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The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations
The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations Status, Revisionism, and Rising Powers
Michelle Murray
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Murray, Michelle K., author.
Title: The struggle for recognition in international relations : status, revisionism, and rising powers / Michelle Murray.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018017069 (print) | LCCN 2018021177 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190878917 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190878924 (Epub) | ISBN 9780190878900 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Unipolarity (International relations) | World politics. | United States—Foreign relations. | China—Foreign relations.
Classification: LCC JZ5588 (ebook) | LCC JZ5588.M87 2019 (print) | DDC 327.73—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017069
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Chris
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Problem of Rising Powers in International Politics 1
CHAPTER 2 The Struggle for Recognition: State Identity and the Problem of Social Uncertainty in International Politics 29
CHAPTER 3 The Social Construction of Revisionism: (Mis)Recognition and the Struggle for Major Power Status 53
CHAPTER 4 Weltpolitik: The German Aspiration for World Power Status 87
CHAPTER 5 Recognition Refused: The Tragedy of German Naval Ambition before the First World War 113
CHAPTER 6 Looking Outward: The American Aspiration for World Power Status 141
CHAPTER 7 Recognition and Rapprochement: America’s Peaceful Rise 167
CHAPTER 8 Conclusion: Rising Powers and the Future of the International Order 191
References 225 Index 251
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is about how states depend on each other to become the kinds of actors they want to be in the international sphere. The same is true of individuals and this book would not have been possible without the support, insight, and guidance of many people whom I depended on along the way.
This book began as a dissertation that I completed at the University of Chicago. It is no exaggeration to say that Alex Wendt has had the most formative effect on me as a scholar and professor. I first met Alex as an undergraduate, when I approached him with an incoherent idea for a BA thesis that he patiently listened to and generously agreed to supervise. As chair of my dissertation committee, he played a significant role in helping me conceptualize this project and provided much needed intellectual guidance along the way. And perhaps most importantly, he was there every step of the way as I undertook the tedious task of turning a dissertation into a book, always willing to offer advice when I wasn’t sure what to do next and encouragement when I was feeling hopeless. He read countless drafts of chapters and his constructively critical eye helped me to understand my argument better, to think harder about my ideas, and to trust my instincts when I was plagued with self-doubt. Alex’s intellectual imprint on this book is unmistakable and I hope he is proud of how it turned out. But beyond this, it is because of him that I became a professor of international politics, and his example—as a generous mentor who encourages his students to think creatively and for themselves—is one I try to emulate with my students.
Charles Lipson has been a devoted advisor from the earliest days of graduate school and persistently encouraged me to think big about the
contribution of this project. His depth of knowledge on a wide range of topics shaped my thinking at important moments and his suggestion to consider the rise of the United States alongside Imperial Germany changed the direction of this book for the better. I am especially grateful to him for his open-mindedness, exceptional insight, and unwavering belief in me. Patchen Markell has been enthusiastic about this project from the beginning and his advice to listen for “productive tensions” in an argument and to make them interesting has had an immeasurable effect on both the argument of this book and how I think about politics more generally. I thank him for his intellectual generosity, incisive comments, and the inspiration I take from his own example.
I could not have finished this book without the support and guidance of Jennifer Mitzen. Jennifer generously read two drafts of the entire manuscript and gave me extensive quality feedback that dramatically improved the overall quality of the book. I am especially indebted to her for encouraging me to set aside my realist detractors and foreground my voice in the manuscript. And even more so, I am grateful to Jennifer for her mentorship and friendship over the past several years. As I progress in the profession, I continue to look to her as the example of an intelligent, generous, and strong woman working in the fields of international relations and security studies.
The international relations community at the University of Chicago is like no other and the years I spent there as a graduate student were some of the most intellectually rigorous and challenging of my scholarly career. This was due in no small part to the amazing cohort of graduate students that sustained the intellectual life of the department and who were always ready and able (for better or for worse) to find the “fatal flaw” in any argument they encountered. For their support, friendship, and countless conversations I want to thank Bethany Albertson, Alex Downes, Todd Hall, Vaidya Gundlupet, Anne Holthoefer, Jenna Jordan, Adria Lawrence, Mara Marin, Chris McIntosh, Emily Meierding, Emily Nacol, Takayuka Nishi, Jonathan Obert, Neil Roberts, Keven Ruby, Jade Schiff, Frank Smith, Ian Storey, Lora Viola, and Joel Westra. A special thanks is due to Jonathan Caverley, Sebastian Rosato, and especially John Schuessler, who have been reliable sounding boards for my ideas, fierce critics when I needed them to be, and a source of encouragement—both during graduate school and since.
