Advance Praise for Why Nations Rise

“Manjari Chatterjee Miller tells a sophisticated story about why some rising
powers like China become great powers, while others like India do not. She
maintains that how a state thinks about its role in the world matters as much
as its material capabilities. This book is essential reading for anyone
interested in understanding the dynamics of the emerging multipolar
international system.”
—John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of
Political Science, University of Chicago

“In Why Nations Rise, Miller explores how rising powers become great
ones. Armed with a provocative argument and comparative case studies,
this book makes the case for the critical role of the narratives that states
hold about what it means to be a great power and the proactive steps they
take to become one. Anyone interested in power transitions should read this
book.”
—M. Taylor Fravel, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science, Director,
Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Manjari Miller’s comparison of national narratives throughout history

provides unique context for the contrast of Chinese great power ambitions
and Indian reticence. For scholars the inclusion of national narratives in the
determination of state power is a significant contribution. For policymakers
the lesson is clear: the ‘India card’ that matters most in the larger
geopolitical equilibrium of Asia is for India to succeed on its own terms.”
—Michael J. Green, Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair, Center for
Strategic and International Studies

[Link]
Why Nations Rise

Narratives and the Path to

Great Power

MANJARI CHATTERJEE MILLER

[Link]
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
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2021

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acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Miller, Manjari Chatterjee, 1976– author.
Title: Why nations rise : narratives and the path to great power /
by Manjari Chatterjee Miller.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Contents: Why nations rise…or remain reticent—
The active rise of the United States—The reticence
of the Netherlands—Meiji Japan and Cold War Japan : a vignette of
rise and reticence—The active rise of China—The reticence of India—
Thoughts on power transitions, past and future.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020037918 (print) | LCCN 2020037919 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190639938 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197558935 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780190639969 (oso) | ISBN 9780190639952 (epub) | ISBN 9780190639945 (updf)
Subjects: LCSH: Great powers—History. | World politics—19th century. |
World politics—20th century. | World politics—21st century.
Classification: LCC JZ1310 .M55 2021 (print) |
LCC JZ1310 (ebook) | DDC 327.1/12—dc23
LC record available at [Link]
LC ebook record available at [Link]

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190639938.001.0001

[Link]
For Jeff, my best friend and biggest cheerleader. I love you.

[Link]
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. Why Nations Rise . . . or Remain Reticent

2. The Active Rise of the United States
3. The Reticence of the Netherlands
4. Meiji Japan and Cold War Japan: A Vignette of Rise and Reticence
5. The Active Rise of China
6. The Reticence of India
7. Thoughts on Power Transitions, Past and Future

Notes
Index

[Link]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Writing a book is lonely. No one writes a book alone.” These words were
written by the children’s author Kelly Barnhill in a book that my ten-year-
old daughter insisted I read. It was a great story but it is this sentence,
written in Barnhill’s acknowledgments, that resonated most with me as I
finished my own manuscript. The research for this book took me nearly a
decade. There were days I was lonely as I holed myself up to write and
think. There were days I was obsessive when I couldn’t get the arguments
to fall into clear patterns. There were days I was joyous as I discovered new
nuggets of information. There were also days I nearly gave up. But I didn’t.
Because I had help—from people generous with their time, their
knowledge, their patience, and their love. Here they are, in no particular
order:
• Renata Keller, Chris Dietrich, and Justin Hart for helping me discover
American history.
• Kanti Bajpai, Thomas Christensen, Erez Manela, Steven Miller, Rajesh
Basrur, Jia Qingguo, and Rohan Mukherjee for inviting me to air my
thoughts at various stages of the manuscript. Michael Laffan, Paul
Kennedy, and Charles Maier for their time, and fascinating
conversations. Paul, thank you for the word “reticent!”
• Dick Samuels for encouraging me to study Japan and providing many
suggestions of how to start. Mike Green and Dave Leheny for listening
and providing further input.
• Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch for directing me to an obscure paper with one
extremely interesting line about the Netherlands which sparked my
research. Henk te Velde for helping me discover the Netherlands, and
introducing me to many colleagues, including my fantastic research
assistant Corné Smit. Corné for your patient work and translations. The
many Dutch academics who generously shared their time and
knowledge particularly, Ben Schoenmaker, Maartje Jense, James
Kennedy, and Vincent Kuitenbrouwer.
Stacie Goddard, Thomas Berger, Henk te Velde, Kate Sullivan de
• Estrada, Josh Shifrinson, Andrew May, and Jorge Heine among others
for an incredibly important and useful book conference which refined
my thinking. Kate for also being an amazing friend and gnome-maker-
in-arms.
• My posse of fabulous female colleagues at Pardee—Kaija, Shamiran,
Jay, R1 (Rachel Nolan), R2 (Rachel Brulé), and Noora—for helping me
with wine zooms, crazy group chats, and all-round support which
enabled me to finish the book in the middle of a pandemic. Goats all
the way ladies!
• Kevin Gallagher for being a rock star mentor, listening, and forwarding
me pertinent articles.
• Think tankers and academics in Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai for
talking with me and helping me understand. Indian academics and
government officials, particularly IFS officers, for sparing time for me
in their busy schedules, and for their candidness. Chen Ting and
Rishika Chauhan for helping me gather data.
• David Barboza for encouraging me to write a book that would bridge
the academia-policy gap. Katie Bacon for forcing me to explain my
writing—even when I didn’t want to.
• Dave McBride for helping me work with OUP.
• The Smith Richardson Foundation for making the research for this
book possible.
• My two children, Neer and Namya, for making me feel like the luckiest
mom on the planet. (Look kids, mommy did get the book done!)
• My husband Jeff, for everything. Because that’s what he is to me.

[Link]
1
Why Nations Rise . . . or Remain Reticent

What are rising powers? Why do some countries become rising powers, but
not others? What does it mean for a country to rise? Today one can find a
thriving industry of newspapers, articles, and books on China and India, the
two countries that are regularly referred to as “rising powers.” Yet when I
recently asked a noted British journalist who had just published a book on
India what he thought a rising power was—and why India was one—he
seemed taken aback. He paused for a minute before offering that it was
“probably” a country with some mix of influence and power—both
economic and military.1 But when I tried to pin him down on how much
power and what kind of influence, he couldn’t clarify. It seemed, as he
acknowledged during the conversation, that one just simply knew when a
country was rising. To be fair to him, these questions only occurred to me
many years after I first began studying China and India. To show why, I’ll
explain my early experience of studying these two countries.
Back then, in the early 2000s, most people I told about my research could
not fathom my interest. Indians were baffled that I wasn’t concentrating my
energies solely on India, my country of birth, and even more puzzled why,
if anyone were to pick another country to study at all, it would not be Japan
or the United States—clearly more important countries. Chinese friends and
acquaintances were surprised because they were unaccustomed to an Indian
studying Mandarin or taking an interest in modern China, and some politely
indicated that they were not flattered by any comparison between the two.
And Americans seemed bewildered on two fronts: that I was studying the
two countries and that I was comparing them to each other; what, after all,
did the two have in common?
But by 2012, when I was on the cusp of finishing a book about both
countries and their curiously similar response to the historical legacy of
colonialism (Wronged by Empire), people’s attitudes toward my research
had changed radically. Far from bewilderment and questions, I now began
to receive hearty congratulations from Americans, Indians, and Chinese,
who commended my study of a “hot” topic. And indeed comparing the two
had, by this time, become fashionable: not only were both countries now
being studied, contrasted, and compared in the West, but they were also
being studied, contrasted, and compared as rising powers. Moreover, they
were treated as a special category of actors—the United States and the
world feared China’s rise, while wondering how to use India’s rise to
counter the coming Pax Sinica.
Yet I had this nagging suspicion that, despite the attention to both as
rising powers, they were different—China was embracing its rise in a way
that India was not. Recently, I looked back through my notes and
documents to understand exactly when I came to this idea that China and
India were very different kinds of rising powers. I eventually found a short
outline from 2009. It consisted of notes for a précis I had been invited to
present at a conference titled “Rising States and Global Order” at the
Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at
Princeton University. The outline had some very preliminary thoughts
based on peripheral data I had gathered in the course of conducting
fieldwork for Wronged by Empire. In it, I had written, “India’s current
ideological chaos (which nearly shut down the nuclear deal) makes for
striking contrast with China. Unlike India, China is acutely conscious of its
international position, and has made a strategic effort to formulate and
reformulate a ‘grand ideology’ that outlines its international image.
Although India says it is a rising power it is [sic] yet to believe it.” My
commentator at that conference was the political scientist John
Mearsheimer. He asked me, if what I was implying was correct, what could
this tell us about rising powers and their international strategy or behavior?
In other words, why did this difference between China and India, if it
existed, matter? I did not have an answer for him at that conference, but I’m
still grateful for his question, because it sent me on the intellectual journey
that led to this book.
In 2013, having finished my first book, and now bombarded with
references to the rise of China and India, I acted on my nagging thoughts. I
began scanning Chinese and Indian newspapers. Narratives of China as a
rising power were also reflected in Chinese newspapers which, like Western
newspapers, were full of articles and op-eds with references to China’s rise,
and what it meant for China to rise. These narratives discussed what kind of
great power China would become, how it should respond to its changing
environment, what its relationship with the status quo power, the United
States, should be like, and whether China’s rise would be contested. In
short, they were chock-full of stories about the story of China’s rise. On the
other hand, when I turned to read Indian newspapers I found no such
stories. There were very few narratives that asked or answered these
questions.
I was deeply puzzled by this. The world now habitually referred to both
as rising powers; therefore, shouldn’t they both also think of themselves as
rising powers? After all, I knew from my past research that it was not that
Indians did not think of themselves as a great country and a great
civilization. But, I also noticed, India consistently faced complaints that it
didn’t act as a great power.2 Instead, it was always “emerging but never
arriving.”3
I took a trip to India that summer to explore a little more and to ask
government officials what they thought of India as a rising power. My
interviews—some conducted at the highest levels of Indian foreign-policy
decision-making—amazed me. Indian officials I spoke with were deeply
uncomfortable with the label “rising power,” and seemed to engage in little
strategizing about how to respond to India’s changing environment or to
deal with the consequences of its rise. In short, I found that although India
was rapidly increasing in both military and economic strength, Indian
officials did not seem to have consistent and concrete narratives about what
that could mean, how India could use its rise for leverage, or what kind of
great power India could become. Moreover, I found foreign policy officials
in other countries deeply frustrated by India’s behavior on the international
stage. Although dubbed a rising power, India seemed to have a reputation of
not living up to the role.4 Meanwhile, China’s behavior alarmed these same
officials, who were convinced of the coming China threat and the challenge
it posed to the liberal order.
These differences raised a whole host of questions. Was China unique, I
wondered? Was it, in fact, unusual for rising powers to both believe and
behave as if they were rising? Was India’s path actually the normal road for
a rising power? And what did it really mean to behave like a rising power or
to have narratives about that rise? Contemporary sources in both academia
and the media were of limited help. “Rising power” was an oft-used term,
but no one could really identify exactly which country today was
indisputably a rising power, and why. Only one fact was agreed upon: some
amount of increasing military and economic power was indeed important.
This made sense; how, after all, could a country be a rising power if the
component of “power” was missing? But beyond that, there was little
agreement. Particularly confusing, the very element that identified them as
rising powers—increasing military and economic power relative to the
established great power of the day—was also used to identify their behavior
as rising powers. Thus, a country was a rising power if we observed that it
had increasing economic and military power, and it behaved as a rising
power if it increased its economic and military power, resulting in an
unhelpful tautology.
So I decided to look to history to see if with the benefit of hindsight I
could better understand our expectations of China and India, and in doing
so, clarify what we mean by and should expect of rising powers. There are
deep divisions among international relations scholars, but even the most
argumentative of them would agree that rising powers are a category of
actors that can tip the world toward war or toward peace. What could we
learn from historical cases of countries that possessed this quality and
others that we associate with rising powers today? What patterns could we
find? Also, and crucially, how did we come to think of a rising power as a
special, and often dangerous, kind of actor in international relations? While
this thought has long historical roots—thousands of years ago,
Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War declared, “it was the rise of
Athens, and the fear this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”—it
also has modern theoretical roots. To understand the rising powers of China
and India—and why we think of them as rising powers—grasping this
theoretical foundation (and its problems) is essential.

What Do We Know of Rising Powers?

