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Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space For Would-Be Great Powers?
Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space For Would-Be Great Powers?
ANDREW HURRELL *
This introduction and the articles on Russia, China and India that follow were originally presented at a
conference on Hegemony, order and emerging powers at the University of Brasilia in April 2005. I
would like to thank those present for their comments and the Centre for Brazilian Studies and the Centre
for International Studies in Oxford, as well as the University of Brasilia, for their support of this project.
Andrew Hurrell
their high levels of economic growth and from projections of their future
economic development and its possible (although usually underspecified) geopolitical and geo-economic implications.1 Picking up an old line of commentary, analysts in the late 1990s also identified Brazil as a pivotal state or one of
the Big Ten emerging markets, countries like China, India, and Brazil
which are acquiring enough power to change the face of global politics and
economics.2 Russia is the outlier: as MacFarlane argues in his article in this
issue, the reality of the past two decades here has been one of decline and the
dissolution of power. Nevertheless, its foreign policy is focused on trying to
arrest that decline and seeking to reassert regional and global influence.
A second reason is that all of these countries share a belief in their entitlement to a more influential role in world affairs. Aspiration alone, of course, is
not enough, and it is easy for the hard-headed realist to scoff at the empty
pretensions of those states whose ambitions run ahead of their material capabilities. And yet power in international relations requires a purpose and project,
and the cultivation of such a purpose can both galvanize national support and
cohesion at home and serve as a power resource in its own right. Think of Nehru
or De Gaulle. Moreover, the search for recognition in which these four countries are united is a fundamental part of the politics of hierarchy. Challenges to
the legitimacy of international order have rarely resulted from the protests of
the weak; they have come more often from those states or peoples with the
capacity and political organization to demand a revision of the established order
and of its dominant norms in ways that reflect their own interests, concerns and
values. Thus a central theme of twentieth-century international history was the
struggle of revisionist states for Gleichberechtigungequal rightsinvolving the
redistribution of territory, the recognition of regional spheres of influence, and
the drive for equality of status within formal and informal international
institutions. However much the currency of power or the rules of the powerpolitical game may have changed, this pattern of behaviour remains an
important element of global politics. Although the likelihood of military
confrontation between major powers may have been lessened, the issue of
recognition has been sharpened by the growth of the idea that international
society should aim to promote shared values and purposes rather than simply
underpin coexistence and help to keep conflict to a minimum.
A third reason for considering these four countries together flows from the
development of relations between and among them. The articles that follow
make reference to many such developments: Chinese and Russian cooperation
through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); joint Sino-Russian
1
Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, Dreaming with the BRICs: the path to 2050, Global
Economics Paper no. 99 (New York: Goldman Sachs, Oct. 2003). See also Arvind Virmani, Economic
performance, power potential and global governance: towards a new international order, working paper no. 150
(New Delhi: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Dec. 2004).
2
Jeffrey E. Garten, The Big Ten: the big emerging markets and how they will change our lives (New York: Basic
Books, 1997), p. xxv; Robert Chase, Emily Hill and Paul Kennedy, eds, The pivotal states: a new
framework for US policy in the developing world (New York: Norton, 1999), esp. pp. 16594.
G. John Ikenberry, Liberalism and empire: logics of order in the American unipolar age, Review of
International Studies 30: 4, Oct. 2004, pp. 60930; and After victory: institutions, strategic restraint and the
rebuilding of order after major war (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
4 Brazils membership of the OAS and Rio Pact makes it a partial exception. However, as we shall see,
for most of the period since 1945 its relationship with Washington has not been particularly close. It is
also an exception in cultural and historical terms, although its foreign policy has long been characterized
by a tension between those espousing terceiro-mundismo (Third Worldism) and those favouring closer
integration with the industrialized world.
Andrew Hurrell
force, and environmental sustainability; and, finally, increased demands that
more effective teeth be given to the norms of international society, involving
both collective enforcement action by the United Nations and increased
delegation to international tribunals, as well as a wide and expanding range of
multilateral sanctions and conditionalities.
These moves from a traditional pluralist view of international society to one
characterized by greater solidarism have undoubtedly represented a substantial
challenge to countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. They challenged
the strong, albeit varying, preference of these states for the older pluralist norms
of sovereignty and non-intervention.5 They interacted in problematic ways with
the complex processes of economic and political liberalization taking place in
all of these statesand, more importantly, with the limits and contested
character of that liberalization. And they challenged traditional modes of
conducting foreign policy, privileging new kinds of soft power and rewarding
new kinds of diplomacy. This is a further point of differentiation from liberal
modernist middle powers such as Canada or Australia, whose foreign policies
have been built around the promotion and exploitation of these very changes.
