triggering surges in bankruptcies
and unemployment.60 Democratic governments obviously are not immune to
crony capitalism, but they usually represent a broader and more diversiªed
portfolio of economic interests, some of which may favor free trade. These
mixed governing coalitions can pull democratic regimes in different directions
and mitigate mercantilist impulses during an economic downturn.61

55. Some economists call this “extractive growth.” For example, see Daron Acemoglu and James
UN. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Currency,
2012), 124–151.
56. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook, 146–150.
57. Patrick J. McDonald's, The Invisible Hand of Peace: Capitalism, the War Machine, and International
Relations Theory (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2009). Snyder calls these regimes
“cartelized.” See Snyder, Myths of Empire, 31–49.
58. Brawley, Liberal Leadership; Markowitz, Fariss, and McMahon, “Producing Goods and Pro-
jecting Power”; Jonathan N. Markowitz et al., “Productive Paciªsts: The Rise of Production-
Oriented States and Decline of Proªt-Motivated Conquest,” International Studies Quarterly 64, Non. 3
(Septembre 2020): 558–572, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaa045.
59. Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival, 177–264, 405–455; Bueno de Mesquita
and Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook, 317–348; Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule; Daron
Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier, and James A. Robinson, “Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model
of Personal Rule,” Journal of the European Economic Association 2, nos. 2–3 (May 2004): 162–192,
https://doi.org/10.3386/w10136.
60. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective,»
American Political Science Review 100, Non. 1 (Février 2006): 115–131, https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0003055406062046.
61. Kevin Narizny, The Political Economy of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press,
2007); Lobell, The Challenge of Hegemony; Peter Trubowitz, Deªning the National Interest: Conºict and

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International Security 48:1 22

Both intervening variables—trade prospects and regime type—are partially
endogenous to the main independent variable (economic growth rates) et
the outcome variable (how peaking powers respond to slowing growth). Theo-
retically, negative feedback loops among these variables could mitigate their
effects. Par exemple, a peaking power with poor trade prospects could expand
abroad militarily and scare rivals into granting it trade concessions, thereby
improving its trade prospects. Or a peaking power that becomes more repres-
sive might incite a revolution that topples the regime and replaces it with a
democratic government committed to free trade.

Just as likely, if not more so, cependant, are positive feedback loops that accen-
tuate the initial effects of trade prospects and regime type. Great powers often
meet aggression with aggression, protectionism with protectionism, and mer-
cantilist expansion with a scramble for economic empire.62 Hard economic
times have more often caused societies to reject democracy and free trade, et
to embrace dictatorship and mercantilist expansion, than the reverse.63 In
short, bad things often go together: trade wars typically heighten geopolitical
tensions, insecure regimes usually become more repressive, and both of these
dynamics tend to drive further mercantilist expansion.

As I explain in the next section, I attempt to address these endogeneity is-
sues by dropping overdetermined cases in which the causal effects of different
variables cannot be easily disaggregated; comparing cases with different com-
binations of trade prospects and regime type; and process-tracing the chain of
events in each case.

summary and observable implications

Peaking powers will engage in mercantilist expansion, becoming more protec-
tionist at home and expansionist abroad than they were during their eras of
rapid economic growth. Speciªcally, they will try to carve out privileged eco-
nomic zones by protecting their domestic industries with subsidies and

Change in American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Snyder, Myths of
Empire, 49.
62. Copeland calls this a “trade-security spiral.” See Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War,
11. See also, Lake, “Economic Openness and Great Power Competition.”
63. James MacDonald, When Globalization Fails: The Rise and Fall of Pax Americana (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016); Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch,
“Going to Extremes: Politics after Financial Crises, 1870–2014,” European Economic Review 88 (Sep-
tember 2016): 227–260, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2016.03.006; Italo Colantone and
Piero Stanig, “The Surge of Economic Nationalism in Western Europe,” Journal of Economic Perspec-
tives 33, Non. 4 (Fall 2019): 128–151, https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.33.4.128.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 23

trade barriers while using overseas investment and other inducements to try
to boost international demand for their exports and to secure access to for-
eign resources. This economic expansion will beget military expansion, comme
the peaking powers protect their overseas assets and trade routes. Le
degree of mercantilist expansion will vary across cases by each peaking
power’s trade prospects and regime type: authoritarian peaking powers with
poor trade prospects will expand the most beyond their preexisting baselines
of overseas activity; democratic peaking powers with favorable trade pros-
pects will expand the least; and mixed cases—authoritarian powers with good
trade prospects or democratic powers with bad trade prospects—will fall
somewhere in the middle.

If this theory is correct, then scholars should be able to observe peaking
powers deliberately adopting strategies of mercantilist expansion. These strat-
egies should emerge within a few years after the great power’s economic
growth rates start to slide and be described extensively in primary and second-
ary sources, including government documents, statements by leaders, and me-
dia coverage from the time as well as historical studies written years later.
In short, mercantilist campaigns should be obvious to observers both past
and present.

En outre, quantitative indicators should show each peaking power be-
coming exponentially more protectionist and expansionist. Speciªcally, peak-
ing powers will adopt higher trade barriers and increase their military
spending and naval tonnage at faster rates during their economic slowdowns
than during their rapid-growth eras. Peaking powers also are likely to boost
their exports and overseas investments and become more frequently involved
in militarized disputes. These outcomes depend partly on how other states
react, cependant, and thus are less likely to occur than increases in military
spending, which peaking powers more fully control.

Par exemple, I expect peaking powers to attempt to increase their export vol-
umes, but in some cases these efforts might fail and thus not yield an actual
surge in exports. Donc, I treat indicators that depend partially on the reac-
tions of other states as secondary evidence; they provide potentially useful in-
formation, but they are not as clear-cut as indicators that directly measure
peaking powers’ policy changes.

This point about indicators highlights an important limitation of my theory,
namely that it is monadic and therefore cannot fully explain dyadic or sys-
temic outcomes, such as the outbreak of major wars. The theory explains peak-
ing powers’ initial reactions to slowing growth, but it cannot completely

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International Security 48:1 24

account for the subsequent outcomes of those reactions or determine the over-
all extent of a peaking power’s overseas presence or mercantilist behavior.
Plutôt, the theory merely predicts that peaking powers will expand in mercan-
tile fashion above and beyond their preexisting baselines of overseas activity,
which are shaped by numerous other factors, including a peaking power’s
geographic location, natural resource endowment, and demography. For ex-
ample, a state that is surrounded by enemies and has a growing population
but dwindling natural resources is probably more inclined to engage in mer-
cantilist expansion (c'est à dire., have a higher baseline) than a self-sufªcient power
that is surrounded by allies. According to my theory, both types of coun-
tries can be expected to expand their overseas presence and mercantilist poli-
cies as they transition from rapid to slow economic growth. Encore, the theory
cannot fully explain why any country has a larger or smaller international
footprint overall.

The History of Peaking Powers since 1870

To assess how rising powers respond to severe and sustained economic
growth slowdowns, I analyze every case from 1870 à 2018 in which a great
power’s per capita gross domestic product (PIB) grew at least twice as fast as
the global average for at least seven years and then suffered at least a 50 par-
cent decline in growth rates over the next seven years. I adopt these case-
selection criteria from previous studies to reduce the likelihood of selection
bias.64 I use the rate of economic growth as a sampling criterion rather than as

64. I adopt my deªnition of “great power” from the Correlates of War Project, “State System
Membership List, v2016,” http://correlatesofwar.org. I adopt the 1870 starting point from Mac-
Donald and Parent, Twilight of the Titans, 45; and Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent,
“Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” International Security
35, Non. 4 (Spring 2011): 22, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00034. MacDonald and Parent note
que 1870 is the ªrst year for which reliable cross-national data are available for all the great pow-
ers. I adopt the seven-year moving average criterion and use of per capita GDP from Eichen-
vert, Parc, and Shin, “When Fast-Growing Economies Slow Down”; and Barry Eichengreen,
Donghyun Park, and Kwanho Shin, “Growth Slowdowns Redux,” Japan and the World Economy 32
(Novembre 2014): 65–84, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japwor.2014.07.003. These studies analyzed
countries since 1957 that grew at 3.5 percent or faster annually for at least seven years, suivi de
seven years in which their growth rates fell by at least 2 percentage points. I supplement those cri-
teria by requiring great powers to have grown at least two times faster than the world average to
account for the fact that growth rates were slower in earlier eras—3.5 percent was spectacular in
the nineteenth century, but just above average in the postwar era. Had I only used Eichengreen,
Parc, and Shin’s criteria, my case selection would have been biased in favor of postwar cases. j'utilise
per capita GDP, rather than GDP, to follow Eichengreen, Parc, and Shin, and because per capita
GDP correlates with both a state’s power and its standard of living. Given my argument that lead-

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 25

Tableau 1. Peaking Powers (1870–2018)

Country

États-Unis
Russia
Japan
France
Soviet Union
Allemagne
Japan
Russia
Chine

Approximate year of transition
from rapid to slower growth

1882
1899
1922
1925
1926
1927
1970
2007
2012

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a continuous variable, because severe and sustained slowdowns are qualita-
tively different from minor slowdowns. I exclude wartime downturns, mean-
ing cases in which a great power grew rapidly as it mobilized for war and then
got destroyed in that war, because wartime destruction differs fundamentally
from peacetime stagnation.