The phrase “rising power” is, today, a ubiquitous term. It is used
indiscriminately by academics, policymakers, and the media to describe not
just China and India, but countries as disparate as South Africa,5 Turkey,6
Brazil,7 Iran,8 and Russia.9 Despite the popularity of the concept, however,
research on understanding rising powers as a category of actors is sparse:
why we perceive some countries but not others to be rising is unclear, and
sometimes contradictory.
Briefly, the theory of power transitions—termed “one of the most
successful structural theories in world politics”10—treats these countries as
a distinct and special category of game-changing actors in the world. Power
transition theorists argue that “the differential growth in the power of
various states in the system causes a fundamental redistribution of power in
the system.”11 They believe that in any international system—that is, a
world composed of great, middle, and small powers—there eventually rises
a challenger country. The challenger, or rising power, is dissatisfied with
how “goods” are distributed in this system. (“Goods,” in this case, mean the
acquisition of power along with the rules and regulations, both formal and
informal, that govern our international order.) According to power transition
theorists, a challenger country seeks not just to overturn how power is
distributed, but also to create and impose its own rules instead of those that
were imposed by the reigning great power. Thus, the rise of this challenger,
more often than not, results in conflict and even war with the established
great power. This is called a “recurring pattern” in world politics.12 This
school of thought seeks to answer meta-questions about war and peace,
conflict and cooperation, stability and instability in the international
system.13 Power transition theorists rarely take the time to examine the
particularities of specific rising powers, their specific trajectories, and their
propensity for conflict.14
A more in-depth scrutiny of rising powers and their behavior has been
undertaken, although implicitly, by historians—the classic example of this
is Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers—as well as
political scientists who seek to understand great powers and great power
behavior.15 Finally, there have been many books focused either on a single
country that also happens to be a rising power, usually China or India,16 or
on comparisons of the rises of India and China to assess the strengths and
weaknesses of each and the obstacles faced by them as they gain power.17
This work on rising powers has relied on two fundamental assumptions
about countries that are rising.
The first is that rising powers can be identified and compared primarily
by measuring their relative material capabilities.18 According to this
assumption, countries rise because their economic and military power
relative to that of the status quo power (the great power of the day)
increases sufficiently to pose a challenge to the latter. Power transition
theorists emphasize that since it is the relative power of the challenger vis-
à-vis the defender that determines the likelihood of war, increasing
economic and military power is, therefore, the most important indication of
a state emerging as a rising power. Sometimes, a rising power is also
assumed to be a country that is increasing, or aspiring to increase, its “soft”
co-optive power.19 Accordingly, discussions of rising powers will often
include soft-power measures such as influence in global affairs20 and
visibility.21 On this premise, scholars have dissected, for example, whether
or not China and India have been successful in wielding soft power and
how this advances or stymies each country’s rise.22
The second assumption is that a rising power is a country that is likely
revisionist; that is, it is unwilling to accept a position of subordinate power
in the way “goods are distributed in the international system”23 and will
therefore eventually challenge the existing international order—and the
great powers who maintain it. War is likely when a power transition occurs,
not just because a rising power gains approximate power parity with the
great power defender, but also because a rising power is also a country that
is dissatisfied with the status quo. Thus, the challenger or rising power is
expected to increase its hard and soft power relative to the status quo power,
and almost by definition to engage in revisionism, often expressed as
expansionism, as it rises.

Why Is What We Know about Rising Powers Problematic?

As it turns out, using these assumptions to identify when or why a state is
rising is less useful in the real world than the theoretical one—for a variety
of reasons. Let’s start by looking at relative material capabilities as a
measure of which state is a bona fide rising power. Some accounts today
focus only on India and China as rising powers, while others focus on the
BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as a group. The BRICs acronym was
created in 2001 by an analyst at Goldman Sachs.24 In doing so, Goldman
Sachs, in effect, concocted a group of rising powers, and differentiated them
from other states simply on the basis of their rapid economic growth and
their exclusion from the governance structures of the world economy.25 But
Brazil’s status as a rising power can be questioned, as can Russia’s. Brazil is
not a nuclear weapons state, an arguably necessary precondition to be called
a rising power today. Russia could reasonably be termed a declining rather
than a rising power. The newer iteration of BRICS now includes South
Africa. Yet, apart from its myriad other problems, South Africa was one of
only eleven countries that actually saw a drop in its life expectancy between
1990 and 2013.26 Moreover, South Africa voluntarily relinquished its
nuclear weapons program, weakening the claim that it could be termed a
rising power. Even China’s rise, predicated on its military power relative to
the United States, has been debated. China’s power as a proportion of US
power is increasing, but the absolute advantage in capabilities continues to
be in favor of the United States.27 While a recent RAND report suggests
that although China has improved its capabilities in many areas, it continues
to trail the United States in both military hardware and operational skills.28
Neither is it clear that a rising power is always a country that is inevitably
going to challenge the status quo power. A rising power is often dubbed
expansionist. Expansionism, typically understood as military and
geographic encroachment29 (and less typically as the “expansion of political
interests”30) is seen as both the natural outgrowth of the rising power’s
increase in material power31 and as negative behavior—reinforcing the
general conviction that rising powers engage in revisionism. This is
problematic for many reasons. The concept of expansionism as applied to
rising powers is both narrow (military assertiveness and geographic
conquest) and muddy (an “expansion of political interests” could also apply
to the foreign policy behavior of many states in general, rather than to rising
powers as a special category of actors). This concept does not allow us to
capture the distinctiveness that should mark the behavior of a special
category of actors, and it also does not allow us to distinguish between
rising powers. And expecting expansionism because a rising power is
increasing its capabilities does not tell us when it will expand, why it will
do so, or why, if ever, it would refrain.
China, for example, has been shown to be both conformist as well as
revisionist, depending on the issue area.32 Moreover, since both China and
India are considered to be rising powers, they should have similar
reputations for dissatisfaction with the current international system. But
they do not. By and large, India is seen as a benign rising power, one whose
rise is, unlike China’s, conforming to the existing international order.33 Yet
just as China can be conformist as well as revisionist, so can India, and they
often do not overlap in what areas of the international order they accept or
reject—China has changed its stance on climate change, embracing the
Paris Agreement, and has made conciliatory noises on the norm of
Responsibility to Protect (R2P), to cite two examples, while India is a
reluctant signatory to the Paris Agreement, and utterly rejects R2P. When
rising powers have been acknowledged to engage in “supportive” as well as
“predatory” behavior in terms of the international order, this has been
predicated on the waxing or waning capabilities of the status quo power—
that is, the rising power engages in behavior designed to strengthen rather
than weaken the global position of the current great power.34 This provides
a useful reading of the rising power’s strategy toward managing a great
power, but does not speak to the general behavior of rising powers in the
world order or why they rise.
Finally, equating a country’s status as a rising power with the possession
of material resources, i.e., military and economic power, ignores the social-
relational aspect of a country’s status.35 If a state is seen to be rising, it is
not just the increasing capabilities in of themselves that bestow that status.
It is the recognition of those capabilities by external actors as a symbol of
the state’s rising power status. One way to understand this in context is to
compare military expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product
(GDP) for states. We can see from these expenditures that it is not simply
the expenditure per se that matters; it is also which countries are being
compared. For example, in 2015, India’s total military expenditure as a
percentage of its GDP was 2.4% (a decrease from 3.6% in 1988). China’s
was a comparable 2.0% in 2015. In the same year, Mali’s military
expenditure was 2.4% (an increase from 2.2% in 1988), while Ecuador’s
was 2.5% (an increase from 1.5% in 1988).36 Yet the latter countries are
obviously not recognized as rising powers. For those who would argue this
point and suggest that it is not percentage increases or decreases but rather
the sum total of capabilities that matter, consider this: as of 2016, Germany
ranks in the top ten countries globally for military strength,37 yet it is rarely
termed a rising power.
Either applying or adding the concept of “soft power” is also
problematic. Soft power is an ambiguous, unmeasurable concept, and there
is no agreement on what constitutes “influence” and how much of it a state
needs to possess to be called a rising power. By some measures of soft
power, Brazil could be said to punch above its weight in international
regimes. Brazil enjoys a prominent position in the World Trade
Organization (WTO) because of its skills of coalition building, “insider
activism,” and ability to manipulate the informal norms of the WTO, rather
than because of its “commercial power.”38 Should this qualify it as a rising
power, even though its military and economic power is not comparable to
that of Russia, China, or India, let alone the status quo power, the United
States? China lacks soft power, and is acutely conscious of this lack.39 Yet
we accord it the status of a rising power.
Thus, power, either hard or soft, is an incomplete measure of a rising
power. We are left, then, with “no commonly accepted definition of what an
emerging or rising power is,” and “no consistent indicators of what a rising
state looks like.”40 What we can deduce from this established discussion on
rising powers is that while power is a necessary condition for a country to
rise, and to be perceived as a rising power, it is certainly not sufficient. So
what is a rising power, and what does it mean for some countries, but not
others, to rise?

Rethinking Rising Powers: Why Nations Rise (or Stay Reticent)

What Is a Rising Power?
There is a crucial fact that is assumed but left unstated when we talk of
rising powers—a rising power is a state that is rising to become, in the near
future, a great power. After all, the material capabilities of many countries
are constantly increasing relative to others. Not all of these countries are
dubbed rising powers, although they may indeed be rising within a regional
or even international context. The term “rising power” is very specifically
intended to capture a special category of actors—those who are in the near
future expecting to join the ranks of the great powers and eventually
determine, as great powers do, the structure, major processes, and general
direction of the international system.41 Moreover, “rising power” is a
modern term; a century ago, English-language newspapers referred not to
“rising powers” but to countries that were becoming great powers.42
Consequently, we can say that rising powers are countries that should be
rising to become great powers. And to understand them, we can first
establish our expectations of a great power. Fortunately, the international
relations literature is prolific on the question of how we can recognize a
great power. The most commonly accepted definition of a great power
utilizes military capabilities alone. A great power is one that holds at least
543 to 10 percent of global military power.44 The Correlates of War project,
which is the data set most widely used to identify major powers, includes
power capabilities measured in terms of total population, urban population,
iron and steel production, fuel consumption, military personnel, and
military expenditures.45 Yet because capabilities alone can result in mis-
measurement of great powers,46 academics have added both the element of
behavioral choice and external recognition to the definition of a great
power. Thus, in addition to possessing unusually high relative capabilities, a
great power’s interests are global rather than regional,47 and it is recognized
both formally and informally by other states as a great power.48 But even
within the category of great powers there are tiered differences. Some
countries are major powers, others are greater powers, and still others are
superpowers. These differences can be attributed not only to the distribution
of material capabilities, relative to other powers in the system,49 but,
because “statistics and military budgets aren’t everything,” also to their
behavior in terms of projection of interests and reputation.50 Not every
major power will become a greater power, and nor will every greater power
become a superpower. There are tiers of great powers.
Thus, we can logically juxtapose two important elements from the great
power literature in order to construct an understanding of rising powers. A
rising power, or a country that is rising to become a great power, should
increase its relative military and economic power, begin to globalize its
interests, and begin to gain recognition as a great power-to-be. There can be
differences among rising powers; these differences can be attributed not just
to capabilities, but also to the powers’ behavior; that is, some countries rise
enough to be on the path to great power, while others may rise, but only in a
material sense.
Increasing relative military and economic power is observable. But how
do we perceive a rising power globalizing its interests and gaining
recognition? When a rising power perceives its interests to be globalizing, it
attempts to acquire global authority. That is, when a rising power perceives
its self-defined national interests to be increasing in scope (expanding
beyond the regional or local) and depth (in complexity and breadth of
affected issues), we can observe it taking on more global authority and
responsibility suited to its changing interests. But the notion of “authority
and responsibility” is not one that is defined by the rising power. Rather, it
is set by the established great power norms of the day. In any given time
period, global society has an example of great power behavior in the status
quo power(s) of the day, as well as in norms and institutions (or
international order) established by that great power. Early 19th-century
Russia gives us an example of a rising power that did not meet the great
power norms of the day. Russia had the material capabilities to be
recognized as a great power. However, its illiberal system of governance
and resulting modus operandi in international politics marked it as glaringly
different from the “first-class powers.”51 As such, European states
continued to harbor doubts about its entry into the ranks of the great
powers. In order to gain this recognition, Russia attempted to adopt
European great power behaviors—“having ambassadors plenipotentiary,
being a guarantor power, participating in conferences, gaining a droit de
regard . . . that were explicitly associated with great powers” of the time.52
Thus, a country that is rising to be a great power attempts to take on
authority, and actively tries to shape its role in the international system in
the fashion of the current great powers. This suggests, crucially, that a
rising power is not revisionist (at least initially). It is, instead,
accommodational. It has to accept and conform to the current international
order before it can reject it.53
The acquisition of global authority is intricately linked to the rising
power’s quest for recognition. Only when a rising power conforms to great
power norms will it be able to shape recognition—both internally and
externally—of it as a country that is on the path to become a great power.
Thus, a rising power also actively attempts to shape both domestic and
international perceptions of its position as a great power-to-be. External
recognition, a key feature of great powers, is an element that is bestowed by
international society, contingent on both established capabilities and proven
global interests. Without these two, external recognition would presumably
be nonexistent. In effect, we know a great power when we see one. But not
only is external recognition, as we have seen, more ambiguous (predicated
on material capabilities) and risky (assumptions of revisionism) for rising
powers, in effect necessitating a response,54 but we can also posit that
internal recognition is just as important as external recognition for these
countries to gain domestic support as their international position changes.
But here is the nub: just as there are differences between great powers,
there are differences between rising powers. If a country seeks to increase
its relative material power without attempting either to acquire global
authority or to court both external and internal recognition of itself as a
great power in the making, it is unlikely to become a great power. Countries
that engage in all of these behaviors are active rising powers—they are
actively rising to become great powers. Countries that engage only in
increasing their material power are reticent powers—they will not rise to
become great powers unless they engage in the other two behaviors.
Thus, a country rising to be a great power—an active power—not only
begins to acquire relative military and economic power, but also begins to
actively acquire global authority by acting in accordance with great power
norms, and, simultaneously, begins to actively court internal and external
recognition as a great power-to-be. It is consequently an accommodational
power.
Active powers may eventually become activist powers, that is, what we
think of as revisionist powers, but they need to first acknowledge, show
themselves to play by, and master the rules before they can gainsay them.
And reticent powers need not stay reticent. If they eventually acquire the
other two behaviors, they will become active powers. And activist powers
are not born of military and economic power, they are made. As we will see
in this book, some countries may indeed have the material strength to both
globalize authority and shape recognition, according to the great power
norms of the day, but may still not display the will to do so. Reticent powers
do not suddenly embark on the path to become active powers.
So we come to a very important question: why do some countries
actively rise while others remain reticent? Because rising to become a great
power is a process. This process encompasses not simply material might—
that is, the requisite military and economic power—or geopolitics or
opportunity, but also a particular type of narratives, narratives about how to
become a great power according to the prevalent norms. These narratives
are as integral as material power to the process of active rising. Countries
that undergo this process are both active and accommodational. Countries
that do not complete this process stay reticent. To understand where these
narratives come from and why they matter for rising powers, we need to
look at a concept that I call “idea advocacy.”