Finally, the changing norms of international society have had a significant
impact on the character of the great power club. Being a great power has never
been solely about the possession of large amounts of crude material power. It
has been closely related to notions of legitimacy and authority. A state can
claim great power status, but membership of the club of great powers is a social
category that depends on recognition by others: by your peers in the club, but
also by smaller and weaker states willing to accept the legitimacy and authority
of those at the top of the international hierarchy. One of the difficulties facing
potential aspirants to the great power club is that the criteria for membership
may militate against themas Japan found in 191819 over the issue of racial
discrimination. Or the criteria may change in ways that work against their
particular interests. For example, for much of the Cold War the possession of
nuclear weapons was widely seen as a necessary qualification for a seat at the
top table; but in the years since its end, acquisition of a nuclear weapons
capability has come to be seen as a sign of unacceptable behaviour and potential
status as a rogue state. If, as Foot argues in her article in this issue, China is
intent on being seen as a responsible great power, how those understandings
of responsibility have shifted is very much to the point.
There are, of course, substantial differences among these countriesin
terms of their power and geopolitical importance; in terms of their economic
weight and degree of integration into the global economy; in terms of their
5
Although it is common to read off attitudes to international order from domestic characteristics (the
degree of political liberalization or the extent of economic reform), we should not discount the large
country syndrome. Brazil, Russia, India and China have shared a preference for hard conceptions of
national sovereignty and, although sometimes professing a liking for multilateralism, have tended to
resist the effective delegation of authority to international bodies. In this, of course, they have much in
common with the United States. Within this company the European preference for more elaborate
forms of institutionalized global governance represents the outlier.
John J. Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 5. For a historical
survey of the idea that the self-revelation of a great power is completed by war, see Martin Wight,
Power politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin/RIIA, 1979), ch. 3.
7 William C. Wohlforth, The stability of a unipolar world, International Security 24: 1, 1999, pp. 541.
8
Joseph S. Nye, Soft power: the means to success in world politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). As Joffe
notes, one of the advantages of soft power is that it complicates the notion of counterbalancing: Against
soft power, aggregation does not work. How does one contain the power that flows not from coercion
but from seduction?. See Josef Joffe, Gulliver unbound: can America rule the world?, the John
Bonython Lecture, Sydney, 5 Aug. 2003.
9 G. J. Ikenberry, American grand strategy in the age of terror, Survival 43: 4, Winter 2001/2, pp. 1934.
Andrew Hurrell
tier states in binary terms: balancing against the dominant state on the one
hand, or bandwagoning with it on the other. Although there are significant
differences between the defensive and offensive versions of neo-realism, both
consider that the emergence of new powers will naturally tend to create
power-political tensions.
Neo-realist theory has generated an enormous and sophisticated literature
with many subtheories and competing diagnoses. It is, however, limited in a
number of important ways. In the first place, most of this literature is written
from the perspective of the United States and is implicitly or explicitly
preoccupied with the strategies that the US has adopted, or should adopt, to
sustain its advantageous position in the system. Second, the foreign policy
choices of second-tier states are arrived at deductively, irrespective of whether
or not they correspond particularly closely either to policy options that have
actually been adopted or to understandings of those choices within second-tier
states themselves. Third, the options are underspecified: What precisely does
bandwagoning consist of, and what determines the choice among the very
different forms that alignment with the hegemon might take? Does bandwagoning describe a pattern of behaviour or a conscious policy choice? Is it
useful to distinguish between hard and soft forms of balancing? What of other
options such as hiding or hedging? Finally, neo-realism sees the system only
in terms of the distribution of power. Systemic forces are indeed crucial; but, as
foreign policy analysis of the countries under consideration here clearly
demonstrates, there is much more in the system than is contained in neo-realist
theory, and this matters not just for accurate empirical analysis but also for the
development of successful theory.
A second cluster of theoretical approaches highlights not the continuity of
conflict and power-political competition but rather powerful changes under
way in both international and global society, especially those associated with
globalization. The central claim is that new kinds of systemic logic have gathered
a force that will enmesh and entrap even the most powerful. A new raison de
systme is developing that will alter and ultimately displace old-fashioned
notions of raison dtat. Since the end of the Cold War liberal versions of these
well-established arguments have dominated the field.
For institutionalist liberals, globalization and ever denser networks of transnational exchange and communication create increasing demand for international institutions and new forms of governance. Institutions are needed to
deal with the ever more complex dilemmas of collective action that emerge in
a globalized world. As large states expand their range of interests and integrate
more fully into the global economy and world society, they will be naturally
drawn by the functional benefits institutions offer and pressed towards more
cooperative patterns of behaviour. Institutions are important in helping to
explain how new norms emerge and are diffused across the international
system, and how state interests change and evolve. Institutions may play an
important role in the diffusion of norms and in the patterns of socialization and
On this distinction see Benjamin Miller, The rise of offensive liberalism and the war in Iraq, paper
delivered at International Studies Association, Montreal, March 2004. The influence of offensive
liberalism is likely to reinforce the view, visible in all four of these countries, that the ideologies and
practices of economic globalization and of liberal solidarism are intimately connected to the hegemonic
power of the US and its closest allies.