I had the great fortune to spend a year in residence as a fellow at the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. The vibrant intellectual community and sense of collegiality
at the Dickey Center inspired me as I finished drafting the manuscript. Thank you to Megan Becker, Dan Benjamin, Stephen Brooks, Jeff Friedman, Michelle Getchell, Jennifer Lind, Stephen Macekura, Jonathan Markowitz, Benny Miller, Daryl Press, Benjamin Valentino, and Riqiang Wu for the many conversations that made me think harder about my ideas and indelibly shaped this book for the better. I am especially grateful to Bill Wohlforth for his unwavering enthusiasm for this project and willingness to offer astute and insightful comments at critical moments in its development. I can attest that his reputation in the field as both a first- rate scholar and a generous mentor to junior scholars is well deserved.
Many generous colleagues have read and commented on my work over the years at various workshops, conference presentations, and/or as discussants. I would like to thank (again, in some cases): Jonathan Caverley, Christopher Daase, Michael Desch, Abigail de Uriarte, Marina Duque, Tanisha Fazal, Caroline Fehl, Anna Geis, Charles Glaser, Todd Hall, Anne Holthoefer, Michael Horowitz, Ian Hurd, Jacques Hymans, Mattias Iser, Lena Jaschob, Jenna Jordan, Jonathan Kirshner, Georgios Kolliarakis, Deborah Larson, Adria Lawrence, Christopher Layne, Thomas Lindemann, Dan Lindley, Charles Lipson, Chris McIntosh, John Mearsheimer, Jennifer Mitzen, Emily Nacol, Henry Nau, Jonathan Obert, Robert Pape, T.V. Paul, Erik Ringmar, Sebastian Rosato, Keven Ruby, Jade Schiff, John Schuessler, Frank Smith, Duncan Snidal, Ian Storey, Lora Viola, Srdjan Vucetic, Steven Ward, Alex Wendt, Joel Westra, and Reinhard Wolf. Audiences at conferences and workshops have asked important questions that helped me to sharpen my ideas and improve the main arguments of the book: American Political Science Association, Bard College Berlin, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Studies Association, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security (PIPES) at the University of Chicago, Program on International Security Policy (PISP) at the University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame.
Jennifer Mitzen and Alex Wendt kindly hosted a book manuscript workshop for me at Ohio State University. I am grateful that Bear Braumoeller, Marina Duque, Ben Kenzer, Kyle Larson, Adam Lauretig, Jennifer Mitzen, Lauren Muscott, Jayan Nair, Ezra Schricker, Randy Schweller, Alex Thompson, Linnea Turco, and Alex Wendt were willing to take time out of their busy schedules to read my manuscript and offer insightful comments. The day I spent talking with them about my ideas helped me to
rethink key parts of the argument and energized me to make the final push to revise the manuscript.
Since coming to Bard College, I have been delighted to find a community of generous friends who have helped me navigate the highs and lows of writing and publishing a book and balancing the demands of teaching at a very intense liberal arts college. For your friendship and intellectual camaraderie, I thank Bill Dixon, Kevin Duong, Simon Gilhooley, James Ketterer, Pınar Kemerli, Peter Klein, Chris McIntosh and Allison McKim. Omar Encarnacion has been an invaluable resource in helping me to understand the book publishing process, to make important decisions, and to stay on track.
Research grants from the Bard Research Fund and the Office of the Dean at Bard College allowed me to make three trips to London to conduct archival research. A yearlong fellowship at the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College enabled me to take a year of research leave to finish writing the book. In addition, the Political Studies and Global and International Studies programs at Bard College provided me with funds to hire two research assistants. Sam Abbott helped me sort through stacks of primary source documents and cheerfully offered to type out (nearly illegible) handwritten documents so they would be easier for me to use. Harper Zacharias not only formatted and copyedited the entire manuscript, but also gave me important comments that helped me clarify my ideas in the penultimate draft of the manuscript.