Idea Advocacy: A Marketplace of Narratives

As we will eventually see through cases in this book, rising to become a

great power is a process—active powers develop, in addition to their
material power, “idea advocacy” or narratives about how to become a great
power. A reticent power does not, and may even reject such notions. These
narratives—or the lack thereof—are a key difference in the behavior
between active and reticent powers.
Idea advocacy can be understood as the generation of new ideas and
recombination of existing ideas by the elites in a rising power to form new
narratives about the country’s appropriate behavior as a great power-to-be.
These new narratives, in conjunction with a rising power’s increasing
capabilities, drive the power to acquire global authority and shape
recognition of its rise. The philosopher Max Weber once said of great
powers, “At a minimum, in order to be a great power, a power has to think
of itself in terms of being great, of having an historical task.”55 A country
rising to become a great power has to think of itself as a great power-to-be,
has to display awareness that its position in international politics is
changing, and yes, has to set itself a historical task.
The concept of idea advocacy itself is deeply rooted in international
relations, and can be traced to a theoretical concept called “idea
entrepreneurship.” To understand the concept, we need to break apart the
phrase and understand each component separately.
In international relations, ideas can be beliefs that are held and expressed
by individuals and groups or beliefs that are embraced by institutions,
influencing their attitudes and behaviors.56 Ideas can also be beliefs about
correct standards of behavior that are held by international society at
large.57 A set of beliefs (I will use ideas and beliefs interchangeably) can
influence how a country behaves on the world stage by serving as “road
maps” or “world views.” These “maps” help a country make sense of the
world and guide it in forming policy,58 and can be expressed as important
narratives. International relations experts continue to debate whether the
material goals, or interests, of a state are distinct from its beliefs, or whether
the beliefs themselves constitute the interests. One school of thought
suggests that since foreign policy actors often have incomplete information
and the absence of certainty about the consequence of their actions, they
can rely on ideas to help choose strategies to further their goals.59 In this
mode of thinking, ideas impact which foreign policy interests are prioritized
by actors. But there are others who argue that “interests cannot be separated
from ideas about interests.”60 In other words, ideas can be causal, but can
also be the foundation of interests in a variety of ways. This does not mean,
however, that ideas themselves are simply static entities that affect the
choices of actors. Ideas can change and can be affected not just by the
political and economic conditions in which they operate, but even by the
strategies and goals of the actors—a “feedback” effect as it were.61 In fact,
it is the very dynamic nature of ideas that can enable actors to conceptualize
and reconceptualize the world.62
Entrepreneurship—broadly, the creation of a new or innovative venture
by risk takers who achieve their goals in a new environment and destroy the
status quo63—has rarely been studied in the context of the foreign policy or
security of countries.64 Instead theorists, particularly international political
economists and institutionalists, have drawn connections between ideas and
entrepreneurship to show how they can influence a country to institute
reform. They have offered the concept of “political/ideational
entrepreneurs” or agents who either institutionalize new ideas or recombine
existing ideas to influence the political leadership.65 Such agents are a
source of innovation in that they put forward new or creative ideas, and
seek to build support for those ideas.66 There is a consensus that these idea
entrepreneurs tend to be elites, i.e., those who can shape the political debate
by framing issues, outlining problems, and ultimately influencing political
agendas.67 Foreign policy ideas are also often associated with elite
individuals who emerge from formal and informal epistemic communities
or bodies of experts or “knowledge regimes” and individual leadership.68
The direction of entrepreneurial ideas can be top-down, where
policymakers construct and communicate ideas and then mediate the public
debates that ensue from these ideas, or bottom-up, where the interactions of
activists and experts can produce ideas that are selected by policymakers.69
Either way, a virtual marketplace of ideas70 becomes crucial for
policymaking. This is because as actors think about, discuss, and exchange
their ideas about political action, countries learn from their rich discourse.71
Particularly, this exchange of ideas leads them to interpret the available
information, reinvent ideologies and identities, and even construct new
institutions.72
We can take away from such theories three important elements: beliefs
matter for the behavior of countries in the world; beliefs about world
behavior predominantly come from entrepreneurial elites in the country;
and beliefs are pluralistic and dynamic.
If we think back to power transition theories and the assumptions made
about rising powers, we can see why idea advocacy expressed as narratives
about how to become a great power would be particularly important. The
root of power transition theories, as we have seen, is the dissatisfaction of
rising powers with the distribution of goods in the international system.
Crucially, though, this dissatisfaction has more to do with the domestic
beliefs of the rising power about the distribution of goods in the
international system than the distribution of goods itself. That is, it is not
necessarily how the goods are actually distributed but rather how the rising
power believes they are distributed that matters for power transitions, and
possible future conflict with the status quo power. Thus, just as international
society feels the need to “manage” a rising power and assess its
satisfaction/dissatisfaction, a rising power manages its own rise through its
beliefs about its changing status (including how to undertake “long-range
planning” and form “a coherent strategic program”73). Rising powers, who
are by definition in a precarious position in the international system—often
seen as revisionist and as potential threats—are compelled to define their
national and international priorities, and manage external and internal
perceptions about them. External perceptions matter because great powers
closely observe rising powers, and particularly their “legitimation
strategies” (or explanations of their aims and motives), to assess threat.74
And internal perceptions matter because rising powers need to satisfy
domestic audiences.75
Narratives about attaining great power are not the same as grand
strategies, although they are related to them.76 Grand strategies are
important for great powers77 as they help them assess the limits of their
capabilities, the prioritization of goals, and the most effective long-term
pursuit of their interests. Similarly, actively rising powers or countries that
are becoming great powers also develop grand strategies as they seek to
change their status and gain power parity with the status quo power;78 elites
in rising powers care deeply about status as a moniker of great power, and
develop strategies to attain it.79 But grand strategies themselves are
underpinned by ideas—it is either composed of core ideas80 or influenced
by them,81 or both.82 Thus, this is another reason that narratives of elite
entrepreneurs about great power are important—they can contribute to the
formulation of the grand strategies of a rising power.83
What kinds of beliefs about how the active rising power should behave
comprise these narratives of elite entrepreneurs? Active powers have
narratives that contain three distinct kinds of beliefs about how to attain
great power.
First, the beliefs reconcile the material capability of the rising power with
the constraints of the international order. In other words, as the material
capabilities of a rising power increase, the beliefs focus attention on those
goals that are now perceived to be materially attainable within the
constraints set by the current order. Second, and related to the first, the
beliefs acknowledge the current norms of great power, outline the rising
power’s acquiring of global authority/responsibility in that context, and
outline its relationship with the status quo power(s), and the current
international order. In this way, beliefs help the rising power actively shape
its role in the international system and act like a great power-to-be in order
to expand its influence. The beliefs acknowledge, therefore, what great
power currently looks like, what the norms of the international order are,
and the rising power’s responsibilities in the context of that international
order to eventually be recognized as a great power. And finally, the beliefs
explain the purpose and goals of a rising power’s increasing international
involvement, helping to build support for that involvement both
domestically and internationally.
The narratives of these beliefs can emanate from a set of elite individuals
belonging to a formal or informal expert community or from a single
influential leader.84 Thus, the narratives may be initiated by leader elites
and taken up by elites in expert communities, or they may be initiated by
expert communities and taken up by individual leaders. It is important to
emphasize here that this means that idea advocacy (or the advocacy of
beliefs) is a marketplace of narratives about great power behavior rather
than one single narrative about how to be a great power; that is, there may
be differing, sometimes even contradictory, narratives about how to attain
great power. But even differing narratives would recognize what the current
norm of great power is, whether they advocated, modified, or rejected
conformance with it. Eventually, as some narratives become more important
than others, there may emerge a consensus among the elites about the rising
power’s behavior.
Reticent powers, on the other hand, do not have idea advocacy or these
narratives about how to attain great power. They may, and often do, have
beliefs about the world, their foreign policy, and their behavior. But these
beliefs are not about becoming a great power. Lacking such narratives,
these powers, even while increasing their economic and military power,
remain reticent about their role on the world stage—they neither acquire
global authority, nor do they actively seek to shape either internal or
external perceptions about their role as a great power-to-be.

Rising to Become a Great Power: A Story about Stories

Before moving on to specific cases, let’s take stock of what we’ve learned.
Active rising powers are countries that increase their military and economic
power and also change their behavior on the world stage—they globalize
their authority by conforming to great power norms, and try to shape both
internal and external recognition of their rise. They do so because they are
going through a process of rising that includes not just material indicators
but also narratives about great power. Reticent rising powers are countries
that may increase their military and economic power but do not globalize
their authority or try to shape recognition of the material change in their
status. This is because the process of their (material) rise is incomplete—it
includes material power, but does not include narratives about great power.
Where narratives about becoming a great power come from—and why
some countries develop them at all and others do not—is an interesting
question which I will discuss briefly in the conclusion of this book. But for
the purposes of the story here, which is to show how some countries begin
taking on global authority and shaping recognition of their rise while others
do not, we can look to history and find some fascinating patterns. What we
find is that the elites in some countries at different periods of time had
narratives about themselves as great powers-to-be. Because the narratives
accompanied rising military and economic power, they were neither wishful
thinking nor suicidal; in fact, they were often strategic—they took into
account material and geopolitical constraints—and were cognizant of the
dangers of overexpansion.85 They also took into account the current notion
of what it meant to be a great power, and conformed to that notion.
But the narratives were not the inevitable consequence of a country’s
rising military and economic power. Because what we find is that in the
same time periods there were other countries who also had increasing
material power—but they did not develop these narratives. The former—
the active rising powers—pushed to acquire global authority and shape
recognition of their rise, and this behavior accompanied these narratives.
Eventually, these active powers were also activist powers and became great
powers. The latter—reticent powers—did not acquire global authority and
seemed indifferent to pushing for internal and external recognition of their
role. They also had very different narratives about their international role,
often even rejecting the current norms of great power. We can turn now to
three different time periods, and six very different cases of active and
reticent powers to illustrate these patterns. Classic theories of power
transitions tell us that rising powers change as they become stronger.86 This
is a story about the process of change, and how material strength needs to
be accompanied by narratives. My goal is to tell a story about the stories
these countries tell, or fail to tell, about themselves.

