Cooperation, Uncertainty, and the Rise of China: It's About "Time"

Many scholars of international politics cast a concerned eye at the prospect of a rising great power approaching the capabilities of a relatively declining great power.1 Following this logic, the US and China may find themselves caught in the “Thucydides Trap,” by which the fear of a rising great power produces war. Other scholars are more optimistic. They point to the growing engagement of China in international institutions, to the high levels of economic interdependence between the two countries, or to the presence of stable nuclear deterrence as factors that limit the possibility of conflict between the two states. Underexplored in these debates is the mix of cooperative and competitive strategies that declining powers typically pursue toward rising powers. Though many scholars have understandably fixated on the danger of conflict between rising and declining powers, the empirical record of power transitions reveals a more nuanced picture characterized by strategies that balance cooperation and conflict.