This exclusion leaves nine cases, which are displayed in table 1. For each
case, I list the year in which the great power’s average annual growth rates
started to slow. Because they are based on imprecise data, these peak years are
rough approximations of when the great power transitioned from rapid to
slow growth.65 I therefore use these years only to identify cases for further re-
recherche, not to conduct precise quantitative tests.

I examine all the cases in detail except interwar France, Allemagne, et le
Soviet Union, because mercantilist expansion was arguably overdetermined in
those cases. Interwar Europe was a cauldron of protectionism and conºict and
featured some of history’s most notorious tyrants. Peaking power dynamics
likely exacerbated Europe’s descent into war but may not have been neces-
sary given the era’s geopolitical pressures and ruthless personalities.66 The

ers of peaking powers fear both relative decline and domestic unrest, per capita GDP is a more
relevant measure of economic trends than GDP growth.
65. For a description of the data, see Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Maddison-Style Esti-
mates of the Evolution of the World Economy: A New 2020 Update,” Maddison Project Working
Paper WP-15 (Groningen, Netherlands: Maddison Project, University of Groningen, Octobre
2020), https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/publications/wp15.pdf.
66. Scholars disagree on the extent to which Europe’s great powers trusted one another and were
committed to international cooperation during the 1920s. Par exemple, see Edelstein, Over the Ho-
rizon, 94–120; Sebastian Rosato, Intentions in Great Power Politics: Uncertainty and the Roots of Conºict
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021), 153–192. There is no doubt, cependant, that the inter-
war European order started to unravel in the late 1920s and particularly after the Great Depression
began in 1929. For detailed accounts of that unravelling, see Zara Steiner, The Lights That Failed: Eu-

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International Security 48:1 26

three interwar cases superªcially ªt my predictions: France, Allemagne, et
the Soviet Union grew rapidly in the early 1920s, suffered slowdowns in the
late 1920s and early 1930s, and reacted aggressively. Germany went on a geno-
cidal rampage to seize what Adolf Hitler called “living space”;67 the Soviet
Union ditched its relatively liberal New Economic Policy for autarky and terri-
torial expansion;68 and France doubled down on punitive reparations, beggar-
thy-neighbor trade policies, and the construction of military fortiªcations.69
Given the turmoil engulªng Europe at the time, cependant, it is difªcult to iso-
late the role that slowing growth played in propelling these actions. Donc,
I drop the interwar European cases from my sample.

I evaluate the remaining cases using an interrupted time series design, com-
paring how the great power behaved during its era of rapid growth with how
it behaved during its subsequent economic slowdown. As described earlier,
my framework predicts a dramatic increase in mercantilist expansion during
the slowdown period and the existence of evidence directly linking the growth
slowdowns to decisions for mercantilist expansion, including statements by
top leaders to that effect and judgments of scholars who have studied the case
in question extensively.

Because of space constraints, this article presents only the two most recent
cases: twenty-ªrst century Russia and China. The other cases are discussed at
length in the online appendix. A quick summary of those cases reveals two
main ªndings.

D'abord, all the peaking powers launched deliberate campaigns of mercantilist
expansion. When the United States’ post–Civil War boom ªzzled in the 1880s,
Washington reacted by forging a “protectionist empire,” adopting the highest
tariffs in the world, channeling investment and exports into Latin America and

ropean International History, 1919–1933 (Oxford: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2005); Adam Tooze, Le
Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 (New York: Allen Lane, 2014).
67. Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York:
Viking, 2007); Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War, 133–142.
68. David R. Shearer, Industry, State, and Society in Stalin’s Russia, 1926–1934 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell
Presse universitaire, 1997); Michael R. Dohan, “The Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky, 1927/28–
1934,” Slavic Review 35, Non. 4 (Décembre 1976): 633–635, https://doi.org/10.2307/2495654; Robert
C. Allen, Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (Princeton, New Jersey: Prince-
ton University Press, 2003), 47–110.
69. Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 et le
Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976); Robert A.
Doughty, “The Illusion of Security: France, 1919–1940,” in Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox,
and Alvin H. Berstein, éd., The Making of Strategy: Rulers, États, and War (New York: Cambridge
Presse universitaire, 1996), 466–497; Robert Boyce, éd., French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918–1940
(Londres: Routledge, 1998).

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 27

East Asia, seizing territory there, and building an enormous navy to secure its
new empire.70 Similarly, imperial Russia responded to the end of its rapid rise
at the turn of the century by abandoning its previous policy of “peaceful pene-
tration,” which had used trade and investment to extend Russian inºuence in
the Far East, in favor of militarily occupying parts of Korea and Manchuria to
secure markets, raw materials, and warm-water ports. Dans les années 1920, a rising
imperial Japan suffered a series of economic crises culminating in the Great
Depression, to which it responded by becoming a serial conqueror and forging
an “East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” a euphemism for a brutal Japanese em-
pire. In the 1970s, Japan again had a rapid rise come to an end. This time Japan
avoided military aggression, but nevertheless adopted a “mercantile realist”
strategy of industrial policies and non-tariff barriers to help Japanese ªrms
snap up global market share and dominate high-technology industries and
international supply chains.71 Japan also expanded its air and naval power-
projection capabilities—procuring advanced military aircraft, ships, and sub-
marines—and began patrolling sea lanes up to 1,000 miles from its territory,
though this militarization was driven partly by Japan’s fears of Soviet expan-
sion and by U.S. demands to contribute more to the U.S.-Japan alliance.72

Each of these mercantilist campaigns is reºected in standard quantitative
datasets. All the peaking powers exponentially increased their military spend-
ing,73 naval tonnage,74 and exports or overseas investment,75 and they became
involved in more militarized disputes during the decade after their growth

70. The phrase “protectionist empire” comes from Benjamin O. Fordham, “Protectionist Empire:
Trade, Tariffs, and United States Foreign Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 31, Non. 2
(Octobre 2017): 170–192, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X17000116.
71. The phrase “mercantile realism” comes from Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, “Mer-
cantile Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy,” International Security 22, Non. 4 (Spring 1998): 171–203,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2539243.
72. Jennifer M. Lind, “Paciªsm or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy,»
International Security 29, Non. 1 (Été 2004): 111–116, https://doi.org/10.1162/0162288041762968.
73. National Material Capabilities, v6.0, Correlates of War, https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/
national-material-capabilities/. See David J. Chanteur, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey, “Capability
Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820–1965,” in Bruce Russett, éd., Peace, War, et
Numbers (Beverly Hills, Californie: Sage, 1972), 19–48.
74. Russia lost a substantial portion of its naval ºeet in the Russo-Japanese War, so Russia’s naval
tonnage plummeted in 1905, but it had been increasing rapidly from 1899 à 1905. Brian Benjamin
Crisher and Mark Souva, “Power at Sea: A Naval Power Dataset, 1865–2011,” International Interac-
tion 40, Non. 4 (2014): 602–629, https://doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2014.918039.
75. From the late 1920s to the early 1930s, Japan’s export growth declined because of the Great De-
pression and a related surge in global protectionism, but its overseas investments increased,
mostly in Manchuria, where Japan was carving out an empire. For investment data on each case,
see the online appendix. For export data on each case, see Katherine Barbieri and Omar M. G.

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International Security 48:1 28

rates peaked compared with the decade before.76 In addition, all but one of the
peaking powers raised tariffs to historically high rates.77 The only exception
was 1970s Japan, which was compelled by the United States and enabled by a
liberalizing global economy to reduce its tariffs and revalue its currency.