Ideas of Great Power in the Late 19th Century

International relations has always been characterized by competition

between powerful political entities. The mid- to late 19th century was no
different in that respect. It was an era of European great power competition.
The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Austria-Hungary, and Russia all
jockeyed for power and influence. Yet it was also an era like no other. The
global economy was interconnected on an unprecedented scale, leading to
an economic boom in Europe. There now existed a transoceanic and
transcontinental trading and financial system that was based in western
Europe. This, combined with the spread of free trade, faster transfers of
technology, explosive growth in manufacturing, and better modes of
transport, created a different kind of international order.87 Moreover, the
Industrial Revolution had led to technological changes which, in turn,
powered a new kind of military and naval strength. Not only did European
powers have greatly improved firepower (the advent of the breechloader,
Gatling guns, Maxims, and light field artillery, for example), but their naval
sea power was now extended from domination of the open seas to even
inland waters, including major waterways.88
But perhaps most importantly, this era was distinct from any other before
it because all of this great economic and military power and influence was
anchored in place with a different kind of territorial conquest—colonies.
Great powers in the 19th century were not just great powers. They were
colonial great powers. A tiny percentage of the world’s countries controlled
a huge percentage of the world’s territory and population. By 1878,
European countries controlled 67 percent of global territory; by 1914, this
had risen to 84 percent.89 In the center of this colonial universe, Britain was
the undisputed superpower. In 1830, the United Kingdom accounted for
two-thirds of Europe’s industrial growth and 9.5 percent of the world’s
manufacturing. By 1860, it produced 53 percent of the world’s iron, and 50
percent of the world’s coal and lignite. It consumed 50 percent of the
world’s raw cotton. Its energy consumption was five times that of either the
United States or Prussia/Germany, and 155 times that of Russia. It
accounted for one-fifth of the world’s commerce and two-fifths of the
manufactured goods trade.90 Britain’s jaw-dropping strength was in no
small part due to its control over its colonies. Britain ruled over a full
quarter of the land on Earth.91
It is important to understand that Britain and the other European
countries of the time were great powers because they held colonies. To be a
great power meant owning overseas colonies and having subsequent sway
over the lives and deaths of millions of people. Industrialized Europe and
the non-industrialized territories they controlled did not just have vast
disparities between them in economic and military power. When a
European country owned colonies, it also meant the establishment and
maintenance of unequal economic relationships, bloody wars with and
plunder of native populations, the introduction of diseases that decimated
those populations, and the constant use of brutal force to retain the
territories. As Theodore Roosevelt put it, colonization was “not merely a
political but an ethnic conquest.”92 Thus, such conquest was accompanied
by unabashed jingoism, proselytization, and a conviction of ethnic, cultural,
and moral superiority—the idea that European civilization was civilization
itself. Great power norms meant controlling colonies, and this was the
accepted and acceptable idea of the day.
In this competitive world of great power jockeying and colonial
acquisition, some countries by the late 19th century were indisputably rising
to join the ranks of the great powers. In 1898, Lord Salisbury, the British
prime minister, famously remarked that the world was now divided into
“living” and “dying” powers.93 These “living” powers—Japan and the
United States, for example—were all rising powers, on the cusp of joining
the ranks of the great powers. Not only were they rising in material terms,
industrializing and growing their economies, investing in their navies, and
modernizing their standing armies, relative to the established great powers
of the day,94 but they were beginning to take on more global authority and
responsibility according to the current norms of great power, and to shape
recognition of their rise. They were active powers. What did it mean to act
according to the prevalent norms of great power? Again, great powers in the
late 19th century were not simply great powers: they were colonial great
powers because they had “impulses to emulate the established powers.”95
No wonder, then, that in the late 19th century the United States and Japan
not only went to war (the United States with Spain; Japan with China and
Russia), but also acquired colonies, and used the ownership of those
colonies to shape internal and external recognition of their rise.
Political scientists generally equate rising power behavior of this time
with the phrase expansionism,96 missing the point entirely that not only was
it a particular kind of expansion—colonial expansion, which meant taking
on the “responsibility” of colonial territories and acquiring millions of
overseas subjects—but it was also accommodational, in that it was
perceived as appropriate great power behavior. Political scientists also tend
to attribute expansionist behavior to opportunity acquired through material
power. Some have argued that American expansionism heralded “an activist
foreign policy,” because the United States had the capacity to do so, and it
now had leaders who perceived the opportunity.97 Others have said that
expansionist behavior was inevitable, the defensive consequence of a rising
power’s need to shore up its security.98 However, the expansionist behavior
at the turn of the 19th century that can be witnessed in countries like the
United States and Japan was more complex than that. Both the United
States and Japan chose to go down the path of colonial great power.
While the United States and Japan were certainly acquiring the capacity
to globalize authority in the style of the great power du jour, not every
country that increased its wealth in the late 19th century (and was provided
opportunities to increase authority) did so. The case of the Netherlands
provides us a different perspective. Post-1870, the Netherlands was
becoming one of the richest countries in Europe—it industrialized later than
the other European powers, but when it did, its economy boomed.
Moreover, the Netherlands, which had acquired its colonies a century or
more previously, was a colonial power, considered second only to Great
Britain in its mastery of colonies. Indeed, its colonies were so immensely
profitable that other countries, including France and even Britain, tried to
emulate Dutch administration strategies in order to exploit their own
colonies more efficiently. The Netherlands parlayed its wealth into
expanding and improving its military and shoring up its defenses, both on
land and at sea. But the Netherlands was surprisingly reticent. It was a
power that was materially rising in important ways, but not an active power,
as it passed up opportunities to expand its colonies further, bartered away
existing colonial territories with little gains, and instead focused on
consolidating its holdings in its colony of Indonesia. And while certainly
the Netherlands was constrained by geopolitical threats—it feared first
France and then Prussia—it was reticent even when compared to small and
weaker European countries. In other words, despite having colonies and no
small amount of economic wealth and some military power, and despite
opportunity presenting itself for an active role within its geopolitical
constraints, it shied away from acquiring authority, and made little push to
acquire internal or external recognition of its material achievements.
Why did countries like the United States and Japan take on global
authority in the style of great powers of the day, while others like the
Netherlands remained puzzlingly reticent even given their capacity? As
historians who study these countries have comprehensively recorded, the
United States and Japan both had extensive ideas on how to be a great
power—they had a plethora of narratives which would, in turn, not only
push them to globalize but also shape internal and external recognition of
their changing status. And these narratives meant that they tried to become
great powers by imitating the established great power ideas of the day. The
Netherlands did not have these narratives, and it even denied the label it
could plausibly claim—that of colonial power—insisting not only that it
was not an imperialist power but that to be an imperialist power was
immoral.
The United States as a rising power had what historians have termed
“visions of greatness.”99 After 1870, America entered an era of astonishing
wealth and prosperity with improvements in productivity and living
standards. To recover from the decimation of the Civil War, it also invested
heavily in its military and, crucially, in its navy; US officials and naval
experts worried that the American navy was no match for the powerful and
global European navies, and pushed for naval expansion. And eventually, it
would acquire colonies, the symbol of great power in the late 19th century
world. Its narratives linked becoming a great power to conceptions of
liberty and racial hierarchy.100 Some narratives advocated that liberty meant
national greatness operationalized as territorial expansion. Others believed
that becoming a great power meant refraining from colonial ambitions
abroad that could “betray” the cause of liberty at home and lead to the
country’s downfall. Still others promoted the idea that becoming a great
power meant conquest and colonization, racial fitness and pride.101
Presidents such as Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and, later,
Woodrow Wilson personally held strong ideas about anti-imperialism and
great power that had to be balanced with elite ideas of becoming a great
power in the style of the colonial Western powers of the day.102
In Japan’s case, the Meiji Restoration showed the country’s
“determination to acquire the power to be the equal of the Western world, or
even to overtake the Western world.”103 The Meiji Restoration was
achieved by a section of the established ruling class—young low-ranking
samurai—and was triggered by events that compelled Japan to enter the
international system.104 The forcible opening of Japan to the West by
Commodore Perry in 1854 foreshadowed an eventual military coup in 1867
by Japanese rebels that would sweep away the Tokugawa shogunate ruling
Japan, and “restore” the young Emperor Meiji to the throne. The Japanese
elite that eventually took control demolished the samurai warrior class, and
wanted to convert the existing feudal society into a modern centralized
states. These elites became “obsessed with the goal of overtaking the West
and doing whatever was necessary, even risking Japan’s very cultural
identity, to achieve that goal.”105 Forced modernization, which spurred the
economic and military revitalization of Japan, was accompanied by certain
narratives that were “not only necessary to expansion” but also influenced
the way it was carried out.106 Many of these elite narratives centered on
imitating the great powers of the day, Western powers, in order to become a
great power; Japanese elites advocated learning Western methods, adopting
them, and then besting them. The only way to make Japan a great nation,
they argued, was to acquire the “spirit” of the West—its self-reliance, its
rationality, its technology.107 Other narratives advocated going further and
wholeheartedly adopting the rules of the existing Western international
order and Westernized legal codes,108 and using those rules to establish
domination and bring countries under Japanese colonial protection.109
These beliefs were countered by others who believed in preserving
traditional Japanese values or, at the very most, combining these values
with Western ideas.110
In each case—though the two countries differed geographically,
politically, and culturally—elites were using idea advocacy not only to
generate new ideas but also to recombine existing ideas to form new
narratives about the country’s appropriate behavior as a great power-to-be.
Many of the divergent beliefs about America’s role in the world after the
war with Spain, for example, were not organic (that is, without historical
roots) and can be traced back to earlier narratives about manifest destiny
and racial superiority. But they crystallized into, as we will see, one of the
“great debates”111 in US foreign policy and expansionism. Interestingly, on
the face of it, realist arguments about US expansionism being the result of
the search for security or the result of opportunity and capacity seem to
make little room for ideas and beliefs that proliferated in the United States
at that time. But in actuality they are contingent on the beliefs of US
decision-makers about US power. Even those who suggest that the United
States engaged in expansionism because of strong decision-makers, and that
leaders such as McKinley and the role they played have been
underestimated, point to the vivid debates that took place in the United
States at the time as what swayed him.112 Similarly, there was a
marketplace of narratives in Meiji Japan about the path to great power in
the style of the great powers of the day—European great powers. What is
striking is that even though Meiji Japan vastly differed from the United
States geographically, politically, and culturally, it too had idea advocacy—
there was a plethora of elite Japanese beliefs about how to achieve great
power.
The Netherlands, on the other hand, did not have such narratives, and
neither did it recognize itself as a successful and increasingly rich country.
Rather, the Dutch had what has been dubbed a “small state mentality,” that
of a country whose era of achievement was past. It stayed an almost
aggressively passive player in international politics—even compared to
countries like Belgium that were similar in size and position—thinking of
itself as unheroic, and lacking military spirit. Its elite narratives often
focused on being a good country, not a great country. This was a
particularly curious notion for many reasons. The Netherlands had once
been a great power during what has been called its Golden Age, and in the
late 19th century was thought by historians to have entered a second Golden
Age, due in no small part to its wealth. And while it was understandable
that the Netherlands would not want to engage in behavior that would be
risky, fearing as it did encirclement by greater powers, it was curious that
the Dutch even refrained from behavior that would be in keeping with their
already existing status—as we know, the Dutch already held colonies, but
they not only refused to believe themselves to be an imperialist country but
also began voluntarily ceding these colonies.