Andrew Hurrell
These systemic arguments have implications for the analysis of Brazil,
Russia, India and China. First, they imply that these countries will come under
increasing pressure to adapt, and that the theoretical logic of this adaptation can
be best captured either by notions of rational adaptation, learning and technical
knowledge, or by notions of emulation, normative persuasion, socialization
and internalization. Second, they imply that the sources of resistance to change
are likely to be found within these societies in blocking coalitions, made up of
the interest groups that grew powerful under previous economic and political
models, or in the continued power of older ideas and ideologies, often
embedded within state institutions.
Strategies and options
Andrew Hurrell
Brazil remains concerned both to continue its technological development in this area and to protect its
autonomous enrichment and reprocessing capabilities from further international restriction.
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countries have become more proactivefor example, using the language of
democracy and representativeness to push for the reform of international
institutions; or using the language of economic liberalism as a stick with which
to attack US and European protectionism. Both Brazil and India have
mobilized claims for greater representational fairness (as with membership of
the Security Council or decision-making within the WTO) and distributional
justice (as with Brazils promotion of a global hunger fund). However, it is
much less clear how far any of these countries have moved in terms of
becoming producers of the ideas that will shape conceptions of global order in
the future. This matters for many reasons, not least because, while state-based
power is undoubtedly hegemonically structured around the US, the power of
ideas, values and culture is potentially more open and contested.
12
This pattern has been consistently dominant in US policy towards Asia. It was also central to US foreign
policy in a previous period of imperial overstretch, namely the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the idea
that US interests could be protected through the devolution of responsibility to regional influentials
in the form of the Nixon Doctrine. See Robert Litwak, Dtente and the Nixon Doctrine: American foreign
policy and the pursuit of stability 19691975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
15 For a fuller analysis see Andrew Hurrell, The United States and Brazil: comparative reflections, in
Mnica Hirst, The United States and Brazil: the long road of unmet expectations (New York: Routledge,
2005), pp. 73108.
16 Stephen P. Cohen, India, emerging power (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2001), pp. 28798.
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Andrew Hurrell
the demands of the so-called war on terror. Against this, we have seen the
recent emergence of a language of natural allies and strategic partnership as
well as a number of concrete agreements, most notably the July 2005 nuclear
agreement and Indias vote to report Iran to the UNSC. However, it is far too
early to talk of any fundamental realignment; there are obvious advantages to
India of developing and exploiting a wider range of foreign policy
relationships, and, as Narlikar notes, there are also important continuities in the
pattern of Indias foreign policy thinking and conduct. It has certainly not
dropped its engagement with developing countries, bilaterally and collectively.
In the case of China, Foot highlights the diversity of positions within the
country and argues that pragmatic accommodation best characterizes Chinese
policy towards the United States. On the one hand, China has sought to accommodate itself to US power and to seek coincidences of interest. It has criticized
but acquiesced in US policies with which it has fundamentally disagreedIraq
most notablyand has been less strident than Brazil and India in opposing US
preferences within the WTO. But this has been counterbalanced by a
broadening range of stances designed both to retain flexibility if relations with
Washington should deteriorate and to lay the groundwork for a more active
foreign policy in the future. MacFarlane notes the move in the period since
2001 away from an emphasis on the importance of re-establishing multipolarity
and towards an acceptance of the unassailability of US primacy. This has led to
a hard-headed recognition of the need to avoid confrontation on matters of
vital interest to the US (as with Iraq), combined with a willingness to engage in
hard bargaining and issue linkage, to cultivate as broad a range of ties as
possible, and to defend immediate interests wherever possible, especially in
relation to its immediate neighbourhood. Assessments of Americas threshold
of tolerance have become one of the most crucial elements of foreign policy
(best illustrated in the case of Russian policy towards Iran).
Two final points should be noted. Bandwagoning is sometimes seen as an
unproblematic option. And yet it is notable how few countries in the world
possess the resources and even the potential capacity to make such a special
relationship work in their favourdense administration-to-administration ties
(including in the military and intelligence sectors), an embedded habit of
consultation, and a broad structure of social interconnections. In the present
context, one of the most interesting signs of potential change is the growth of
transnational ties with the Indian American community, and the attempt by the
Indian government to exploit these as part of the relationship (including, for
example, in the aftermath of its nuclear test). Second, whatever the incentives
to seek productive bargaining with Washington, all of these countries have
experienced the difficulties of accommodating themselves to this particular
hegemon. The United States has never been an easy country with which to
bandwagon, and this is especially true in the period since 2001a period in
which it has emphasized its own inalienable right to security even at the cost of
the insecurity of others; upheld a traditional rigid conception of its own
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resistance to reform of the Security Council or the relative thinness of the
allegedly strategic ties between India and Brazil), and the continuation of
underlying suspicion among such states (as in the case of Russia and China).