The second main ªnding from the historical cases is that each peaking
power’s reaction to slowing growth was shaped by its regime type and trade
prospects. Democratic institutions and political polarization tempered U.S.
mercantilist expansion in the late nineteenth century: Republicans pro-
moted mercantilist expansion, whereas Democrats opposed it and reduced tar-
iffs and naval construction whenever they held power. The United States also
had decent trade prospects. Although European powers raised tariffs on
many U.S. goods in the 1880s, the United States was able to negotiate a series
of bilateral exemptions because its huge market made it an attractive trade
partner. Par conséquent, the surge of U.S. expansion in the 1880s and 1890s was
primarily a “commercial invasion,” albeit one backed by the periodic use of
gunboat diplomacy.78

Imperial Russia, by contrast, reacted to slowing growth with an actual inva-
sion of Manchuria. Autocratic institutions gave Russia the means to mobilize a
major military operation—the government, military, and major industrial com-
panies were controlled by the czar and a handful of senior ofªcials—while
poor trade prospects and slowing growth provided the motives. Russia’s stag-
nating industries were ten to ªfty times less productive than those of other
great powers at the time, and its investments in the Far East were becoming in-

Omar Keshk, Correlates of War Project Trade Data Set Codebook, V4.0, 2016, https://
correlatesofwar.org.
76. Militarized dispute counts include disputes at hostility level 2 and above, because hostility
level 1 implies no show or use of force. Faten Ghosen, Glenn Palmer, and Stuart A. Bremmer, “The
MID3 Data Set, 1993–2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description,” Conºict Management and
Peace Science 21, Non. 2 (Avril 2004): 133–154, https://doi.org/10.1080/07388940490463861.
77. For the United States, see Census Bureau, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times
à 1970 (Washington, CC: Government Printing Ofªce, 1975), series U 207–212. For Russia, see For-
rest Capie, “Tariff Protection and Economic Performance in the Nineteenth Century,” in John Black
and L. Alan Winters, éd., Policy and Performance in International Trade (Londres: Palgrave
Macmillan, 1983), 20–21. For imperial Japan, see Ippei Yamazawa, “Industrial Growth and Trade
in Prewar Japan,” Developing Economies 13, Non. 1 (Mars 1975): 50, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-
1049.1975.tb00342.x.
78. The phrase “commercial invasion” comes from a 1902 essay in Scribner’s Magazine by former
U.S. Assistant of the Treasury Frank A. Vanderlip. See Vanderlip, The American Commercial Invasion
of Europe (1902; Whiteªsh, MT: Kessinger, 2010). But scholars have used the term to describe U.S.
late nineteenth-century policy more broadly. Par exemple, see Matthew Simon and David E.
Novack, “Some Dimensions of the American Commercial Invasion of Europe, 1871–1914: An In-
troductory Essay,” Journal of Economic History 24, Non. 4 (Décembre 1964): 591–605.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 29

creasingly vulnerable to turmoil in China. Russian leaders therefore feared
that they could not revive their economy through free trade and, instead, étaient
driven by a sense of “reactive desperation” into imperialism and conquest.79
The contrast between the two Japanese cases further illustrates the impor-
tance of regime type and trade prospects. Dans les années 1920, imperial Japan had a
parliament, but the military reported directly to the emperor, the ofªcial
head of state. With little governmental oversight and a ªefdom of assets
in Manchuria, the military was prepared to hijack Japanese policymaking
during the economic downturn in the 1920s, especially once international
protectionism skyrocketed with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Mil-
itary ofªcers blamed Japan’s economic woes on liberal internationalist civil-
ian policymakers, assassinated ofªcials deemed insufªciently committed to
autarky and conquest, and eventually invaded Manchuria unilaterally in 1931.
In the 1970s, by contrast, Japan was a consolidated democracy, and its slow-
down occurred amid the heyday of Cold War détente, the opening of China to
Western commerce, and the start of “hyperglobalization,” an era in which
global tariffs fell by more than half from 1970 à 1980.80 As a technological
leader with attractive products to sell, Japan was able to prosper with open in-
ternational markets while outsourcing its security policy to the United States.
That arrangement, à son tour, gave the United States leverage to pressure Japan
into additional tariff reductions. Given these circumstances, plus the memory
of World War II, Japan not surprisingly avoided aggressive mercantilist expan-
sion in the 1970s.

russia, 2007

Russia’s economy shrank during the 1990s, but from 1999 à 2008 it grew 8 par-
cent annually and more than doubled in size.81 Living standards rose for the
ªrst time in decades, and wages jumped 400 percent from 2004 à 2008 alone.82
The main driver of this prosperity was a seven-fold rise in world oil and natu-
ral gas prices from January 1999 to June 2008.83 Because Russia was the

79. William C. Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), 373.
80. Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler, “The Hyperglobalization of Trade and Its Future,»
Working Paper 13-6 (Washington, CC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, Juillet 2013).
81. Timothy Frye, Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
Presse universitaire, 2021), 41.
82. Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul, “Who Lost Russia (This Time)? Vladimir Putin,»
Washington Quarterly 38, Non. 2 (Été 2015): 175, https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2015
.1064716.
83. “Crude Oil WTI,” MarketWatch, accessed April 20, 2023, https://www.marketwatch.com/
investing/future/crude%20oil%20-%20electronic.

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International Security 48:1 30

world’s largest natural gas producer and second-largest oil producer at the
temps, few if any countries beneªted more than it from the rise in prices—or
suffered more when prices plummeted by 70 percent during the 2008 mondial
ªnancial crisis and by an additional 15 percent from 2008 à 2020.84 Le
Russian economy shrank by 8 percent in 2009 and grew only 1.6 percent annu-
ally on average during the 2010s.85

The domestic popularity of Russian leader Vladimir Putin tracked the trajec-
tory of Russia’s economy. When growth rates were high from 2000 à 2008,
Putin’s job approval rating approached 90 pour cent; but from 2008 à 2013, it de-
clined to 61 pour cent, the lowest level since his ªrst months in power.86 In
Septembre 2011, Putin announced that he would seek a third term as presi-
bosse, a decision he expected Russian citizens to welcome.87 But tough eco-
nomic times had hardened the public’s mood.88 In November 2011, Putin was
publicly booed at a martial arts match in front of 20,000 people. In parliamen-
tary elections a few weeks later, Putin’s party, United Russia, lost a quarter of
its seats—a shocking result in a rigged authoritarian system—and hundreds
of thousands of Russians began ºooding the streets to protest Putin’s planned
return to the presidency.89 These demonstrations were the largest in Russia
since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and they occurred as the Arab Spring
was toppling autocratic regimes across the Middle East.90

As a kleptocratic dictatorship, the Kremlin was primed to respond aggres-
sively to these threats.91 The Russian state is run by Putin and a small band of

84. Ibid..
85. World Bank DataBank, accessed April 20, 2023, https://databank.worldbank.org/home.aspx.
86. “Putin’s Approval Rating,” Levada Center, accessed April 20, 2023, https://www.levada.ru/
en/ratings/.
87. Depuis 2008 à 2012, Vladimir Putin served as prime minister but was widely regarded as Rus-
sia’s true leader.
88. Maxim Trudolyubov, “Russia’s Grand Choice: To Be Feared as a Superpower or Prosperous as
a Nation?,” in Elizabeth A. Wood et al., Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 2015), 80–84.
89. Stoner and McFaul, “Who Lost Russia (This Time)?,» 176.
90. Ibid..
91. On the links between Russian domestic unrest and international expansion, see Daniel
Treisman, “Putin Unbound: How Repression at Home Presaged Belligerence Abroad,” Foreign Af-
fairs 101, Non. 3 (May/June 2022): 40–53, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-
04-06/putin-russia-ukraine-war-unbound; Valerie Bunce and Aida Hozic, “Diffusion-Prooªng
and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine,” Demoktratizatsiya 24, Non. 4 (Fall 2016): 435–446, https://muse
.jhu.edu/article/634318#info_wrap; Kathryn E. Stoner, Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in
a New Global Order (New York: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2021), 235–268; Chris Miller, “What Putin
Really Feared in Ukraine,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, E-Note, Septembre 17, 2014, https://
www.fpri.org/article/2014/09/what-putin-really-feared-in-ukraine/.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 31

oligarchs who collectively own the commanding heights of the economy.92
Sustaining this “pyramid of patronage” was relatively easy during the high-
growth years, when Russian tycoons reaped bumper proªts and the Kremlin’s
coffers were ºush, but this system came under severe pressure during the eco-
nomic downturn.93 In response, the Russian government cracked down on dis-
sent, stoked anti-Western nationalism, and transferred assets from political
opponents to Putin’s cronies at state-favored ªrms.94 By some estimates, le
state-owned share of Russia’s economy doubled from 35 percent in 2005 à
70 percent in 2015.95

As he seized assets domestically, Putin also looked abroad for new sources
of revenue.96 Russia expanded more aggressively into the Arctic after the late
2000s to secure natural resources, sending tens of thousands of troops there
and conducting regular military patrols and exercises.97 The Kremlin also
began pressuring neighboring countries to join a Russian-dominated cus-
toms union, the Eurasian Economic Union, that essentially would have turned
them into economic vassals of Moscow.98 Putin hoped that this economic bloc
would stimulate Russian industries and establish, as he put it in an article in

92. La plupart, if not all, senior Russian ofªcials operate a medium-to-large business or have a spouse
who does. On that point, see Natalia Lamberova and Konstantin Sonin, “The Role of Business in
Shaping Economic Policy,” in Daniel Treisman, éd., The New Autocracy: Information, Politique, et
Policy in Putin’s Russia (Washington, CC: Brookings Institution Press, 2018), 139–140. On Russia as
a kleptocratic dictatorship, see Frye, Weak Strongman, 37–49; Alena V. Ledeneva, Can Russia Mod-
ernise? Sistema, Power Networks, and Informal Governance (Cambridge: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge
2013), 50–84; Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2014).
93. “A Tsar Is Born,” Economist, Octobre 26, 2017, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/10/
26/a-tsar-is-born.
94. According to one study, members of Putin’s inner circle received 142 times more money in
new assets and contracts than less connected business owners. See Lamberova and Sonin, “The
Role of Business in Shaping Economic Policy,» 141. On Russia’s nationalization of industries as a
means of sustaining Putin’s patronage network, see Anders Åslund, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: Le
Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 86–87, 95.
On the crackdown on dissent and stoking of nationalism, see Bunce and Hozic, “Diffusion-
Prooªng and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine”; Stoner, Russia Resurrected, 249–262.
95. “Milk without the Cow,” Economist, Octobre 20, 2016, https://www.economist.com/special-
report/2016/10/20/milk-without-the-cow.
96. Russia expanded into the Arctic to secure natural resources, sending tens of thousands of
troops there and conducting regular military patrols and exercises. See Markowitz, Perils of Plenty,
80–123.
97. Ibid..
98. William E. Pomeranz, “Ground Zero: How a Trade Dispute Sparked the Russia-Ukraine Cri-
sis,” in Wood et al., Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine, 54–55; Samuel Charap and Timothy J. Colton,
Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia (Londres: Routledge,
2017), 102–127; Chris Miller, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia (Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 2018), 140–144; Pomeranz, “Ground Zero,” 54–55; Andrej Krickovic
and Maxim Bratersky, “Benevolent Hegemon, Neighborhood Bully, or Regional Security Provider?