Ideas of Great Power in the Cold War and Post–Cold War World

As we’ve seen, the late 19th century was marked by the era of colonial
great power, where great powers were those with the economic and military
clout to own colonies. But in the 20th century, ideas about what it meant to
acquire and hold great power shifted. It was not that great powers no longer
had empires or engaged in imperialism. But rather, there were several shifts
in world politics that changed the way we think about great power. One of
the most important occurred in the Cold War period, as anti-colonial
national movements gathered force all over the world. Eventually the forces
of decolonization led to a moral normative shift in the international system
—that is, the idea of owning a colony became fundamentally wrong.113
Such moralistic notions were reflected not simply in the discomfort of many
in the United States with the idea of an American empire (while some
accepted the idea of American imperialism and debated only whether the
effects of this were positive or catastrophic for the world, others rejected the
idea of an American empire altogether114). This discomfort was also felt, at
least ostensibly, by the Soviet Union, the other superpower. The Soviet
Union claimed to wholly reject the idea of colonialism and to support the
decolonized developing countries. Its constitution declared imperialistic
wars and colonial slavery to be the characteristics of capitalism. Thus, it
was clear after the end of World War II that, in the new bipolar Cold War
world, while aspiring to be a great power was acceptable, aspiring to be a
great colonial empire was not. But if great power did not mean owning
colonies, what did it mean?
The post–World War II world saw the rise of multilateralism—a new
order of business for countries, conducted via the mechanism of
international institutions. Three decades ago, political scientist Robert
Keohane defined multilateralism simply as “the practice of coordinating
national policies in groups of three or more states.”115 But multilateralism
in the Cold War world was also more than that. It assumed that countries
would create and operate institutions that would reduce transaction costs
through providing and sharing information. This would in turn enable
countries to more easily achieve their goals. For great powers,
multilateralism meant not just interdependence but controlling the processes
of interdependence.
Even prior to the end of the war, the Atlantic Charter laid out the aims of
the United States and the United Kingdom. In signing the Charter, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared a
commitment to not just territorial integrity and self-determination, but also
to the ideas of free trade and collective security. Though the Charter did not
fulfill the specific goals of both leaders, it laid down a foundation that
would be used after the war not just by colonial territories through the
world to fight for their independence, but also by the United States to create
a liberal international order. The Bretton Woods Conference, convened by
the United States with British cooperation, expanded on the ideas enshrined
in the Charter. Under US leadership, the provisions of the Bretton Woods
system laid down the principles of free trade, allowing for the free
movement of goods and money, and creating new rules for the postwar
international monetary system. Economic cooperation through new
institutions was seen as not only the path forward to peace, but also as a
boon to US economic interests, as it would provide unimpeded access to the
resources and markets of the world.
The rise of the Soviet Union and the deteriorating US-Soviet relations
dashed Roosevelt’s hopes that the Soviets could be persuaded to join the
new economic order. However, multilateralism was the order of the day not
only through economic institutions. Rather, there was also multilateralism
through the creation of security institutions. In 1949, the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) was created by the United States, Canada, and
eleven Western European nations as a collective security institution to
protect against the Soviet Union. The original membership would expand
over the Cold War era. In turn, six years later, the Soviet Union and its
allies created the Warsaw Pact. Similar to NATO, the Warsaw Pact was built
on the assumption of multilateral security cooperation to deter an enemy
attack. Multilateral security and economic cooperation were the defining
hallmarks of the Cold War world. In the 1990s, when the Cold War ended
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, collective security institutions
struggled to redefine themselves in the absence of the Soviet threat. But the
triumph of the liberal order, represented less by the victory of democracies
over non-democracies and more by the flourishing of capitalism,116 meant
that multilateral economic institutions continued to thrive. The United
States had won the Cold War, meaning in effect that post–Cold War great
power norms meant unparalleled leadership in terms of economic
interdependence. In a globalized and increasingly networked world, the
country that could have the most connections, set the global agenda, and
unlock innovation would be the central player.117
In both the Cold War and post–Cold War world, great power meant, as it
had before, rapidly increasing military and economic superiority. But
instead of the acquisition of colonies, the symbol of great power was the
wielding of global influence through different kinds of international
institutions—security, economic, and diplomatic. And after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, the control of economic and monetary institutions became
even more crucial for great power. Some have argued that such great power
was also imperialist, even without formal colonial territories. The historian
Charles Maiers, for example, has elegantly made the case that the United
States should be considered imperial, whether or not we dub it an empire,118
because it wields power overseas through its institutions.119 What Maier
was implying was that even though the United States no longer had formal
colonies, the reach of American great power could be extended to every
corner of the globe because of the United States’ ability to create and lead
international institutions. However, we don’t need to determine here
whether such reach was indeed imperialistic or non-imperialistic. What we
can say is that during the Cold War and post–Cold War eras, acquiring great
power was set within the context of rapidly increasing interconnectivity of
global economies and politics. And with globalization came the need to
manage it. No wonder, then, that the exercise of great power was tied to
international institutions. The Cold War oversaw the proliferation of
international institutions—from institutions that controlled and set security
agendas, like arms-control regimes, mutual defense pacts, and proliferation
regimes, to those that controlled global politics and economics, like
monetary and financial institutions and political membership organizations.
Participation and, more significantly, power in such organizations became
key to acquiring, maintaining, and increasing great power status. Thus,
recognition of great power during this time was not simply the recognition
of a country’s capabilities, but also a recognition of its ability to set the
global agenda through institutions by controlling, directing and impacting
the processes of globalization and interconnectivity.
During the Cold War period, the country whose rise again came to be
feared was Japan. In 1937, when Japan joined World War II, its economy
was less than 4 percent of world manufacturing output. By the 1980s, Japan
was the world’s second-largest economy, with more than 15 percent of
world product.120 Academics and popular writers ranked it “number one”
and “a model to all the world.”121 Japan rapidly transformed from an enemy
to an ally of the United States. Yet despite America’s considerable
investment in Japan in order to gain its help in the fight against
communism, it was taken aback by Japan’s rapid economic growth. The
fact that Japan was now in the first rank of developed countries became a
source of American and international anxiety. A proliferation of fiction and
nonfiction books and articles in the media began casting Japan as a
dangerous challenger to the world. Not only were Japanese elites amassing
power at worrying rates, but they were apparently out to dominate the
United States through nefarious ways and means. The 1992 bestselling
thriller by Michael Crichton, Rising Sun, for example, sensationally
portrayed the Japanese as out to viciously and systematically destroy
American businesses. Crichton’s fearmongering fell on receptive ears: a
Newsweek/Gallup poll conducted in 1989 showed that most Americans
believed that Japan was as much a threat as the Soviet Union.122
Yet Japan remained curiously reticent on the world stage. It did not
behave like an active power: it did not convert its massive economic wealth
into military strength; it was content to remain under the American security
umbrella; and it showed no signs of taking on global authority—leadership
and responsibility—in economic or diplomatic institutions. One expert
declared that Japan “simply had no appetite for world responsibility.”123
By the 1990s, Japan’s economic bubble had burst and the world’s eyes
turned to two new rising powers on the scene—China and India. The 1990s
marked the rapid increase in military and economic power in these two
countries, resulting in constant references to their rise. Moreover, during
this period, the capabilities of the two countries were comparable (this
would change in the 21st century). But they behaved very differently.
China’s foreign policy behavior changed dramatically in the 1990s, as it
transformed its bilateral relations with other countries and established
significant multilateral networks. It enmeshed itself, often for the first time,
in existing trade, diplomatic, and security regimes. It also spearheaded the
creation of new institutions. India, on the other hand, did not. Instead, it
frustrated many of its partners by refusing to step up and assume leadership
in both multilateral and bilateral settings. It also often refused to support the
United States in the post–Cold War order. India was, in a word, reticent.
While China’s increasing economic and military power was accompanied
by narratives about great power and how to become a great power, similar
narratives were missing in both Cold War Japan and post–Cold War India.
China accepted the norms of great power in the post–Cold War world and
tried to play by the rules and seek great power validation. The Chinese elite
discussed China’s role in the world as a rising power, and debated the
merits and demerits of multilateralism as well as the importance of
controlling the forces of global interdependence. The decade of the 1990s
was when China became an active power, but one that was also
accommodational of the great power norms of the day. Japan did not take
this path, and neither did India. In Japan’s case, it had an alternative vision
of its role in the world, as that of a “trading state.” In India’s case, there was
a strong continuity of Cold War ideas about nonalignment that stymied it
from expanding its role and globalizing its interests. Either way, both
powers hung back, while China actively rose.

An Answer to Why Powers Rise or Remain Reticent

International society has always been consumed with the rise of new great
powers-to-be. On the one hand, we worry about rising powers because we
fear they will upend the international order and the world we live in. On the
other, we are not very good at understanding why we should fear them or
whether indeed we should. As for the question that John Mearsheimer
asked me more than a decade ago about the difference between China and
India and why it matters, I now have an answer. Some countries become
active rising powers not simply because they acquire material power, but
also because they deliberately acquire global authority and seek
recognition, and initially go to great lengths to show that they accept and
accommodate the existing international order. These countries go on to
become great powers. Other countries may count as rising powers in
material terms, but because they do not attempt to acquire global authority
or seek recognition, they are reticent powers. They will not become great
powers unless they become active powers. Rising to become a great power
is a process—not, all things being equal, a natural and given outcome of
increasing material power. Narratives, or idea advocacy, about becoming a
great power are key to that process. Active powers have such narratives.
Reticent powers, even when they have strengthening material attributes of
wealth, military might, or both, do not. And while with the benefit of
research hindsight, I was wrong in that long-ago précis to think of beliefs in
India as “ideological chaos”—what I found was deep continuity in foreign
policy ideas, just not entrepreneurial ideas about attaining great power
commensurate with its changing material status—the lack of great power
narratives have contributed to India’s reticence.
Thus, there are three important conclusions from this book. First, looking
to history we can find a significant pattern: rising powers that became great
powers had both material capabilities and narratives about becoming a great
power. These powers were active rising powers and they were initially
accommodational. They did not become great powers by destroying the
international order. They became great powers by buying into it before they
openly attempted to remake it. China, even today, attempts to borrow norms
established by the United States, and to use those very norms to advocate an
end to US dominance.124 Second, an activist rising power, meaning a
country that will be revisionist, is not a sudden phenomenon. The rise of a
country to become a great power is a process. The United States went from
being an active power, displaying its accommodation of the international
system, to being an activist power, rejecting international norms and
attempting to remake the international order. While there has been much
discussion of why rising powers become activist,125 the fact that rising
powers need to be active before they can turn to activism has been missed.
Fearing a country simply because of its increasing capabilities does not
prima facie make sense. Nor does thinking that simply because a country
has increasing economic and military strength, it will want to remake the
international order. Finally, some countries display reticence and remain
reluctant to take on global authority in the international system, despite
adequate wealth and/or military power. This tells us that, on the one hand,
we need to pinpoint the norms in the current order that matter for active
powers—such norms can be utilized as a point of convergence for the active
power and the established great power of the day. On the other hand, we
need to avoid the assumption that increasing military and economic
capabilities alone can compel a country to assume more responsibility, and
adjust our expectations accordingly.
Why do some countries develop idea advocacy or narratives about
becoming a great power? In terms of explaining why some countries begin
increasing their military and economic power, we know that there are many
established theories, ranging from opportunity to the perception of a threat
to individual leaders. Similarly, idea advocacy, too, can be rooted in a range
of different causes. The purpose of this book isn’t to examine exactly why
idea advocacy arises although in the concluding chapter I will briefly
consider potential causes for why some of these countries thought like great
powers-to-be while others did not.
But first, in the following chapters, I examine two detailed and two mini-
cases of active and reticent powers—the United States and the Netherlands
in the late 19th century, and Meiji Japan and Cold War Japan. I then turn to
China and India in the 1990s post–Cold War world. We see in each case of
an active rising power—the 19th-century United States, Meiji Japan, and
post–Cold War China—the idea advocacy that accompanied the increasing
economic and military power. And in the cases of reticent powers—the
19th-century Netherlands, Cold War Japan, and post–Cold War India—we
see material power and many ideas about foreign policy but no idea
advocacy. These are not perfect comparisons, nor am I suggesting they
should be. These countries are chronologically, politically, geographically,
and culturally varied from each other, and I am aware of these differences.
My goal is not to leave the impression that all active rising powers are alike,
and all reticent powers are alike. Nor do I wish the reader to think I
discount the impact of factors such as international environment and
geopolitical threats. But each of the cases provides differing examples of
opportunities taken and opportunities missed across time and space.
Moreover, the cases of active and reticent powers present a puzzle. The
United States, Meiji Japan, and post–Cold War China, as we would expect
of rising powers, all invested in increasing their economic and military
power. But they also engaged in behavior that, contrary to what we expect
of rising powers, was surprisingly accommodational of the norms of great
power at the time. The Netherlands, Cold War Japan, and India also
invested in many ways in increasing their material power. But they passed
up not only opportunities that might have increased their influence, but also
those that arguably could have further enhanced their economic and military
power. The mini-cases of Japan in two time periods are a bridge between
the late 19th-century and late 20th-century worlds, and the transition from
the Western age of great power to the beginning of what has been called an
Asian age of great power. Japan presents an additional curiosity—it was
active in one time period and reticent in another, even when considered a
rising power in both, suggesting that idea advocacy is not historically
inevitable.
Together the cases showcase intricate patterns of similarities and
differences. The United States and Meiji Japan agreed on how a great
power needed to behave in the late 19th century—despite very different
regimes and cultures (Western democracy versus Eastern monarchy). What
is more, they embraced narratives of accommodation, even when those very
narratives could be seen as contrary to core issues of identity. A hundred
years later, an authoritarian China would do the same, with narratives that
conformed to post–Cold War notions of great power. China’s behavior
differed from that of 1990s democratic India, despite initially comparable
levels of economic development and military investment that led to both
being dubbed rising powers. Late 19th-century Netherlands and Cold War
Japan were both rich countries, with high levels of income comparable to
the great powers. While the former undertook military modernization that
was primarily defensive, the latter prominently eschewed military
development. Both relied on security guarantees provided by more
powerful countries—and they both displayed behavior that was highly
reticent, even when set in the context of their material capacity and
geopolitical constraints. Why? As we will see, some of these societies had
idea advocacy about attaining power and tried to adopt and debate great
power ideas of the day, while others did not. The next chapters will lay out
the fascinating narratives in each country.

