Overview

How do established powers react to growing competitors? The United States currently faces a dilemma with regard to China and others over whether to embrace competition and thus substantial present-day costs or collaborate with its rivals to garner short-term gains while letting them become more powerful. This problem lends considerable urgency to the lessons to be learned from Over the Horizon. David M. Edelstein analyzes past rising powers in his search for answers that point the way forward for the United States as it strives to maintain control over its competitors. Edelstein focuses on the time horizons of political leaders and the effects of long-term uncertainty on decision-making. He notes how state leaders tend to procrastinate when dealing with long-term threats, hoping instead to profit from short-term cooperation, and are reluctant to act precipitously in an uncertain environment. To test his novel theory, Edelstein uses lessons learned from history's great powers: late nineteenth-century Germany, the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, interwar Germany, and the Soviet Union at the origins of the Cold War. Over the Horizon demonstrates that cooperation between declining and rising powers is more common than we might think, although declining states may later regret having given upstarts time to mature into true threats.

Full Product Details

9781501707568

Table of Contents

Reviews

Over the Horizon is clearly written and will be of interest to IR scholars and policymakers alike. --Christopher Layne, author of The Peace of Illusions In this important and impressive book, David M. Edelstein eschews the traditional mechanistic view of power transitions and puts politics front and center. --Randall Schweller, author of Unanswered Threats David M. Edelstein's book provides a sophisticated, original, and compelling account of how leaders manage uncertainty, with particular attention to time horizons. He offers the stunning insight that short-term cooperation between great powers is possible, even likely, in the face of uncertainty about the long-term. I strongly recommend this book to all policy scholars and practitioners. --Jeremi Suri, author of The Impossible Presidency

Over the Horizon is clearly written and will be of interest to IR scholars and policymakers alike. -- Christopher Layne, author of <I>The Peace of Illusions</I> In this important and impressive book, David M. Edelstein eschews the traditional mechanistic view of power transitions and puts politics front and center. -- Randall Schweller, author of <I>Unanswered Threats</I> David M. Edelstein's book provides a sophisticated, original, and compelling account of how leaders manage uncertainty, with particular attention to time horizons. He offers the stunning insight that short-term cooperation between great powers is possible, even likely, in the face of uncertainty about the long-term. I strongly recommend this book to all policy scholars and practitioners. -- Jeremi Suri, author of <I>The Impossible Presidency</I> David Edelstein's book makes significant and novel theoretical contributions toward studying great and rising powers. * International Studies Review * There is much to like about this volume. The writing is crisp, and the case studies-evaluating the impact of time horizons visavis the rise of Germany and the United States, Germany's interwar resurgence, and the origins of the Cold War-are a model for qualitative research. More substantively, Edelstein has issued a clarion call for scholars to directly study states' temporal calculations and how these calculations affect foreign policy. Even if one does not accept the argument, future work will need to address the importance of time horizons. * Political Science Quarterly * Edelstein (Georgetown) provides a timely analysis of the relations between established and rising great powers in order to determine why variations between cooperation and competition occur between them. * Choice * Over the Horizon asks important questions, provides clear arguments, and delivers an elegant theory that pushes Realist scholarship in new directions. * H-War *

Over the Horizon is clearly written and will be of interest to IR scholars and policymakers alike. -- Christopher Layne, author of <I>The Peace of Illusions</I> In this important and impressive book, David M. Edelstein eschews the traditional mechanistic view of power transitions and puts politics front and center. -- Randall Schweller, author of <I>Unanswered Threats</I> David M. Edelstein's book provides a sophisticated, original, and compelling account of how leaders manage uncertainty, with particular attention to time horizons. He offers the stunning insight that short-term cooperation between great powers is possible, even likely, in the face of uncertainty about the long-term. I strongly recommend this book to all policy scholars and practitioners. -- Jeremi Suri, author of <I>The Impossible Presidency</I> Over the Horizon asks important questions, provides clear arguments, and delivers an elegant theory that pushes Realist scholarship in new directions. * H-War *

David M. Edelstein's book provides a sophisticated, original, and compelling account of how leaders manage uncertainty, with particular attention to time horizons. He offers the stunning insight that short-term cooperation between great powers is possible, even likely, in the face of uncertainty about the long-term. I strongly recommend this book to all policy scholars and practitioners. -- Jeremi Suri, author of <I>The Impossible Presidency</I> In this important and impressive book, David M. Edelstein eschews the traditional mechanistic view of power transitions and puts politics front and center. -- Randall Schweller, author of <I>Unanswered Threats</I> Over the Horizon is clearly written and will be of interest to IR scholars and policymakers alike. -- Christopher Layne, author of <I>The Peace of Illusions</I>

Over the Horizon asks important questions, provides clear arguments, and delivers an elegant theory that pushes Realist scholarship in new directions. * H-War * Edelstein (Georgetown) provides a timely analysis of the relations between established and rising great powers in order to determine why variations between cooperation and competition occur between them. * Choice * David Edelstein's book makes significant and novel theoretical contributions toward studying great and rising powers. * International Studies Review * There is much to like about this volume. The writing is crisp, and the case studies-evaluating the impact of time horizons visavis the rise of Germany and the United States, Germany's interwar resurgence, and the origins of the Cold War-are a model for qualitative research. More substantively, Edelstein has issued a clarion call for scholars to directly study states' temporal calculations and how these calculations affect foreign policy. Even if one does not accept the argument, future work will need to address the importance of time horizons. * Political Science Quarterly *

Author Information

David M. Edelstein is Associate Professor of International Affairs in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Center for Security Studies, and Department of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of Occupational Hazards, also from Cornell.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available