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International Security 48:1 32

late 2011, “a powerful supranational association, capable of becoming one of
the poles of the modern world.”99 To underscore his ambitions, Putin in-
creased Russia’s defense spending by 7 percent in 2011 et 15 percent in 2012.
Par 2013, Russia’s defense budget was more than 50 percent larger than it had
been in 2007.100

Dans 2012, cependant, the European Union (EU) threatened Russia’s trade pros-
pects by offering a “deep and comprehensive free trade agreement” to
Ukraine, the most populous former Soviet state and main producer of Russia’s
military hardware.101 The agreement would have granted Ukraine extensive
access to European markets in exchange for Kyiv cutting ties to Russia’s mili-
tary and adopting EU regulatory standards, which would have barred many
Russian products from the Ukrainian market.102 The agreement also called for
integrating Ukraine into the EU’s common security and defense policy, a move
that Putin viewed as a Trojan horse for NATO membership.103

Ironically, Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) dans 2012
exacerbated its negative trade prospects. With the exception of commodities
and military hardware, few Russian industries could compete on interna-
tional markets without the aid of state subsidies. For that reason, the Russian
Ministry of Economic Development estimated that Russia would lose $13 bil- lion from 2012 à 2014 alone as foreign competitors displaced domestic pro- ducers in the wake of Russia’s WTO entry.104 Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress tied its approval of normal trade relations with Russia to passage of the Magnitsky Act, which authorized the United States to freeze the assets of foreign human rights offenders, including senior Russian leaders.105 Thus, Russia’s Efforts to Promote Regional Integration after the 2013–2014 Ukraine Crisis,” Eurasian Ge- ography and Economics 57, Non. 2 (2016): 180–202, https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2016.1211026. 99. Quoted in Andrej Krickovic, “Imperial Nostalgia or Prudent Geopolitics? Russia’s Efforts to Reintegrate the Post-Soviet Space in Geopolitical Perspective,” Post-Soviet Affairs 30, Non. 6 (2014): 503–528, https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2014.900975. 100. Military Expenditure Database, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2022, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex. 101. Richard Sakwa, Russia against the Rest: The Post–Cold War Crisis of World Order (Cambridge: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2017), 144–152; Stoner, Russia Resurrected, 43–44; Jokull Johannesson, “Russia’s War with Ukraine Is to Acquire Military Industrial Capability and Human Resources,” Journal of International Studies 10, Non. 4 (2017): 63–71, https://doi.org/10.14254/2071-8330.2017/10- 4/4. 102. Pomeranz, “Ground Zero,» 61; Elias Götz, “It’s Geopolitics, Stupid: Explaining Russia’s Ukraine Policy,” Global Affairs 1, Non. 1 (2015): 3-dix, https://doi.org/10.1080/23340460.2015.960184. 103. Götz, “It’s Geopolitics, Stupid,» 4. 104. “Russia Could Lose $13 Billion from WTO Entry, Economy Minister Says,” Moscow Times,
Juillet 10, 2012, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2012/07/09/russia-could-lose-13bln-from-wto-
entry-economy-minister-says-a16133.
105. Pomeranz, “Ground Zero,» 57.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 33

Russia’s initiation into the WTO raised tensions with the West and fueled
Putin’s determination to consolidate a Russian-led regional trade bloc.106

Toward that end, Russia began aggressively pressuring Ukraine to reject the
EU’s trade deal. Russia both promised Ukraine a 30 percent reduction in gas
prices, lower tariffs, et $15 billion for joining the Eurasian Economic Union and threatened steep tariffs on Ukrainian goods for signing with the EU. In November 2013, Moscow had seemingly achieved its objectives when Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych rejected the EU deal. That decision, cependant, sparked protests in Kyiv that forced Yanukovych to ºee to Russia. Le lendemain, the Ukrainian parliament voted to replace his government with one that enthusiastically backed the EU deal. The change in regime reoriented Ukraine away from Russia and toward the West. It also galvanized Putin’s do- mestic political opponents. Alexey Navalny, a Putin rival who had won nearly a third of the vote in Moscow’s mayoral election in 2013, celebrated the Ukrainian coup as a “popular uprising” against “corrupt authorities” and sug- gested that it could serve as a model for political change in Russia.107 The Kremlin feared that Ukraine was about to split in half, that the EU would swallow the western portion of the country, that Russia would lose its gas deals with Ukraine and its naval base in Crimea, and that the result- ing chaos might spark domestic unrest within Russia.108 To prevent those out- comes, dans 2014 Russia annexed Crimea and supported pro-Russia separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, together known as the Donbass region of southeast- ern Ukraine. china, 2012 Since 1978, the economy in China has grown faster, for longer, than in any country ever. Propelled by a demographic dividend and easy access to Western markets and capital, Beijing rode a wave of hyperglobalization from the 1980s to the 2010s to become the world’s workshop and its second- largest economy. 106. Notably, Putin tried to get the Eurasian Economic Union admitted to the World Trade Orga- nization (WTO) as a uniªed trade bloc. He also demanded that the WTO allow members to defend national industries during times of insecurity. Ibid., 56–58. 107. Miller, “What Putin Really Feared in Ukraine.” 108. Miller, Putinomics, 144–145; Daniel Treisman, “Why Putin Took Crimea: The Gambler in the Kremlin,” Foreign Affairs 95, Non. 3 (May/June 2016): 47–54, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/ukraine/2016-04-18/why-russian-president-putin-took-crimea-from-ukraine; Anthony H. Cordesman, “Russia and the ‘Color Revolutions’: A Russian Military View of a World De- stabilized by the U.S. and the West (Full Report)» (Washington, CC: Center for Strategic and Inter- national Studies, May 28, 2014), https://www.csis.org/analysis/russia-and-color-revolution. l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / i s e c / art – pdlf / / / / 4 8 1 7 2 1 5 3 3 0 6 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 4 6 3 pd . f par invité 0 9 Septembre 2 0 2 3 International Security 48:1 34 During this high-growth period, China’s leaders maintained ambitious ob- jectives, including reabsorbing Taiwan, controlling swathes of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, “blunting” the global spread of democracy, and breaking the chain of U.S. alliances in East Asia.109 With some glaring excep- tion, cependant, China’s approach to pursuing these interests was relatively peaceful.110 Conªdent in a growing economy, and wary of U.S.-led encircle- ment, Chinese leaders mainly relied on the lure of their nation’s vast market to extract concessions from other countries.111 From the 1990s to the mid-2000s, China settled border disputes with seven neighbors;112 joined major interna- tional organizations, including the WTO;113 and shelved plans to build aircraft carriers and other military power-projection platforms.114 Western ªrms re- ported that China’s business climate was becoming friendlier;115 and rigorous research suggested that China was, on the whole, behaving as a “status quo power.”116 In short, China carried out a “peaceful rise” strategy during its high-growth years.117 In the late 2000s, cependant, China’s rapid growth and geopolitical modera- tion started to end. In March 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao warned that China’s investment- and export-dependent economy had become “unsteady, unbal- anced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.”118 A year later, le 2008 global ªnan- cial crisis caused world trade to plummet by 15 percent in a single quarter.119 109. Doshi, The Long Game, 47–158. 110. Glaring exceptions include: un 1988 naval battle in the Spratly Islands, during which China killed nearly seventy Vietnamese sailors; le 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre; le 1994 annex- ation of Mischief Reef; the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis; et le 2001 EP-3 reconnaissance air- craft incident. China also invested in “assassin’s mace” military capabilities designed to destroy U.S. forces within several hundred miles of China’s coastline. See Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Mar- athon, 134–155. 111. Doshi, The Long Game, 53–67, 105–112. 112. M.. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conºict in China’s Territorial Disputes (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008), 46–47. 113. Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?,” International Security 27, Non. 4 (Spring 2003): 5–56, https://doi.org/10.1162/016228803321951081. 114. Doshi, The Long Game, 68–100. 115. Yeling Tan, “How the WTO Changed China: The Mixed Legacy of Economic Engagement,” Foreign Affairs 100, Non. 2 (March/April 2021): 95, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/ 2021-02-16/how-wto-changed-china. 116. Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?» 117. Zheng Bijian, “China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great Power Status,” Foreign Affairs 84, Non. 5 (September/October 2005), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2005-09-01/chinas- peaceful-rise-great-power-status; Oriana Skylar Mastro, “The Stealth Superpower: How China Hid Its Global Ambitions,” Foreign Affairs 98, Non. 1 (January/February, 2019): 31–39, https://www .foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/china-plan-rule-asia. 118. “Wen Conªdent in Maintaining Economic Growth,” China Daily, Mars 16, 2007. 119. Rudolf Bems, Robert C. Johnson, and Kei-Mu Yi, “The Great Trade Collapse,” Working Paper no. 18632 (Cambridge, MA: NBER, Décembre 2012). l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / i s e c / art – pdlf / / / / 4 8 1 7 2 1 5 3 3 0 6 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 4 6 3 pd . f par invité 0 9 Septembre 2 0 2 3 The Peril of Peaking Powers 35 Over the following year, Chinese export growth collapsed, twenty million workers lost their jobs, and labor strikes and protests proliferated around the country.120 Fearing a recession and internal unrest, China’s leaders launched what be- came the largest credit expansion in history; depuis 2008 à 2018, Chinese ªrms and local governments took out an astounding $29 trillion in new credit.121
This enormous injection of funds kept China’s growth rates artiªcially high for
a few years after 2008 but exacerbated a longer-term slowdown. Awash in easy
money, local governments and state-owned enterprises spent trillions of dol-
lars on loss-making projects, including the construction of more than ªfty
“ghost cities.”122 The spending binge also provoked China’s trade partners,
many of which were unwilling to absorb a glut of Chinese exports as they
struggled to stabilize their own economies. China faced nearly eight hundred
new trade barriers in 2009 alone and thousands more during the 2010s.123
Entre-temps, a dozen of China’s major trading partners, which collectively con-
stituted 40 percent of the global economy, were negotiating what eventually
became the Trans-Paciªc Partnership. Not only did this trade bloc exclude
Chine, but it was designed “to make sure the United States—and not countries
like China—is the one writing this century’s rules for the world’s economy,” as
U.S. President Barack Obama later declared.124