[Link]
2
The Active Rise of the United States

When we think of the United States today, we think of preponderant, even

overwhelming, raw power. This is not surprising. In the post–Cold War era,
the United States stands as the world’s only superpower—an empire in
denial, as Niall Ferguson has alleged,1 but an empire nonetheless. Pax
Americana may not have the population or territory of Pax Britannica or
Pax Romana, but for sheer force, technological superiority, and influence,
the United States remains unmatched. Even the rise of China, while rapid,
has not yet come close to the aggregate power projection capabilities of the
United States.2 But the United States was not always a great power and,
despite American conviction of its superior place in the world, it was
sometimes overlooked during its early decades by the other powers of the
day. The mid-19th century saw the gradual rise of the United States; by the
late 19th century, its ascent was recognized by the other great powers.
During this time, in addition to displaying its economic might and flaunting
its military prowess, the United States also acquired overseas colonies,
which, as we’ve seen, were the 19th-century symbol of great power. This
was despite a long-held conviction among American elites that, even with
American expansion within the region, the United States was inherently an
anti-imperialist, anti-colonial country. Yet, by the end of the 19th century
the dominant strain of elite opinion conformed to and even justified the
norms of great power that existed at the time (even while there were
competing strains). In other words, in many important ways, the behavior of
the United States as it rose was accommodational—it accepted the norms of
international great power. It was an active power before it became an
activist power and imposed a new international order. And at the same time,
there was a variety of narratives in the country about what kind of great
power the United States would become. Some of these narratives were
deeply conflicted as they sought to both reconcile and reject the conception
of the United States as a colonial great power. These narratives were
particularly prominent and stark in their divisions during the seminal event
of the Spanish-American War of 1898 and its aftermath, which we will
examine in depth here. Eventually, the United States as an established great
power would reject the idea of holding overseas colonies. But as we will
see, before it did so, as a rising active power it came to accept the idea,
even while some of its own citizens resisted it.

America: The Long Rise

Some have argued that the United States was a great power right from its
inception; others have pointed out that it was always destined for greatness;
while still others believe America was not placed firmly on the path to
becoming a great power until toward the end of the 19th century. Each of
these claims about when the United States was on the cusp of entering the
“great power club” have relied on metrics as disparate as the confident
beliefs of the founding fathers, America’s bold expansion across the
continent, the potential of its economic markets, its geographic isolation,
and its willingness to assert control over the Americas. What is clear is that,
by the material great power metrics of the day, in the 19th century the
United States entered a long period of rise. The world from the mid- to late
19th century was, as we saw in chapter 1, a world of colonial great powers.
These countries held sway over the lives and deaths of millions of people
around the globe. These countries were also all European nations.
Civilization meant European civilization; wealth meant European wealth;
colonies were European colonies. In this world where great power was
concentrated a continent away, the United States rose slowly. On the one
hand, it expanded across the North American continent, becoming an
established regional power, but on the other, it had no significant army,
virtually no navy, and no overseas colonies. It did, though, have tremendous
economic potential, and post-1865, with the end of the Civil War, this
potential would be realized even while the country suffered major economic
downturns.
For much of the 19th century, recognition of the United States as a great
power to be was mixed. The historian Ernest May noted drily that it was not
that the other countries were “oblivious to its existence” but rather that they
thought of it only occasionally, as possibly a useful “chess piece in the
game of world politics,” similar to Sweden or the Netherlands. That it could
be a major player on its own was not really considered.3 The slights were
both broad and minute. Diplomats rarely compared the United States to, or
even thought of it in terms of, the acknowledged great powers of the time—
the Russian consulate in the United States had no minister for almost two
years; a German envoy in the United States eagerly opted to take a pay cut
in order to be posted to Spain; Britain dispatched to the United States an
ambassador whose embarrassing peccadilloes necessitated a distant and less
significant posting; and when the Ottoman Sultan decided to cut expenses,
he closed the embassies in relatively minor countries like Sweden, Belgium,
and the United States.4 A Britisher noted that the true danger from America
was “in the Settler. . . . Not in their armies and navies.”5 The diplomatic
correspondence of the time forces on one, as another American historian
noted, a painful awareness of the “low estimate in which the physical power
of the United States was held.”6 But by the end of the 19th century,
particularly after the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States
would be established and recognized as an active rising power, one
possessing the symbol of great power: overseas colonies. European
observers would begin worrying about a world order dominated by the
“American moneybags.”7 And the United States itself would think of not
just international greatness but of becoming the great power of the day; in
essence, it would start “measuring itself for Britain’s shoes.”8

The Rise of American Capabilities

Emerging from the Civil War after 1865, the United States’ industrial
economy, which had been stymied by the conflict, began to again rapidly
expand. The American economy was fueled by both steel and oil. While the
United States had been and remained a big exporter of both agricultural and
mineral products, it also now became an exporter of manufactured goods
that it had previously imported. This was particularly evident in iron and
steel products, which were “the cutting-edge of late 19th century
technology.”9 While prior to the Civil War the United States exported
around $6 million worth of iron and steel manufacturing, by 1900 it was
exporting approximately $121 million worth of iron and steel goods. In
doing so, it threatened to displace European countries that relied on raw
materials from the United States in order to export finished goods to
America and the rest of the world.10 During the same time, American oil
production increased rapidly. While in 1859 the United States produced
approximately 2,000 barrels of oil, by 1869 US production was 4.25
million, and by 1900 it was nearly 60 million barrels.11
Around 1870 is considered the early beginning of a golden era of the
accumulation of American wealth, and an improvement in living standards
and productivity. The United States was reaping the fruits of the British-led
Industrial Revolution. By 1870, per capita income in the United States had
reached 74 percent of British per capita income.12 It has been argued that
during the 1870s, the rapid growth in American manufactured goods (value
added13 to manufactured goods shot up to 82 percent and even to 112
percent after 1879) and the increasing importance of industrialists and
financiers combined to create the seeds of a vast American commercial
empire.14 By 1893, America’s trade exceeded that of every major power
except Britain.15 Per capita income increased from $531 in the 1870s to
$933 in 1898. The United States had always been a leading agricultural
exporter, but now it overtook Britain, France, and Germany in steel and coal
production along with overall manufacturing output. Exports increased
from $281 million to $1.231 billion (putting it at third behind Britain and
Germany), and the United States also accounted for one-third of the world’s
industrial production.16 This explosive growth fueled the creation of
unimaginable wealth, the likes of which had hardly been seen before. The
business writer John Steele Gordon points out that the pace of this
astonishing accumulation of national wealth can best be understood by
noting the rapid increase in personal fortunes during the course of the 19th
century—John Jacob Astor, who died in 1848, left a fortune of $25 million;
Commodore Vanderbilt left $105 million by the 1870s; Andrew Carnegie
sold his business in 1916 for $480 million; and by that same year, John D.
Rockefeller was worth a whopping $2 billion.17
But the country’s economic growth, as production outpaced
consumption, was also punctuated with major downturns—depressions in
1873, 1882, and most notably in 1893 led to wide unemployment,
decreased demand, and the disruption of the banking system. Moreover, the
two decades preceding 1893 had seen a continuing drop in the price of
agricultural goods, which in turn led to rural political unrest, while the
industrial cities saw labor unrest that splintered along class lines.18 But
despite the severe economic suffering in the early 1890s, the economy
would recover, and between 1897 and 1907 America would enjoy “a
prosperity beyond anything previously experienced”; its exports and
imports doubled, its bank deposits increased to $4.3 billion—a figure larger
than the gross domestic product of 1860—and the amount of money in
circulation increased from $1.5 billion to $2.7 billion.19
Military growth, though, was a different story. Between 1865 and 1890,
the United States military was slow to recover from the decimation of the
Civil War. The army in 1880 consisted of just 36,000 men. In comparison,
Russia, which had a much smaller economy than that of the US, had an
army of 862,000 strong, while Britain’s army, although more modest, still
had 248,000 men in 1880.20 Importantly, many Americans distrusted
government and believed that the military, like all of the civil branches of
the public service, was both inefficient and mostly unnecessary.21 And even
though after the Civil War the US army was successful in its battles with
Indian tribes, it suffered “horrifying losses” during those battles because it
was “poorly staffed, poorly equipped, and poorly managed.”22
The most glaring gap between the United States and the European
powers, however, was in their navies. Reportedly, President Martin van
Buren had declared, well back in the 1830s, that the United States “required
no navy at all, much less a steam navy,”23 signaling the general lack of
interest in a strong US navy. Meanwhile, throughout the 19th century,
European countries were massively expanding their numbers and sizes of
ships and investing in naval architecture and technology. Though the Civil
War did spur the United States to build up its navy—the Union navy had
around 700 ships with 5,000 guns24—most of it was dismantled after the
war. Five years after the Civil War ended, the navy shrank to trifling
proportions—a mere 200 ships mounting 1,300 guns, with most of the ships
not even fit for service. They were made of wood and iron, and, in a time of
advancing technology, were old and obsolete, as were the guns of the
fighting ships.25 Moreover, nearly half of the US Navy’s enlisted personnel
were foreigners. A letter to the editor published in the New York Times
lamented that the lack of discipline, organization, and training led to a high
rate of dropout among Americans, who were then replaced with foreigners.
“In no other navy in the world does such a condition of things exist. In no
navy except that of the United States would such a state of affairs be
permitted.”26 The American navy of the time was no match for the
powerful navies of Europe that had fanned out over the globe, helping to
both acquire and hold their colonial possessions.
More importantly, both the navy and the army were decentralized and
influenced by localism; due to the military’s small size, it was
supplemented by autonomous militia units supplied by the states that
would, when necessary, join the regular force. However, the militia system
was chaotic and the soldiers were badly trained, if they were trained at all,
leading to a waste of resources and very slow response times. Nationally,
too, the forces were not well managed, with no clear lines of command. The
army and the navy were each led by separate bureaus that theoretically
reported to the secretary of war and the secretary of the navy. In practice,
however, the chiefs of the two bureaus often maintained close relationships
with congressional committees and bypassed not only the secretaries of the
army and navy but even at times the White House.27
But by the 1880s, the United States had begun to acknowledge the need
to invest in its military. Although there was no sweeping reform, American
attitudes about the army and navy changed,28 leading to a number of key
organizational shifts. Military education was reformed to train and
professionalize the military; the position of assistant secretary of war (along
with assistant secretary of the navy) was established in 1890; key issues
such as coastal fortifications were moved from the control of Congress into
the professional military and executive branch;29 and the military received a
larger share of the federal budget. These changes are strikingly evident, for
example, when comparing the report of President Ulysses S. Grant’s
secretary of war in 1874 with the report of President Benjamin Harris’s in
1891. In the former, Secretary William Belknap complained bitterly that
Congress had restricted the recruitment of troops to the severe detriment of
the army, and requested an increase in budget and numbers, warning that
otherwise there would be “severe consequences.”30 In the latter, Secretary
Redfield Proctor listed the improvements and fortifications that had been
undertaken, including new methods of recruitment, examinations for the
promotion of officers, and the establishment of an adequate coastal defense
system.31
By the late 1880s, influenced by naval reformers such as Alfred Thayer
Mahan and Stephen B. Luce, the United States had also begun
acknowledging the need for a world class navy. A report to Congress in
1889 by the secretary of the navy, Benjamin Tracy, warned that America,
with its 13,000 miles of exposed seacoast, was vulnerable to attack. Tracy
pointed out that the European powers and China each had larger numbers of
both armored and unarmored ships, and he requested twenty world-class
battleships, which would be divided between the Pacific and Atlantic
coasts. He also recommended the construction of cruisers, torpedo boats,
and vessels for coastal and harbor defense. “If the country is to have a navy
at all, it should have one that is sufficient for the complete and ample
protection of its coast in time of war. If we are to stop short of this, we
might better stop where we are, and abandon all claim to influence and
control upon the sea.”32 This report was remarkable in that it marked the
beginning of the shift from a passive to an offensive naval strategy. By 1890
Congress had adopted Tracy’s recommendations and had permitted the
construction of three splendid battleships at the cost of $3 million each. By
1893, the reforms had raised the status of the United States Navy from
around seventeenth in the world to seventh.33 Over the next decade the
navy’s budget more than doubled, rising from $22 million in 1890 to $56
million.34
These gradually increasing capabilities allowed the United States to
amass regional power, and take important steps to obtain territories and
exert an imperialist influence in the region. By the end of the 19th century,
after its victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States
had succeeded in acquiring a bona fide overseas colony, the Philippines.