However, those who take a sceptical view of soft balancing risk setting the
bar too high and underplaying the role of US power and US policies in shaping
policy across a range of apparently very diverse issue areas. The relevance and
utility of balance-of-power theory are not limited to those cases where
unbalanced power poses a direct security challenge to other states.21 The
problem of unbalanced power is not that it leads inexorably to a military threat;
it is rather that radically unbalanced power will permit the powerful to lay
down the law to the less powerful, to skew the terms of cooperation in its own
favour, to impose its own values and ways of doing things, and to undermine
the procedural rules on which stable and legitimate cooperation must inevitably depend. It is for this reason that the perceived need to contain the power
of the United States does form a very important element of the policies of
Brazil, Russia, India and China in many areas and on many issues that sceptics
would like to consign to the arena of normal diplomatic bargaining. The
politics of Brazil and India in the WTO is very directly related to the systemic
concentration of power and is not simply a product of issue-specific interests.
Finally, much of the argument depends on the significance that one attaches
to questions of legitimacy and symbolic action. For the sceptics, soft balancing
is not an argument about symbolic action. It applies only to policies that promise
to do something to increase constraints on or shift power against the United
States.22 It is, however, only a very narrow and inadequate view of power that
can so easily dismiss the degree to which sustained US power depends on the
successful cultivation of legitimacy. As Aron noted: Either a great power will
not tolerate equals, and then must proceed to the last degree of empire, or else
it consents to stand first among sovereign units, and must win acceptance for
such pre-eminence.23 Legitimacy and symbolic action are central to the winning of such acceptance.
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, Hard times for soft balancing, International Security 30:
1, Summer 2005, p. 103.
22 Brooks and Wohlforth, Hard times for soft balancing, p. 82.
23
Raymond Aron, Peace and war: a theory of international relations (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966),
p. 70.
16
See Anthony Payne, The global politics of unequal development (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 95100.
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highlight the increased politicization of foreign policy in Brazil. But, thus far, it
is the limits to greater pluralism that are their most evident aspect.
Third, although inwardly oriented development models were strongly
associated with nationalist foreign policies in the years after 1945, the move
towards economic liberalization and greater integration in the global economy
does not appear to have a clear foreign policy correlate. In Brazil, Lulas assertive and activist foreign policy has gone hand in hand with an extremely
orthodox macroeconomic policy at home. In their different ways, both India
and China indicate how nationalism and economic liberalization can coexist
whether spontaneously or as a result of active cultivation on the part of
government. A strongly nationalist foreign policy may be consciously used to
bolster legitimacy at home (as with China), or to compensate for the absence of
radicalism at home (as in Brazil). In the case of India, Narlikar highlights the
importance of a domestic political culture that supports grandstanding and naysaying abroad. Success is arguably what matters most. The goals of seeking
greater influence and a more prominent role in the world or in the region
remain; liberal economic integration provides a means of achieving those goals.
Hence a willingness to challenge comes from the renewed confidence that
economic success brings. To argue in this way does not imply acceptance of
the neo-realist belief that all economic power will inevitably be tied to a
politico-military challenge. Rather, it is to suggest that all states, but especially
very large states, balance economic welfare and development with considerations of power and autonomy. Power matters because, even within the context
of continued market-liberal economic reform within a mostly market-liberal
global economy, the scope for real clashes of interest and of values remains very
wide. Who gets how much? Who sets the rules of the global economy? Whose
values are embodied in those rules?
Conclusion
At the start of this article, I suggested various reasons for taking Brazil, Russia,
India and China as a group. Two other similarities need to be stressed. The first
is a shared sense of uncertainty, especially about the behaviour of the United
States. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that hedging should be a very visible
characteristic of the foreign policy behaviour of second-tier states. A second,
and maybe more surprising, characteristic is a shared sense of vulnerability. Size
may increase options, and each of these countries may have a belief in its
natural right to an influential international role. But all of them remain acutely
aware of their vulnerability. The precise character of the problems varies from
case to case, as does the balance between vulnerabilities rooted respectively in
the system as a whole, in the nastiness of regions and neighbourhoods, and in
domestic cohesion and state capacity.
On the other side, the articles that follow serve to highlight that this is an
extremely disparate group of states. Russia is a power that has been in decline
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