As these economic headwinds gathered speed, internal Chinese government

120. Sharon LaFraniere, “China Puts Joblessness for Migrants at 20 million,” New York Times, Fév-
ruary 2,
2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/asia/03china.html; Zheping
Huang, “China Has Seen a 13-Fold Increase in Labor Strikes and Protests since 2011—and It’s
Cracking Down,” Quartz, Décembre 23, 2015, https://qz.com/580553/china-is-cracking-down-on-
labor-rights-ngos-in-its-worlds-factory-with-a-state-media-smear-campaign.
121. On Chinese leaders’ fears of economic decline and domestic unrest, see Barry Naughton,
“China and the Two Crises: Depuis 1997 to 2009,” in T. J.. Pempel and Keiichi Tsunekawa, éd., Deux
Crises, Difference Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2015),
118–123. On Chinese credit expansion, see Daniel H. Rosen and Logan Wright, Credit and Credibil-
ville: Risks to China’s Economic Resilience (Washington, CC: Center for Strategic and International
Études, Octobre 2018), 1.
122. Koh Qing, “China Wasted $6.9 Trillion on Bad Investment Post-2009,” Reuters, Novembre 20, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-investment/china-wasted-6-9-trillion-on- bad-investment-post-2009-media-idUSL3N0TA2KP20141120; Guanghua Chi et al., “Ghost Cities Analysis Based on Positioning Data in China,” Baidu Big Data Lab, 2015, https://doi.org/ 10.48550/arXiv.1510.08505; Wade Shepard, Ghost Cities of China: The Story of Cities without People in the World’s Most Populated Country (Londres: Zed Books, 2015); Atif Ansar et al., “Does Infrastruc- ture Investment Lead to Economic Growth or Economic Fragility? Evidence from China,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 32, Non. 3 (2016): 360–390, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grw022. 123. Global Trade Alert, accessed May 1, 2023, https://www.globaltradealert.org/country/all/ affected-jurisdictions_42/period-from_20090101/period-to_20220815. 124. Barack Obama, “Writing the Rules for 21st Century Trade,” White House, Février 18, 2015, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/02/18/president-obama-writing-rules-21st- century-trade. l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / i s e c / art – pdlf / / / / 4 8 1 7 2 1 5 3 3 0 6 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 4 6 3 pd . f par invité 0 9 Septembre 2 0 2 3 International Security 48:1 36 reports began painting pessimistic pictures of an economy beset by slowing growth, foreign protectionism, soaring debt, diminishing returns, and looming demographic and environmental crises.125 “Facing these challenges,” one re- view of Chinese sources concludes, “Chinese ofªcials and state-afªliated researchers were concerned and gloomy.”126 China’s hope for a return to steady growth and expanding market access, another study concludes, quickly “gave way to concerns about economic and political stability” and “a consen- sus that industrial overproduction remained a serious problem that could hob- ble China’s future economic growth.”127 Yet China’s leaders also perceived a tantalizing opportunity.128 The great re- cession had thrown the international balance of power into ºux by hobbling the U.S. economy and polarizing politics across the democratic world. Hyperglobalization had stalled, but the eroding liberal order was creating space for a more China-centric system—and thanks to decades of rapid growth, China had more tools to forge such a system than at any point in its modern history. Par conséquent, as Thomas Christensen explains, China’s lead- ers were imbued with “a strange mix of conªdence on the international stage and insecurity at home.”129 They could reshape the international system in their favor, but only by adopting a more assertive grand strategy. The ªrst sign of this new strategy emerged in July 2009, when president Hu Jintao declared at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 11th Ambassadorial Conference that China “must more actively promote the resolution of interna- tional and regional hot-spots related to China’s core interests . . . make more offensive moves, and actively guide the situation to develop in a favorable di- rection.”130 Premier Wen elaborated on the economic prong of this strategy in his 2010 Government Work Report. “Trade protectionism is clearly reasserting it- soi,” he warned, and China’s economy was beset by “considerable excess ca- pacity” and “insufªcient internal impetus driving economic growth.”131 In 125. Daniel C. Lynch, China’s Futures: PRC Elites Debate Economics, Politique, and Foreign Policy (Stan- ford, Californie: Stanford University Press, 2015); Margaret M. Pearson, Meg Rithmire, and Kellee S. Tsai, “China’s Party-State Capitalism and International Backlash: From Interdependence to Insecurity,” International Security 47, Non. 2 (Fall 2022): 135–176, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00447. 126. Min Ye, The Belt and Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China: 1998–2018 (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2020), 3. 127. Axel Dreher et al., Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China’s Overseas Development Program (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2022), 285–286. 128. Doshi, The Long Game, 159–182, 261–296. 129. Thomas J. Christensen, “The Advantages of an Assertive China: Responding to Beijing’s Abrasive Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs 90, Non. 2 (March/April 2011): 59, https://www.foreignaffairs .com/articles/east-asia/2011-02-21/advantages-assertive-china. 130. Quoted in Doshi, The Long Game, 180. 131. Wen Jiabao, 2010 Report on the Work of the Government, Delivered at the 3rd Session of the l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / direct . m je t . e d u / i s e c / art – pdlf / / / / 4 8 1 7 2 1 5 3 3 0 6 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 4 6 3 pd . f par invité 0 9 Septembre 2 0 2 3 The Peril of Peaking Powers 37 response, the government needed to assert “macro-control” over the economy and pursue two objectives: (1) “transform the pattern of economic develop- ment” by “fostering emerging industries of strategic importance”; et (2) “steadily develop foreign trade . . . by opening new markets.”132 China’s authoritarian system facilitated this combination of statist industrial policy and overseas market expansion. The CCP owns almost all of China’s land; roughly two-thirds of its assets; the four largest banks in the world; and major ªrms in critical sectors, including energy, transportation, heavy indus- try, and telecommunications.133 In addition, CCP members hold the top po- sitions in 95 percent of the country’s largest private ªrms.134 China’s leaders, donc, were highly capable of controlling economic policy—and heavily incentivized to ªnd ways to maintain solid growth without giving up that con- trol.135 These facts were underscored in November 2013, when the World Bank worked with the CCP to develop 336 reform proposals designed to liberalize China’s growth model by allowing markets to “play a decisive role in allocat- ing national resources.”136 Less than 10 percent of those reforms were ever im- plemented.137 Instead, the CCP doubled down on mercantilist expansion in an attempt to patch its economic problems while maintaining its authoritarian grip on power.138 The CCP reasserted tight control over the economy—assets owned by the state more than doubled from 2008 to 2012—and then used that 11th National People’s Congress on March 5, 2010, https://china.usc.edu/wen-jiabao-2010-report- work-government-march-5-2010. 132. Ibid.. 133. Nicholas R. Lardy, The State Strikes Back: The End of the Reform Era (Washington, CC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2019); Chang-Tai Hsieh and Zheng Song, “Grasp the Large, Let Go of the Small: The Transformation of the State Sector in China,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2015, 295–366, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ 2015a_hsieh.pdf; Curtis J. Milhaupt and Wentong Zheng, “Beyond Ownership: State Capitalism and the Chinese Firm,” Georgetown Law Journal 103, Non. 3 (Mars 2015): 665–722, https://law .stanford.edu/publications/beyond-ownership-state-capitalism-and-the-chinese-ªrm/. 134. Chun Han Wong and Eva Dou, “Foreign Companies in China Get a New Partner: The Com- munist Party,” Wall Street Journal, Octobre 29, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign- companies-in-china-get-a-new-partner-the-communist-party-1509297523. 135. Mark Wu, “The ‘China, Inc.’ Challenge to Global Trade Governance,” Harvard International Law Journal 57, Non. 2 (Spring 2016): 261–324, https://harvardilj.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/ 15/HLI210_crop.pdf. 136. “Market to Play ‘Decisive’ Role in Allocating Resources,” Xinhua, Novembre 12, 2013; Barry Naughton, “The Challenges of Economic Growth and Reform,” in Robert S. Ross and Jo Inge Bekkevold, éd., China in the Era of Xi Jinping (Washington, CC: Georgetown University Press, 2016), 80. 137. Daniel H. Rosen, “China’s Economic Reckoning: The Price of Failed Reforms,” Foreign Affairs 100, Non. 4 (July/August 2021), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-06-22/chinas- economic-reckoning. 138. Nadège Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (Washington, CC: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017), 93–120. l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / i s e c / art – pdlf / / / / 4 8 1 7 2 1 5 3 3 0 6 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 4 6 3 pd . f par invité 0 9 Septembre 2 0 2 3 International Security 48:1 38 control to launch the most extravagant campaign of industrial policies and overseas investments the world has ever seen.139 “After 2010,” Barry Naughton shows in a detailed study, “China was com- mitted to a full panoply of industrial policies” and would go on to spend more than twice as much on technological development as any other nation during the 2010s, both in absolute terms and as a share of its economy.140 Whereas past policies focused on catching up to technological leaders in existing indus- tries, China’s new policy called for leapfrogging the rest of the world in emerg- intelligence and synthetic biology.141 ing technologies, such as artiªcial Naughton attributes this ambitious approach to China’s growth slowdown: “This new Chinese government effort expanded just as the Chinese economy was slowing. To be sure, the new policy package was a response to the slow- down, not the cause of it.”142 Slowing growth also drove Chinese economic expansion overseas. After the 2008 ªnancial crisis, Chinese strategists assessed that their traditional ex- port markets in the United States, Europe, and Japan had become “saturated” and plagued by “ªnancial crises and trade frictions.”143 To boost exports, and thereby maintain government revenues, CCP strategists proposed a “Marshall Plan” to “proactively create external demand” for Chinese goods in emerging markets.144 Accordingly, the Hu administration began engaging in “infra- structure diplomacy” during the ªnal two years of its reign, extending billions 139. On the more than doubling of state-owned assets, see Tan, “How the WTO Changed China,» 98. On the CCP asserting tight control over the Chinese economy, see Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai, “China’s Party-State Capitalism.” Notably, the authors conclude on page 136: “This change has been driven by the leadership’s uncertainty about its economic model, heightened anxiety after the 2007–2009 global ªnancial crisis, and a more generalized perception of domestic and external threats.” 140. Barry Naughton, The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy, 1978 à 2020 (Ciudad Universitaria, Mex- ico: Academic Network of Latin America and the Caribbean on China, 2021), 49. On China’s in- dustrial policy spending, see Gerard DiPippo et al., Red Ink: Estimating Chinese Industrial Policy Spending in Comparative Perspective (Washington, CC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2022), 2. 141. Dans 2010, Chinese policymakers began to parrot the slogan “occupy the commanding heights of the technology revolution” as short-hand for this policy. Naughton, The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy, 71. 142. Ibid., 13. 143. Luo Jianbo, director of the Chinese Diplomatic Research Division of the Institute of Interna- tional Strategic Studies at the CCP Central Party School, quoted in Nadège Rolland, A New Great Game? Situating Africa in China’s Strategic Thinking, Special Report 91 (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, Juin 2021), 13, https://www.nbr.org/publication/a-new-great-game-situating- africa-in-chinas-strategic-thinking/. 144. Zhang Monan, “Jiji zhudong de chuangzao waixu shishi zhongguoshi maxieer jihua” [Ac- l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / i s e c / art – pdlf / / / / 4 8 1 7 2 1 5 3 3 0 6 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 4 6 3 pd . f par invité 0 9 Septembre 2 0 2 3 The Peril of Peaking Powers 39 of dollars in loans to dozens of developing countries from 2010 à 2012.145 After assuming power, President Xi Jinping rebranded this campaign in 2013 as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and greatly expanded its scope and scale to curb China’s industrial overcapacity, which Xi described as “the root cause” of China’s economic woes that would “trigger an economic crisis” if not resolved.146 Chinese leaders also believed that expanding into new markets would en- hance their leverage over trade partners and, finalement, reorient the global economy on terms more favorable to Beijing. Behind closed doors at the 18th National Congress held in November 2012, Xi told delegates that the CCP’s previous policies of reform and opening had allowed the United States and other rich nations to “hijack” China’s economy.147 Western ªrms exploited China’s cheap labor and plowed the savings into innovation, thereby reinforc- ing their technological lead. To avoid becoming a cog in Western supply chains, Xi and other top ofªcials reasoned, China needed to cultivate indige- nous innovation and new markets where it would be the dominant dispenser of capital and technology.148 Driven by these imperatives, China massively expanded its economic pres- ence abroad. Depuis 2010 à 2017, China doled out over $1 trillion in loans to
more than one hundred countries, a sum greater than the sovereign lending of
the twenty-two Paris Club governments combined.149 The main goal of this
lending was to create privileged economic zones where Chinese ªrms could