The Active Path to Great Power

The United States’ international role and presence were extremely

“minimal” for most of the second half of the 19th century.35 However, the
seeds of its eventual active behavior—globalization of authority, and the
shaping of perceptions—were sown during this period, when it began
asserting itself as a regional power.
From the very beginning of the 19th century, the United States engaged
in nation-building, a process that would continue for the next century. But
after the American Civil War ended in 1865, the United States also
embarked upon substantial expansion in the region. Conquering the lands of
the West was the most important task after the war. But additionally, the
United States sought to establish both economic and strategic control of the
Western Hemisphere. Thus, it sought to annex islands in the Caribbean and
Pacific, unilaterally construct an isthmian canal in Central America, and
assert its economic supremacy in Latin America as a whole.36 For example,
in 1867, the United States pulled Hawaii into a reciprocity treaty; in 1868,
William H. Seward, the secretary of state, negotiated a treaty with
Colombia that gave the United States the sole right to construct a canal; in
1869, President Grant drew up, ultimately unsuccessfully, an annexation
treaty to acquire Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic); in 1884,
another treaty, the Frelinghuysen-Zavala treaty, tried to establish the right of
the United States to own and control a canal, this one in Nicaragua.
A few incidents particularly stand out in this period as examples of
America’s active move toward the beginnings of global influence. In 1895,
the United States decided to intervene in a standoff between Venezuela and
Great Britain. Tensions between Venezuela and the United Kingdom over
the boundary between the former and British Guiana had been simmering
for five decades, as the two countries went back and forth over a large
disputed territory that was eventually discovered to have substantial gold
deposits. Venezuela did not have the capacity to assert its claims, and in
1887 it severed its diplomatic relationship with Great Britain. Meanwhile,
Venezuela appealed to the United States to intervene, and in 1895 the
United States decided to take the matter up. secretary of state Richard
Olney sent a dispatch to the British Prime Minister Salisbury that asserted
the right of the United States to intervene in the boundary dispute. The
United States stated that if the boundary dispute was not settled by
arbitration, it would administer the border itself. The ultimate upshot of this
salvo was that the United Kingdom, after much negotiation, accepted that
the United States would play a role in resolving the conflict, and in 1896,
the two countries agreed on a treaty of arbitration.37
Second, the United States gradually moved toward the annexation of
Hawaii. In 1875, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish negotiated a reciprocal
trade agreement with Hawaii that enmeshed the islands both economically
and politically with the United States but “stopped short of formal
annexation.”38 But in January 1893, the white planter elite, who had their
roots in New England, organized a coup against the native queen,
Liliuokalani, hoisting the American flag in Honolulu and declaring Hawaii
to be a protectorate of the United States. They hoped that by doing so they
would inspire the US government to formally annex the islands. Two weeks
later, their hopes seemed to materialize as the United States signed a treaty
of annexation with Hawaii. However, the incoming Democratic president,
Grover Cleveland, refused to adhere to the treaty, and withdrew. Five years
later, in July 1898, Hawaii was formally annexed with a joint resolution by
Congress.
Finally, and most crucially, America went to war with Spain in 1898 and
defeated it, ending Spain’s colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere.
Nearly sixty years later, historian Thomas Bailey would declare that “every
school boy knows, or would know if he bothered to read his textbook, that
the United States did not become a world power until 1898.”39 Although
Bailey was being facetious,40 his statement points to an inescapable fact—
the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the subsequent American
annexation of the Philippines are considered the events that heralded the
emergence of the United States as an international power to reckon with41
and the rise of the American century.
This war occurred after a long history of unrest in Cuba, a Spanish
colony. Cuba had already led a ten-year failed struggle for independence
from 1868 to 1878. This rebellion was resumed in 1895, and rapidly
devolved into a guerrilla war against the Spanish forces, which
outnumbered the Cubans in men, artillery, and finances. But as the conflict
intensified, marked by massive Spanish brutalities against the Cuban
population, the United States decided to intervene. There were two
important immediate factors in February 1898 that preceded American
intervention. First, a scandalous letter from the Spanish minister in
Washington, Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, to a friend fell into the hands of the
Cuban rebels, who delivered it to US Secretary of State William R. Day.
The letter, headlined in the American press as “The Worst Insult to the
United States in its History,” contained several unflattering comments about
President McKinley and his diplomacy. Second, the USS Maine, a
battleship sent to Havana to provide naval presence, exploded and sank,
killing 266 American sailors. While no investigation then or subsequently
has been able to prove who was responsible, the United States detected the
hand of Spain. McKinley demanded that Spain grant independence to Cuba;
Spain responded by breaking off diplomatic relations; and the United States
declared war. The war was a short one, marked by two early successes: in
the Atlantic, Admiral William Sampson blockaded Havana; in the Pacific, a
fleet of ships that had been sent to the Philippines prior to the Maine
disaster was now secretly authorized by the assistant secretary of the navy,
Theodore Roosevelt, to destroy the Spanish fleet in Manila. By July, the
war had ended with a decisive victory for the United States.
The subsequent and historic Treaty of Paris of 1899 ended America’s
first foreign war in fifty years. It netted the United States the Spanish
territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The treaty’s
significance is difficult to overstate. It destroyed the Spanish Empire and set
off America’s acquisition of overseas territories. Even more momentous
was the acquisition of the Philippines, an overseas colony. Transformed into
a colonial power, the United States took possession of the country and
promptly found itself warring with Filipino rebels fighting for
independence. For the first time, the United States had policed the affairs of
the Caribbean, and then involved itself in the international politics of the
Far East, fighting “men of a different color in an Asian guerrilla war.”42

An Active and Accommodational Power

In these behaviors, the United States was an active power. It not only began
to acquire relative military and economic power, it began to acquire global
authority, but it did so by acting in accordance with great power norms. The
United States was accommodational in its behavior because it conformed to
the great power norms of the time.43 Its intervention in Venezuela, its
ultimate annexation of Hawaii, and the Spanish-American War and the
acquisition of the Philippines show the rising United States behaving in
keeping with the colonial great power norms of the day. America showed a
willingness to begin asserting “imperial” authority overseas. Secretary
Olney’s dispatch during the Venezuelan crisis demonstrates the assumption
of this authority. “Today,” he wrote, “the United States is practically
sovereign upon this continent, and its fiat is law.”44 Similarly, with the steps
toward the eventual formal annexation of Hawaii, the United States was
taking steps that were entirely in keeping with the norms of gradually
acquiring a colonial empire.45
This behavior was not mere expansionism, a natural outcome of its
increasing material capabilities. In the case of Venezuela, for example, it
was the US intervention that prompted the acceleration of the demand for a
larger navy (at the time of the crisis, the United States had just one
battleship versus Britain’s naval might46), rather than the other way around.
The material gains to the United States from intervention were also not
clear at the outset, and eventually the arbitration panel convened to oversee
the crisis would issue a judgment that would in fact favor Great Britain.47
And throughout the intervention, US actions were mostly in accordance
with the behavior displayed by colonizing great powers. Olney never
discussed American policy with the Venezuelans, even during the height of
the crisis. And even though it was Venezuelan territory that was at stake, the
Venezuelans were themselves completely excluded from the negotiations.48
In the arbitration process, the Americans also valued British colonial
demands over the wishes of the Venezuelan government. The British
demanded that territories where British subjects had been settled for more
than fifty years would be excluded from arbitration, meaning that Britain
could legally claim more of the disputed territory. The Americans
eventually accepted Britain’s position, over the repeated protestations of the
Venezuelan government. The news of the American sellout triggered riots
in Venezuela. And when the arbitration commission granted most of the
disputed territory to Britain, the United States did not raise any objections.
That America was behaving similarly to other colonial great powers was
recognized by Great Britain, the country that was the exemplar and,
arguably, the keeper of such norms. The Economist stated, for example, that
in taking these actions the United States was establishing “a kind of
protectorate” over the Americas.49 Although Venezuela had initially been
eager for the United States to intervene, the result was so antithetical to
what it considered its interests that just a few short years later Venezuela
would support Spain in its war against the United States.
Similarly, categorizing America’s intervention in the affairs of Spain in
Cuba as the result of security or economic interests alone is problematic.
Not only was there an absence of perceived threat, but economic special
interests also were not decisive factors.50 The United States became an
empire not only when “its security and vital interests were not at risk,”51 but
also when “imperialism was not a [structural or interests-based] make or
break question of national existence.”52 It was also not clear that not
acquiring an empire would have hurt the United States economically. The
research on business interests, how enmeshed they were in colonial
expansionism, and whether they believed it would be economically
beneficial is mixed, but it is generally accepted that special interests
(business, military lobbying, missionaries, etc.) were not decisive factors in
the US intervention.53 While the United States certainly now had the
capacity to intervene,54 there is also mixed evidence as to whether the
decision was driven by strong leaders. President McKinley, indecisive and
besieged, was himself “neither a jingo nor an enthusiast of expansion”55 but
gave in to the pressure to intervene, probably because of either public
opinion and/or fear that he would lose influence in the Republican Party.
Unsurprising, therefore, is the popular joke of the time: “Why is
McKinley’s mind like a bed? Because it has to be made up for him every
time he wants to use it.”56 While most historians agree that America’s
intervention was a particular kind of expansion, a colonial expansion, they
assert either that this was unintentional—“a momentary fall from grace,” as
historian Bemis put it,57 or that this was absolutely deliberate—a planned
exploitative economic imperialism.58 Whatever the intent of American
policymakers, a debate that rages to this day,59 two facts are inescapable—it
was a different kind of expansion than the United States had engaged in
previously, and America emerged from it as a recognized imperial power
with an overseas colonial territory. What we can understand from these
facts is that rising America was engaging in active behavior, playing by the
international norms of colonial great powers, not overturning them.