As a first-time author, I feel lucky to have worked with Angela Chnapko at Oxford University Press. Throughout the process Angela has been an enthusiastic, dedicated, and patient editor to work with, always willing to provide feedback and take the time to explain what the next steps were. Three well-chosen, anonymous reviewers provided detailed and constructive comments on the manuscript, and the book is much better because of their suggestions. I also want to thank Alexcee Bechthold and the production team at Oxford University Press for helping to bring this book to fruition. Portions of chapters 2, 3, and 4 were published as “Identity, Insecurity and Great Power Politics: The Tragedy of German Naval Ambition Before the First World War,” in Security Studies 19, no. 4 (2010): 656–688. Parts of chapters 4 and 5 were published in “Constructing the July Crisis: The Practices of Recognition and the Making of the First World War,” in Recognition in International Relations: Rethinking an Ambivalent Concept in a Global Context, eds. Christopher Daase, Anna Geis, Caroline Fehl, and Georgios Kolliarakis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 68–75.
Last, but certainly not least, this book would not be possible without the constant love and support I have received from friends and family. Emily Nacol, our friendship has given strength to me throughout graduate school, the tumult of the tenure track, and the—at times unpredictable— publishing process. You have never failed to be there for me when I needed urgent advice, a simple pep talk, or just a distraction. Joan Murray has been a steadfast source of encouragement and I cherish the conversations we have had about politics (and life) over the years. My grandmother Gabriele has never wavered in her support of me and the strength and courage she has shown in her own life stands as an example I try to follow. I am forever indebted to my sister Meagan for the support and friendship she always provides me. And to my niece Gabby and nephews Andy and Joey: you never fail to brighten my day and I look forward to every moment I get to spend with you. My parents, Jeremiah and Doris Murray, taught me throughout my life that I could do anything I set my mind to and their belief in my potential inspires me every day.
Finally, Chris McIntosh has been with me from the beginning of this journey and my greatest debt is to him. You read and commented on innumerable drafts of this book and endured even more (sometimes trying) conversations as I tried to figure out what I wanted to say. You uprooted your life, moved to the middle of nowhere with me, and put your scholarly career second to mine. Yet, through all of this you have not once complained or ever failed to unconditionally support me. The unwavering respect you have for me is one of the greatest gifts of my life and makes it possible for me to be the person I am. I thank you for your love, your friendship, and the life we have built together. This book is for you.
The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The Problem of Rising Powers in International Politics
“This is an historic moment,” declared President George H.W. Bush when announcing American military intervention in the Persian Gulf. “We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order.”1 In Bush’s estimation the importance of American leadership in this moment was unparalleled and historically unique. The end of the Cold War had given way to a “unipolar moment” where US military, diplomatic, and economic power and influence could not be rivaled.2 As the system’s preeminent superpower, the United States used this opportunity to maintain and extend the liberal international order it constructed after the Second World War. The so-called Pax Americana is anchored in a dense web of economic and political institutions and a complex network of dominant military power.3 Its vast military capabilities enable the United States to project its power throughout the world, weaken and isolate adversaries before they pose a serious threat, and provide public
1 George H.W. Bush, “Address to the Nation Announcing Allied Military Action in the Persian Gulf,” January 16, 1991. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, accessed June 24, 2016, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=19222. On the continuity of “new world order” discourse in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, see Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar, “The Discourse of the New World Order: ‘OutCasting’ the Double Face of Threat,” Discourse and Society 15, no. 2–3 (2004): 223–242.
2 Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 1 (1990/1991): 23–33; William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 5–41.
3 G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Charles A. Kupchan, “Unpacking Hegemony: The Social Foundations of Hierarchical Order,” in Power, Order and Change in World Politics, ed. G. John Ikenberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 48–53.
goods by promoting free trade, human rights and the spread of democracy. The economic and political institutions representative of this order allow states throughout the world to reap the benefits of globalization and reinforce for many a perception of the United States as a benign hegemon. More than two decades into its unipolar moment, US hegemony appears to be robust: in absolute terms the United States remains at the apex of its military and economic power and continues to set the rules that govern the international system.4
As history demonstrates, however, this unipolar moment will inevitably come to an end as new great powers rise and challenge the prevailing international order.5 Thus, one of the key challenges facing the United States in the coming years concerns the economic and military rise of China. China’s economy has grown at unprecedented levels since the launch of market reforms, and some analysts predict it could soon surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.6 Along with this expanding economic reach has come a heightened voice and political influence in world affairs. Concomitantly, China has used its stunning economic growth to increase significantly its military spending. While US military spending is projected to stay flat or decrease, China’s military spending continues—as it has for the past two decades—to grow by double digits nearly annually, enabling it to acquire the technology necessary to project power beyond its borders and challenge American global preponderance.7 In short, China is emerging as both an economic and military rival of the United States; a
4 Michael Beckley, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” International Security 36, no. 3 (2011/2012): 41–78; Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the Twenty-First Century: China’s Rise and the Fate of America’s Global Position,” International Security 40, no. 3 (2015/2016): 7–53.