tively and proactively create external demand and implement the Chinese Marshall Plan],
Zhongguo jingji daobao [Chinese Economic Daily], Juin 27, 2009.
145. Min Ye, The Belt and Road and Beyond, 117–118.
146. Quoted in Yangpeng Zheng, “New Warning on Overcapacity,” China Daily, Novembre 5,
2013, https://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-11/05/content_17080567.htm. In October
2013, a few weeks after Xi announced the BRI in Kazakhstan, China’s State Council issued the
“Guidelines for Resolving Severe Overcapacity,” which set out a roadmap to resolve overcapacity
in major industries within ªve years. See Zhiwei Zhang, “China Guidelines Announced to
Resolve Overcapacity Problem,” China Money Network, Octobre 17, 2013, https://www
.chinamoneynetwork.com/2013/10/17/china-guidelines-announced-to-resolve-overcapacity-
problem.
147. Katsuji Nakazawa, “Xi, Not Trump, Started on Path to Decoupling,” Nikkei Asia, Avril 20,
2023, https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Analysis-Xi-not-Trump-started-on-
path-to-decoupling.
148. Julian Gerwitz, “The Chinese Reassessment of Interdependence,” China Leadership Monitor,
Non. 64 (Été 2020), https://www.prcleader.org/gewirtz; Alicia Garcia Herrero, “What Is be-
hind China’s Dual Circulation Strategy?,” China Leadership Monitor, Non. 69 (Fall 2021), https://
www.prcleader.org/herrero.
149. Dreher et al., Banking on Beijing, ªg. 4.1; Sebastian Horn, Carmen M. Reinhart, and Christoph
Trebesch, “China’s Overseas Lending,” Journal of International Economics 133 (Novembre 2021):
1–32, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2021.103539.

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International Security 48:1 40

dump excess capacity in poor countries while maintaining non-tariff barriers
on rich countries.150 Beijing typically targeted areas that were packed with re-
sources or potential consumers, or that had ports near China’s main trade
routes. Then it extended a panoply of credit, goods, services, and technologies
to partner governments, many of which ended up taking Chinese loans to em-
ploy Chinese workers to build infrastructure and install Chinese telecommuni-
cation and “smart city” systems. These “coordinated credit spaces” not only
drummed up business for Chinese ªrms but also drew partners into China’s
ecosystem of products and services.151 “The goal is not simply proªt maximi-
zation,” Stephen Kaplan explains, but “market maximization.”152 To facilitate
this process, the central government paired Chinese provinces with countries
that seemed ideally suited to alleviate their speciªc overcapacity problems.153
Provincial governments then directed local companies to relocate production
capacity to those countries.

