"Do Power Transitions Always Lead to War?" - by CWP alum Manjari Chatterjee Miller

At first, many in Washington assumed that China’s rise could be managed. In response to the inexorable logic of modernization and some coaxing, China would become, as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick put it in 2005, a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. For a time, Beijing did seem to be tamed, as it appeared to embrace Western norms and international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Today, however, that hope is dying. On issue after issue, Beijing seems to be rejecting rather than accepting the U.S.-led global order, putting it on a collision course with Washington and prompting endless discussion about how to solve the “China challenge.” But for all the specificity of the debate—how to deter an invasion of Taiwan, what to do about Beijing’s expansionist claims in the South China Sea, and whether the West should economically and technologically decouple from China—at the heart of the matter lies a much bigger and older conundrum in international relations. How does a status quo power handle a rising power, and do moments of transition inexorably lead to war?

The Most Dangerous Game: Do Power Transitions Always Lead to War? By Manjari Chatterjee Miller July/August 2024Published on June 18, 2024

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a research associate in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. An expert on India, China, South Asia, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021, shortlisted for the 2022 Hedley Bull Prize in International Relations) and Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013). Miller is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020), a columnist for the Hindustan Times, and a frequent contributor to policy and media outlets in the United States and Asia.

Photo Credit: By White House - https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/posts/462685699378889, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126581507