5 Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security 17, no. 4 (1993): 5–51; Kenneth N. Waltz, “Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security 18, no. 2 (1993): 44–79; Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
6 Measured in purchasing power parity, the World Bank predicted China’s gross domestic product (GDP) would exceed the United States’ sometime in 2014. When converted into US dollars, China’s GDP is not expected to surpass the United States’ for several decades. Tom Wright, “China’s Economy Surpassing the US? Well, Yes and No,” The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2014.
7 “At the Double: China’s Military Spending,” The Economist, March 15, 2014; Thomas M. Kane, “China’s ‘Power Projection’ Capabilities,” Parameters 44, no. 4 (2014/15): 27–37; Ronald O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress (CRS Report No. RL33153) (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2016), 4.
“late-blooming great power” set on obtaining its rightful place in the international order.8
The consequences that China’s emergence to major power status will have for the US-led international order remain uncertain. Chinese President Xi Jinping continues to promote his vision for a ‘new model of great power relations’ between China and the United States, centered on a working partnership that avoids the seemingly inevitable conflict that has characterized many power transitions in the past.9 Likewise, leaders in the United States have emphasized that a strong and prosperous China has the potential to be a stabilizing force in the world. Even so, many analysts worry that as China’s power continues to grow, so too will the assertiveness of its foreign policy and territorial ambitions, leading to an inevitable clash with the United States over the terms of the international order.10 Thus, the challenge facing policymakers—and the subject of this book—is how, as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, “to write a new answer to the age old question of what happens when an established power and a rising power meet.”11 Or rather, how can an established power manage the peaceful rise of new major powers?
The conventional wisdom in international relations (IR) scholarship is that power transitions are intrinsically destabilizing to the international order. Since Thucydides first observed that growing Athenian power and the fear it inspired in Sparta made the Peloponnesian War inevitable, IR scholars have focused on the differential growth of power among states as the primary cause of conflict during a power transition.12 At the center of
8 Richard K. Betts and Thomas J. Christensen, “China: Getting the Questions Right,” National Interest 62 (2000/2001): 23; Gilbert Rozman, “China’s Quest for Great Power Identity,” Orbis 43, no. 3 (1999): 383–402; Robert D. Kaplan, “The Geography of Chinese Power: How Far Can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 3 (2010): 22–41; Arvind Subramanian, “The Inevitable Superpower: Why China’s Dominance Is a Sure Thing,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 5 (2011): 66–70, 71–78.
9 Andrew S. Erikson and Adam P. Liff, “Not-So-Empty Talk: The Danger of China’s ‘New Type of Great-Power Relations’ Slogan,” Foreign Affairs, October 9, 2014, accessed June 24, 2016, http:// www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2014-10-09/not-so-empty-talk
10 Richard Javad Heydarian, “China’s New Territorial Assertiveness,” Al Jazeera, July 9, 2014, accessed November 1, 2014, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/china-territorialclaims-2014786350488424.html. For a dissenting view on Chinese assertiveness, see Alastair Iain Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?” International Security 37, no. 4 (2013): 7–48.
11 William Wan, “Hillary Clinton, Top Chinese Officials Air Differences,” The Washington Post, September 5, 2012, accessed June 24, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/ hillary-clinton-top-chinese-officials-air-some-differences/2012/09/05/78487e86-f746-11e1-82533f495ae70650_story.html
12 Thucydides, “History of the Peloponnesian War,” in The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, trans. Robert B. Strassler (New York: Touchstone, 1996): 1.23–[6].