The impetus for this expansion was slowing growth at home and declining
trade prospects abroad. As Min Ye concludes from her review of Chinese
sources, “GDP growth rates had continued to slide, corporate performance
was in trouble, and industrial overcapacities were widespread. . . . These eco-
nomic pressure points provoked a sense of urgency—the state had to respond
and respond quickly. . . . It was against this background of crises and state pa-
ralysis that the BRI was launched.”154 Zenobia Chan reaches a similar conclu-
sion based on hundreds of elite interviews, Chinese government documents,
and quantitative data on China’s overseas project contracts:

China was facing a conºuence of economic, politique, and diplomatic chal-
lenges that could jeopardize the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP). On the economic front, substantial excess industrial capacity and re-

150. Zenobia T. Chan, “Afºuence without Inºuence? The Inducement Dilemma in Economic
Statecraft” (unpublished manuscript, Octobre 10, 2022), https://drive.google.com/ªle/d/
1SyXgHDz37p-5V02527G5MlVAKmvTqobA/view. Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century?, 93–120;
Charles Clover and Lucy Hornby, “China’s Great Game: Road to a New Empire,” Financial Times,
Octobre 12, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/6e098274-587a-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.
151. Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher, “Coordinated Credit Spaces: The Globalization of
Chinese Development Finance,” Development and Change 50, Non. 1 (Janvier 2019): 245–274, https://
doi.org/10.1111/dech.12470; Robert D. Atkinson, “A Remarkable Resemblance: Germany from
1900 à 1945 and China Today. Time for a NATO for Trade?,” International Economy, Fall 2020, 14–
17, 53–56, https://itif.org/publications/2021/01/20/remarkable-resemblance-germany-1900-1945-
and-china-today-time-nato-trade/.
152. Stephen B. Kaplan, Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the
Americas (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2021), 48.
153. Dreher et al., Banking on Beijing, 286.
154. Min Ye, The Belt and Road and Beyond, 44.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 41

gional inequality within China had only worsened after the 2008 Global
Financial Crisis, hampering the economic growth the country had sustained
for three decades. On the political front, ethnic conºicts and riots in Xinjiang
and Tibet stemming from poverty, marginalization, and discrimination di-
rectly threatened the inter-ethnic harmony promoted by Beijing. On the diplo-
matic front, Chinese policymakers perceived the imminent threat of strategic
encirclement under the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and the Trans-
Paciªc Partnership. Against the backdrop of these shocks to the CCP, the Belt
and Road Initiative was launched.155

Economic expansion quickly spurred calls within China’s leadership for mil-
itary expansion to protect the country’s increasingly far-ºung assets.156 From
2014 à 2016, the number of Chinese legal laborers abroad doubled from one to
two million; tens of thousands of Chinese ªrms registered overseas; and China
became the leading trade partner of many of the world’s countries and the
largest importer of food, energy, and other vital commodities.157 Roughly
20 percent of China’s overseas workers and investments were deployed in
countries classiªed by the World Bank as highly unstable, and dozens of
Chinese citizens were killed or kidnapped abroad during the 2010s.158 Conse-
quently, China’s leaders developed a keen interest in overseas security.159
“Wherever Chinese interests go, our security boundary must also go,” one
prominent strategist wrote in 2014.160

China’s military had been gradually increasing its noncombat operations

155. Chan, “Afºuence without Inºuence?,» 16.
156. Timothy R. Heath, China’s Pursuit of Overseas Security (Washington, CC: RAND Corporation,
2018).
157. Nadège Rolland, “Securing the Belt and Road: Prospects for Chinese Military Engage-
ment along the Silk Roads,” in Nadège Rolland, éd., Securing the Belt and Road Initiative: China’s
Evolving Military Engagement along the Silk Roads, Special Report 80 (Seattle: National Bureau of
Asian Research, Septembre 2019), 3, https://www.nbr.org/publication/securing-the-belt-and-
road-initiative-chinas-evolving-military-engagement-along-the-silk-roads/.
158. Murray Scott Tanner and Peter W. Mackenzie, China’s Emerging National Security Interests and
Their Impact on the People’s Liberation Army (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2015),
32.
159. Michael McDevitt, éd., Becoming a Great “Maritime Power”: A Chinese Dream (Arlington, VA:
Center for Naval Analyses, 2016), https://www.cna.org/archive/CNA_Files/pdf/irm-2016-u-
013646.pdf; Liza Tobin, “Underway: Beijing’s Strategy to Build China into a Maritime Great
Power,” Naval War College Review 71, Non. 2 (Spring 2018): 17–48, https://digital-commons
.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article(cid:2)1734&contexte(cid:2)nwc-review;
Jeffrey Becker, “Securing
China’s Lifelines across the Indian Ocean,” CMSI China Maritime Report, 11 (Décembre 2020),
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/11/.
160. Zhang Wenmu, Lun zhongguo haiquan [On China’s sea power] (Beijing: Haiyang chubanshe,
2014), 210–211, quoted in Isaac B. Kardon and Wendy Leutert, “Pier Competitor: China’s Power
Position in Global Ports,” International Security 46, Non. 4 (Spring 2022): 14, https://est ce que je.org/10.1162/
isec_a_00433.

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International Security 48:1 42

abroad since 2004. Dans 2006, it began using law enforcement ships to enforce
China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.161 As the BRI was developed
in the early 2010s, cependant, Chinese analysts began calling for the develop-
ment of “strategic strongpoints”—a vast overseas port and base network con-
centrated around global chokepoints.162 The 2013 edition of China’s Military
Strategy tasked the People’s Liberation Army for the ªrst time with safeguard-
ing China’s overseas interests, et le 2015 version of that document declared
that protecting overseas interests had become as important as defending
China itself.163

This new emphasis on “open seas protection” contributed to a massive
expansion of Chinese power-projection forces.164 From 2014 à 2018, Chine
launched more large warships than were in the British, Indian, Spanish,
Taiwanese, and German ºeets combined.165 Whereas China launched ten de-
stroyers in twenty years from 1990 à 2010, it launched twenty-four destroyers
in just eight years from 2010 à 2018. Prior to 2009, China had shelved plans to
build aircraft carriers, but in the 2010s it launched two carriers and prepared
to build at least two more in the 2020s.166 China also built and militarized

161. On noncombat operations, see M. Taylor Fravel, “Economic Growth, Regime Insecurity, et
Military Strategy: Explaining the Rise of Noncombat Operations in China,” Asian Security 7, Non. 3
(2011): 177–200, https://doi.org/10.1080/14799855.2011.615080. On maritime law enforcement, voir
Andrew Chubb, “Xi Jinping and China’s Maritime Policy,” Brookings Institution, Janvier 22, 2019,
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/xi-jinping-and-chinas-maritime-policy/.
162. Conor M. Kennedy, “Strategic Strong Points and Chinese Naval Strategy,” China Brief 19,
Non. 6 (2019), https://jamestown.org/program/strategic-strong-points-and-chinese-naval-strategy/;
Christopher Len, “China’s 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative, Energy Security and SLOC
Access,” Maritime Affairs 11, Non. 1 (2015): 1–18, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/
09733159.2015.1025535.
163. The Diversiªed Employment of China’s Armed Forces (Beijing: State Council Information Ofªce of
the People’s Republic of China, Avril 2013), http://www.andrewerickson.com/wp-content/
uploads/2019/07/China-Defense-White-Paper_2013_English-Chinese_Annotated.pdf; China’s Mili-
tary Strategy (Beijing: State Council Information Ofªce of the People’s Republic of China, May
2015), http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2015/05/27/content_281475115610833
.htm. Dans 2015, China also released a central-level document calling for a vast increase in overseas
transport infrastructure focused on maritime chokepoints. See National Development and Reform
Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce, “Vision and Actions on
Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,” Xinhua she,
Mars 28, 2015.
164. Doshi, The Long Game, 184; Christopher J. McMahon, “The Middle Kingdom Returns to the
Sea, While America Turns Its Back—How China Came to Dominate the Global Maritime Industry,
and the Implications for the World,” Naval War College Review 74, Non. 2 (Spring 2021): 81–114,
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol74/iss2/7.
165. Brad Lendon, “China Has Built the World’s Largest Navy. Now What’s Beijing Going to Do
with It?,” CNN, Mars 5, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/05/china/china-world-biggest-
navy-intl-hnk-ml-dst/index.html.
166. Rick Joe, “Predicting the Chinese Navy of 2030,” Diplomat, Février 15, 2019, https://
thediplomat.com/2019/02/predicting-the-chinese-navy-of-2030.

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 43

seven artiªcial islands in the South China Sea, negotiated its ªrst ofªcial over-
seas base in Djibouti, and purchased or leased dozens of ports near the world’s
most heavily trafªcked maritime chokepoints—and made many of those ports
capable of hosting large warships.167 Beginning in 2012, China began creating
“strategic projection support ship ºeets,” which are essentially armadas of car
ferries, container and bulk carriers, tankers and other large vessels capable of
ferrying military equipment and vehicles to distant locations.168 Armed with
a growing array of power-projection platforms, China signiªcantly increased
its overseas military activity and use of coercion after the late 2000s—
especially sanctions, ramming of ships, and aerial intercepts—to assert its mar-
itime claims.169

Many studies document these and other instances of Chinese aggressiveness
since the late 2000s. Less often noted is that China’s surge of mercantilist ex-
pansion occurred amid the nation’s most protracted economic slowdown of
the post-Mao era.

