Overview

As China emerges as a global force in the twenty-first century, questions of how existing great powers will navigate the geopolitical transition loom large. In Fateful Transitions, Daniel M. Kliman revisits historic power shifts to shed light on enduring patterns in international relations, demonstrating that the regime type of ascendant powers greatly influences global interactions.Since the late nineteenth century, the world's major democracies have tended to accommodate or conciliate ascendant democratic states. Certain attributes of democracy, such as a free press and domestic checks and balances, encourage trust during power shifts, whereas closed and autocratic regimes on the ascent tend to produce a cycle of suspicion, competition, and confrontation. Drawing on democratic peace theory and power transition theory, Kliman compares Great Britain's embrace of U.S. ascendancy in the early twentieth century to its confrontational stance toward autocratic Germany and later U.S. mistrust of the Soviet Union. Within this geopolitical context, he evaluates the interactions between China and current great powers, the United States and Japan. Building on this analysis, Kliman offers new insights into the dynamics of power shifts and explores their implications for how today's established and emerging powers can successfully navigate fateful transitions.

Full Product Details

9781322513768

Table of Contents

Reviews

How do democracies respond to the emergence of new great powers? Daniel Kliman's timely, informative, and persuasive new book shows that the answer depends on a rising state's domestic political system. Fast-growing powers that are transparent and open will be less threatening to other democracies than closed and secretive authoritarian regimes. This finding has important and potentially troubling implications for China's future relations with the United States, Japan and the world's other major democracies. --Aaron L. Friedberg, Princeton University

Author Information

Daniel M. Kliman is Senior Adviser for Asia at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available