this materialist argument is the view that the divergence between the extant distribution of benefits in the system (e.g. territory, economic interests, etc.) and the underlying distribution of power leads a rising state to want to revise the international order.13 As Robert Gilpin succinctly notes in his canonical work on the subject, the source of international political change “lies in a disjuncture between the existing social system and the distribution of power toward those actors who would benefit most from a change in the system.”14 The logic is simple and straightforward. As a rising state grows more powerful, it seeks greater political influence commensurate with its new capabilities and shows an increased willingness to pursue its interests, if necessary, by using force. The established power, meanwhile, views its emerging rival with suspicion and fear, and acts simultaneously to contain its growing power and influence. These incompatible material preferences—the established power’s determination to defend the international status quo and the rising power’s incontrovertible revisionism— make conflict difficult to avoid.15 As a consequence, power transitions are likely to generate security dilemmas, provoke dangerous arms races, and give rise to intense security competition as rising powers seek to establish their place in an international order not organized to their benefit.
The conventional wisdom offers a plausible and parsimonious understanding of power transitions. Indeed, many rising powers have pursued aggressive and expansionist foreign policies, challenged established powers in their regions and the system when they could, and sometimes even triggered expensive arms races or ruinous wars to secure their position among the great powers. That is, throughout history rising powers have been, more often than not, obviously revisionist powers.
Yet, despite capturing something important about the phenomenon of power transitions, the conventional wisdom is also limited. First, while it may be true that most rising powers act in an objectively revisionist manner, their aggressive foreign policies are not uniformly interpreted as such by the established powers of the time. Consider, for example, the consequential shift from British to American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere
13 Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); A.F.K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Knopf Books, 1958); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
14 Gilpin, War and Change, 9.
15 This is also the crux of what Graham Allison terms the “Thucydides Trap.” Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015.
at the turn of the twentieth century. At this time the United States emerged onto the world stage as a major naval power and aggressively used its newfound capabilities to minimize the influence of foreign powers in the hemisphere, directly threatening important British interests in the region and Britain’s status as a regional power. The scale of American ambition was profound: from 1898 to 1913 the United States acquired seven times the amount of territory as Imperial Germany (often considered to be the quintessential revisionist power), upending the balance of power, and irreversibly shifting the international political landscape.16 However, instead of moving to contain growing American power and influence, as the conventional wisdom would expect, Britain accommodated American demands and effectively ceded control of the hemisphere to its former rival. In short, this case of peaceful power transition (and others like it17) present a significant empirical challenge to the conventional wisdom: neither shifts in the distribution of power nor an objective assessment of a rising power’s orientation toward the international status quo alone can explain why some power transitions end in conflict whereas others proceed peacefully.
Second, the conventional wisdom is also limited theoretically because it understates the importance of the social factors that shape the dynamics of power transitions. Theorists of power transitions have long accepted that significant shifts in the international distribution of power also raise questions about the prestige or status of rising and declining powers. An established power’s prestige plays a critical role in enabling it to govern the international order and controversies over the hierarchy of prestige in the system—namely, when it lags behind changes in the distribution of power—are an important source of international political change. Prestige functions as the “everyday currency of international politics,” which inclines weaker states to accept the legitimacy and utility of an existing international order and allows the hegemon to realize its interests without having to use force.18 Yet, despite acknowledging the important role that status and prestige play during a power transition, the conventional
16 Dale Copeland, “Economic Interdependence and War,” International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 28–29.
17 Ikenberry identifies eight power transitions between the years 1500–2000, half of which were peaceful. G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China: Power, Institutions and the Western Order,” in China’s Ascent: Power, Security and the Future of International Politics, Robert S. Ross and Zhu Feng, eds. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008a): 95–100. Graham Allison, using different classificatory criteria, lists sixteen power transitions during the same period, with four occurring peacefully. Graham Allison, “Thucydides Trap Case File” (Presentation, Belfer Center, September 23, 2015).
18 Gilpin, War and Change, 30.
wisdom conceptualizes these social factors to be largely derivative of material power.19 For example, for Gilpin prestige is the “reputation for power,” which is best discerned through victory in a war that enables the hegemon to effectively reorder the international system. Likewise, recent approaches to status within the realist tradition define it as collective beliefs about a state’s ranking on valued material attributes.20 In both of these instances, status and prestige are reduced to accurate perceptions of a state’s material (and often military) capabilities. As a consequence, extant approaches to status and prestige have had difficulty fully incorporating what is a fundamentally ideational concept into a theoretical framework that prioritizes military power. In short, the conventional wisdom is undersocialized, rendering the social dimensions of power transitions epiphenomenal to the system’s material power structure.