Conclusion

Every peaking power over the past 150 years expanded its economic and mili-
tary presence abroad as its economy slowed. Many of these cases are well
known—the late-nineteenth-century United States, imperial Russia, imperial
Japan, Putin’s Russia, and contemporary China—but even postwar Japan, un
country not usually thought of as expansionist, signiªcantly increased its over-
seas footprint as its era of rapid growth came to an end. In short, expansion
has been the dominant response to peaking power. The main question has

167. “China’s ‘Maritime Road’ Looks More Defensive than Imperialist,” Economist, Sep-
tember 28, 2019, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/09/28/chinas-maritime-road-
looks-more-defensive-than-imperialist; Kardon and Leutert, “Pier Competitor,” 22–26.
168. Conor M. Kennedy, “Civil Transport in PLA Power Projection,” CMSI China Maritime Report,
4 (Décembre 2019), https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/4; Conor M. Ken-
nedy and Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Third Sea Force, The People’s Armed Forces Maritime
Militia: Tethered to the PLA,” CMSI China Maritime Report, 1 (Mars 2017), https://digital-
commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/1/.
169. Andrew Chubb, “PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea: Measuring Continuity and
Changement, 1970–2015,” International Security 45, Non. 3 (Hiver 2020/21): 93, https://est ce que je.org/10.1162/
isec_a_00400; Ketian Zhang, “Cautious Bully: Reputation, Resolve, and Beijing’s Use of Coercion
in the South China Sea,” International Security 44, Non. 1 (Été 2019): 133, https://est ce que je.org/
10.1162/isec_a_00354; Gregory B. Poling, Tabitha Grace Mallory, and Harrison Prétat, Pulling Back
the Curtain on China’s Maritime Militia (Washington, CC: Center for Strategic and International
Études, 2021); Edmund J. Burke et al., China’s Military Activities in the East China Sea: Implications
for Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force (Washington, CC: RAND Corporation, 2018), 26.

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International Security 48:1 44

been how that expansion took place, an outcome that depended heavily on
each peaking power’s trade prospects and regime type. The autocracies with
poor trade prospects (imperial Russia, imperial Japan, and Putin’s Russia) concernant-
sorted to military coercion and conquest, the most aggressive forms of mercan-
tilism. China today may be headed in a similar direction, although its growth
slowdown is ongoing. Par contre, the two democracies with good trade pros-
pects, the United States and postwar Japan, employed a more moderate and
market-based set of responses to slowing growth.

There are two main implications of these ªndings. D'abord, they amend classic
theories of great power expansion and conºict. An enormous literature focuses
on power transitions between rising and declining states and debates whether
the former or latter are more likely to upend the international system. In con-
trast, I have suggested in this article that rising and declining states are often
peaceful—the former because they can be, the latter because they must be—
whereas peaking powers tend to be the prime drivers of geopolitical conºict.
Many of the cases that scholars have classiªed as rising or declining powers
that turned aggressive were instead peaking powers suffering severe economic
slowdowns. These peaking powers did not immediately launch preventive
wars, as some theories predict. Plutôt, they engaged in mercantilist expan-
sion to try to rekindle their rise. In most cases, that expansion fueled security
competition with rival nations and culminated in violent conºict. But the chain
of events leading to that climax was often more complex and contingent than
the theories of preventive and diversionary war would predict. Future re-
search should focus on understanding those causal chains and the peaking
power dynamics that catalyzed them.

Deuxième, much of the debate on U.S. policy toward China concentrates on the
perils of an ascendant and conªdent China. Yet the United States actually faces
a more volatile threat: an ambitious and anxious China suffering a prolonged
economic slowdown. China’s economic growth rates are sliding and could fall
further in the coming years as debt, demographic decline, environmental deg-
radation, and other headwinds take their toll.170 Economic stagnation would
render China a less fearsome long-term rival to the United States, but possibly
a more explosive near-term threat. Whereas a fast-growing China could afford
to expand slowly and back down in crises—safe in the knowledge that its
wealth, pouvoir, and status were rising and that the legitimacy of the CCP was

170. Michael Beckley, Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 2018), 33–61, 98–134; Beckley and Brands, “The End of China’s Rise.”

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The Peril of Peaking Powers 45

secure—an economically sluggish China could be more desperate for eco-
nomic outlets and primed to react violently to slights and setbacks.

En effet, it is hard to see how the CCP could do otherwise. The regime has al-
ready dialed up nationalist propaganda, pledged to make China whole again
by taking back territories lost in previous eras, loaned hundreds of billions of
dollars of Chinese taxpayers’ money to foreign governments that will struggle
to repay those debts, and adopted a national security strategy that calls
for preventive action against threats to CCP security. Xi Jinping has attached
his legitimacy to many of these initiatives, and powerful interest groups—
including state-owned industrial ªrms and the armed forces—favor China’s
current strategy, because it channels money into their budgets.171 Historically,
great powers have struggled to escape foreign entanglements, especially when
those entanglements beneªted political elites.172 China appears to be no excep-
tion to this pattern.173

The challenge for U.S. foreign policy is to contain China’s mercantilist
expansion without causing the CCP to lash out. Achieving that aim, à son tour,
requires U.S. policymakers to simultaneously deter Chinese aggression, allay
China’s insecurities, and insulate the United States from blowback should de-
terrence and assurance fail—no small task given the inherent tension among
these objectives. If mishandled, U.S. policy could end up choking China eco-
nomically and provoking it with tough talk over Taiwan and other issues
while failing to deter Beijing militarily. History suggests that would be a recipe
for disaster.

Two principles could help strike a better balance.174 First, the United States
should focus on competing in the few areas that could upend the balance of
pouvoir. The two most pressing dangers are Beijing’s efforts to conquer Taiwan
and to monopolize and weaponize what the CCP calls economic “choke-
points,” meaning goods and services that other countries cannot live without,
such as telecommunications networks, computer chips, medical supplies, et
rare earths. The United States does not need to confront China everywhere at
once; enacting across-the-board trade sanctions, covert action programs to
destabilize the CCP, or a U.S. version of the BRI, Par exemple, would be ªnan-
cially ruinous and strategically destabilizing. Nor should U.S. policymakers

171. Susan L. Shirk, Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (New York: Oxford University
Presse, 2022).
172. Snyder, Myths of Empire; Taliaferro, Balancing Risks.
173. For a detailed account of China’s escalating repression and aggression, see Brands and
Beckley, Danger Zone, 105–137.
174. For more explanation of these strategic principles, see ibid., 138–216.

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International Security 48:1 46

engage in symbolic gestures, such as upgrading Taiwan’s diplomatic status,
that provoke Beijing without enhancing U.S. or allied capabilities. Plutôt, le
United States should focus on blunting Chinese military and economic aggres-
sion while reacting calmly to, or even encouraging, initiatives that channel
Chinese resources in less threatening directions. Par exemple, if Beijing fritters
away money on loss-making projects along the BRI or builds aircraft carriers
that will not be combat-ready for decades, so much the better.

Deuxième, competition with a peaking power is a race against the clock. Se-
curing U.S. interests requires “strategic MacGyverism,” using tools and part-
ners available now rather than waiting for cutting-edge assets that may not
materialize for many years.175 The fact that China faces a challenging long-
term trajectory will not be much consolation if Beijing nonetheless thrashes the
United States in a war over Taiwan or achieves dominance over economic
chokepoints this decade. To blunt these near-term threats, the United States
will need to embrace second-best solutions, adapt old capabilities for new pur-
poses, and assemble imperfect coalitions on the ºy. Militarily, that means im-
mediately procuring and deploying missile launchers and armed drones near
Taiwan, even if doing so drains funds for longer-term investments in more ad-
vanced weapons systems. Economically, the United States needs to marshal a
patchwork of “mini-lateral” coalitions to develop alternatives to Chinese prod-
ucts and to enforce targeted export and investment controls in critical sectors,
as the United States and several of its allies recently did in the advanced semi-
conductor industry.

Perhaps in the 2030s, Chinese power will mellow, and a Sino-American
diplomatic breakthrough will become possible. Now, cependant, is a moment
of maximum danger, because a peaking China has both the means and the
motive to upend key aspects of the international system, including the territo-
rial status quo in East Asia, the openness of the global economy, et le
dominance of democratic governments and norms. As China’s epic rise comes
to an end, and Xi’s “China Dream” slips away, the United States must handle
the CCP’s mercantilist expansion with a sophisticated blend of deterrence, concernant-
assurance, and damage-limitation. Compared with waging a hegemonic strug-
gle with a rising superpower, managing China’s economic slowdown may
seem like an uninspiring mission. But it would be wiser and ultimately
more effective.

175. See Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, “America Needs
to Rediscover Strategic
MacGyverism,” National Interest, Mars 27, 2021, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-
needs-rediscover-strategic-macgyverism-181245.

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