Narratives of Attaining Great Power

During the process of its rise as an active power, the United States was also
debating how to become a great power. Some historians assert that the
United States has always, right from its inception in 1776, thought of itself
as a great power.60 Indeed, in a letter from 1811, John Quincy Adams made
clear to his mother, Abigail, that he thought of America as “a nation . . .
Destined by God and nature to be the most populous and most powerful
people ever combined under one social compact.”61 But while it has
perhaps always had visions of national greatness,62 visions of international
greatness came later.63 How the United States would become a great power
on the world stage, what kind of great power it would be, how it would
actively promote its national greatness in world affairs, and how it would
eventually reshape the international system had not yet been thought of.
And crucially, it struggled with whether it should become a colonial great
power, and if yes, how this could be reconciled with traditional perceptions
of American anti-colonialism.
As we will see, in the mid- to late 19th century, and particularly by the
end of the century, as the United States expanded global authority and
shaped perceptions of its rise, there were narratives—or idea advocacy—
accompanying its increasing material strength that portrayed the necessity
of colonialism in attaining great power. Conflicting narratives warned,
however, that possessing colonies could lead to destruction of that very
goal. Often arguments about America’s expansionism and power during this
period are contingent on the beliefs of decision-makers about US power—
what leaders believed they could do given America’s military and economic
strength—even as they sometimes dismiss the role of beliefs.64 What we
see in the narratives that accompanied the growth of US economic and
military power is that America’s active behavior was not just about what
decision-makers believed they could do, but also about what they should
do, and what kind of great power America should be. These narratives
existed during some of the key actions that America undertook in Venezuela
and in Hawaii, but they also came out in full force after the seminal
Spanish-American War. The war forced the United States to move away
from its long held principle of non-intervention65 and to confront the
question of what kind of role the country would now want to play in
international politics.66 Meanwhile, the United States had to grapple with
domestic problems spurred by its intervention.
To understand why these later 19th-century narratives were so important,
we need to also look to early 19th-century ideas about the role and identity
of the United States. Two particularly stand out as crucial to later American
identity, as they contained ideas that would impact later narratives about
America becoming a great power: the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and the
idea of Manifest Destiny, coined in 1845.
On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe made a speech to the US
Congress. Two paragraphs in that speech would come to be known as the
Monroe Doctrine. In the context of the United States’ relationship with
Russia, President Monroe declared,
The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have resumed
and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects of future colonization by any
European powers. . . . We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing
between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt
on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our
peace and safety. With the existing colonies and dependencies of any European power we
have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared
independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration
and just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of
oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power
in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United
States.67

This stirring speech did not come to embody a powerful doctrine until
much later.68 Initially, not only did it fall flat among the American public,
but the reaction among European powers was merely to be slightly
“irritated” by it, matching with their view of America as a weak rather than
a strong country.69 But it did capture, with the non-colonization clause, a
belief cherished by American elites of the time that their country and ethos
were viscerally opposed to colonialism. John Quincy Adams, who had a
direct hand in Monroe’s speech, was a known opponent of colonization,
believing that “the whole system of modern colonization was an abuse of
government, and it was time that it should come to an end.”70 Although in
the following years the Monroe Doctrine would be interpreted and
reinterpreted, the principles of anti-colonialism and non-intervention were
seen as its foundation.71 And these principles became an important
foundation for later narratives about American colonial expansion abroad.
The second important idea appeared in 1845, when American journalist
John Louis O’Sullivan wrote an article in the Democratic Review about the
annexation of Texas. In this article there was a buried phrase that criticized
European interference in America’s affairs:
[O]ther nations have undertaken to intrude themselves . . . in a spirit of hostile interference
against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power,
limiting our greatness in checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying
millions.72
The use of “manifest destiny” in this article attracted little attention. But
a few months later, O’Sullivan used it again in an editorial for the New
York Morning News. This time he stated, with regard to the US claim to the
territory of Oregon: “that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to
overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has
given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and
federated self-government entrusted to us.” This editorial had tremendous
impact, implying as it did that there was a “higher law” that governed
America’s behavior.73 Many prominent Americans adopted the concept
wholeheartedly, even as they adopted it for differing ends. Manifest Destiny
certainly impacted America’s westward expansion to gain markets, enlarge
the union, and showcase racial superiority, but expansionists also had to
reconcile its racial and economic aggression with “the belief in American
innocence.”74 As a consequence of this belief, “very few Americans”
viewed the expansion in the West as “an act of colonialism.”75 The tensions
inherent between America’s national vision of itself as exceptional, non-
colonial, and destined by a higher authority to expand in the region versus
its interventions and acquisition of overseas colonies, just like the European
powers, were prominently displayed by the later 19th century in the
narratives of the time about how to become a great power.
The narratives of attaining great power that would be displayed
prominently by the end of the 19th century were certainly about increasing
economic and military strength—Mahan, for one, thought great power was
impossible without a command of the seas—but they now also
encompassed ideas about the nature of the United States itself, and what it
would become. They were not organic. Rather, they drew on ideas that had
existed in the United States for many decades—ideas about liberty,
democracy, and America’s destiny as a unique country. While some used
the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny to advocate for colonial great
power, others used them to oppose it. But the narratives also took on newer
iterations conforming to the norms of great power of the time. And they
were often controversial and contested. While some, particularly early on,
indeed saw the Monroe Doctrine as advocating isolationism, others used it
to justify internationalism and the links between the United States and
European great powers, even the hated British. Still others by the late 19th
century would invoke it to promote active behavior.76 The notion that
imperialism and great power were the inseparable norms of the day was a
concept that American elites struggled with—thus the doctrine was often
invoked to cloak the influence of colonial great power norms on late 19th-
century American foreign policy.77 Manifest Destiny pushed the idea of
American exceptionalism, and this was used by some to later argue that
because America was exceptional, it was its duty to help make others fit for
self-rule. These struggling narratives could be seen during the crisis in
Venezuela and the US annexation of Hawaii, but they burst into full force
after the Spanish-American War.
A few years prior to the intervention in Venezuela, for example,
politicians including Secretary of State James G. Blaine, appointed in 1881,
explicitly sought to mimic the British Empire. He wrote a series of notes to
the British demanding the modification of an old treaty in Central America
so that the United States could fortify and politically control any canal built
in the Central American isthmus in the future. “This government will not
consent to perpetuate any treaty that impeaches our rightful and long-
established claim to priority on the American continent.” While making his
demand, he argued that the United States was simply doing in its
neighboring region what the British had been doing in Egypt with the Suez
Canal. The next secretary of state, Frederick Frelinghuysen, continued in
the same vein, citing the Monroe Doctrine to justify US behavior.78 A few
years later, Olney used the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention in
Venezuela, declaring European colonialism unacceptable. But even though
he eschewed a US “protectorate” in Venezuela and sought to reassure the
public that the United States did not “contemplate any interference in the
internal affairs of any American state,” others, notably Theodore Roosevelt,
wrote joyfully that now that the United States had intervened in Venezuela,
it should do the same in Cuba.79
In the early 1890s when President Cleveland refused to annex Hawaii
despite the request of the rebels to do so, his decision could be understood
against the backdrop of the conflicting narratives from American
expansionists, including those who were vehemently against any kind of
imperialistic behavior. Cleveland did not just refuse to annex Hawaii—he
authorized, in addition, an investigation into the matter, which concluded
that the revolution had been “a shameful affair orchestrated by a small
special-interest group.” The New York Times, for good measure, said
annexation would “sully the honor and blacken the name of the United
States.”80 But in July 1898, when Hawaii was finally annexed, President
William McKinley justified it as “not a change” but “a consummation.”81
America was rising. It was flexing its economic and military muscles,
yes, but it was also fiercely contending how it should rise. Nowhere would
this become more obvious than during the Spanish-American War and its
aftermath. Different, and sometimes conflicting, narratives—a “crisis of
identity,” as historian Frank Ninkovich has termed it—would engulf the
public space post-1898. These narratives comprised one of the “great
debates”82 in US foreign policy about how America should achieve
international greatness. Even opposing sides of the issue firmly believed
that America was now becoming a great power. That was undisputed. What
was disputed was how to assume the mantle.
In the 1890s, the depression, clashes in rural and urban areas, and an
anxiety about immigration all combined with an awareness that the United
States was beginning to amass unprecedented military and economic power.
This created a volatile backdrop against which the unrest in Cuba, and
stories of the brutal violence against Cuban rebels by Spanish troops, were
to play out. American elites were anxious about the values that would make
the country great, and were divided on whether that meant preserving the
old values, redefining them, or looking abroad for solutions.83 Non-
interventionists argued that potential American involvement in Cuba would
have no noticeable effect on stimulating foreign economic expansion,
would enmesh the United States in a conflict that could stymie its domestic
industry, and would pit it against a European power at a cost to its values.
Elites such as Senators Mark Hanna, Nelson W. Aldrich, and Orville H.
Platt called for prudence and discretion. However, among many others there
was a rising hyper-nationalism—“jingo nonsense,” as McKinley
contemptuously put it to Carl Schurz, an influential and staunch anti-
imperialist.84 Some of these so-called jingoes, like Roosevelt, fell into the
camp of thinking that American values were declining, and saw war as a
way to national rejuvenation—in 1897, he declared to an audience at the
Naval War College that the “fight well fought, the life honorably lived, the
death bravely met . . . count for more in building a high and fine temper in a
nation than any possible success in the stock market.”85
But it was also about the United States acquiring global authority and
acting like a great power by assuming responsibility, and eventually
acquiring colonies. Cuba’s misery and the unfolding humanitarian disaster
struck a chord in American public opinion. The fact that the United States
had the economic and military heft and could do something about Cuba
“helped convince [many] they should do something . . . it was a question of
whether the nation stood for something in world affairs.”86 As Republican
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge asked, “What are the duties of the United
States in the presence of this war? . . . if that war goes on in Cuba . . . the
responsibility is on us; we cannot escape it.” Enrique Dupuy de Lôme’s
insults against McKinley and the sinking of the Maine served to further
inflame these ideas. Ultimately, with slogans such as “Remember the
Maine! To hell with Spain” abounding, the American public supported war,
and the newly elected McKinley bowed to public opinion.87
These narratives became more contested after the war. With the signing
of the Treaty of Paris, the question now became whether the United States
should or should not possess a colony—the Philippines. This question
framed the heart of what it meant for the United States to attain great power.
Should the United States be a colonial great power, in the tradition of the
great powers of the day who held and profited from overseas colonies? The
narratives around this issue pitted American elites fiercely against each
other. Who were these elites? They came from many different backgrounds
—to debate whether becoming a great power required America to assume
the mantle of colonialism. Although these elites can be broadly divided into
two ideational camps—the anti-imperialists and the expansionists—the
views, even within each camp, were far from monolithic. Rather, as we will
see, there was a plethora of different kinds of beliefs, leading to many
different narratives on how the United States should follow the path to great
power.
Reacting to the notion that, with the Treaty of Paris, the United States
was now an interventionist state with colonial territories, anti-imperialists
vehemently objected to America’s overseas expansion. Some sought to
oppose the Paris treaty itself and its provisions about the Philippines; others
opposed the war with the Filipino rebels that followed; and all opposed the
very idea of an American colonial administration in the Philippines. “Anti-
imperialism became a nationwide movement that captivated headlines and
made a significant impact on US foreign policy.”88 “Democrats,
Republicans, progressives, conservatives, party stalwarts, independents,
businessmen and labor union chiefs”89 all came together to oppose America
becoming a great power. Anti-imperialism generated thus a fascinating
unity among American elites from not just different but even contradictory
backgrounds—the movement had such widespread support that it cut across
many otherwise divisive lines. These highly influential men included
former senator Carl Schurz; prominent senators such as George Hoar
(Massachusetts), Walter Mason (Massachusetts), Augustus Bacon
(Georgia), Edward Carmack (Tennessee), and Donelson Caffery
(Louisiana); Congressman Thomas Reed (Maine); three-time Democratic
presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan; former president Grover
Cleveland and his secretary of state Richard Olney; industrialist Andrew
Carnegie, who even then was one of the most famous men in the nation; the
philosopher William James; the economist Edward Atkinson; writer Mark
Twain; the presidents of Harvard (Charles Eliot), Stanford (David Starr
Jordan), and Northwestern (Henry Wade Rogers); the head of the American
Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers; and even prominent clergymen like
Bishop Henry Codman Potter. They vocally expressed their opinions
through speeches, letters, pamphlets, editorials, and debates on the floor of
the House and the Senate.
Why were these men so adamantly opposed to the idea of the United
States becoming a colonizing power in the tradition of the European great
powers? They had many different, sometimes even contradictory, reasons.
As the historian Frank Friedel pointed out, “Their arguments were moral,
humanitarian, economic, military and racist.”90 Some of the anti-
imperialists argued, for example, that empire was contrary to the very ideal
of American liberty91 and American exceptionalism. George Hoar declared
in a letter, “No man . . . will successfully challenge . . . the affirmation that
under the constitution of the United States, the acquisition of territory, as of
other property, is not a constitutional end, but only a means to a
constitutional end . . . and that there is therefore no constitutional warrant
for acquiring or holding territory for that purpose.”92 William Jennings
Bryan believed that were the United States to become a colonizing power, it
would be abandoning a vital principle of democracy—that governments
should derive their powers through the consent of the governed.93 Even
though he supported the ratification of the Paris treaty, he did so in the
belief that this would be the path for the US Congress to eventually support
the freedom of the Philippines. When it became clear that the United States
would not only annex the Philippines but subdue it with force, he
poignantly asked:
Shall we keep the Philippines and amend our flag? . . . Shall we add a new star, the blood
star, to indicate that we have entered upon a career of conquest? . . . No a thousand times
better to haul down the stars and stripes and substitute the flag of an independent republic
than to surrender the doctrines that gave glory to “Old Glory.”94

Others claimed that America needed to be the protector of liberty, not its
assailant, one that inflicted bondage on another peoples. William James
lamented, “we are cold-bloodedly, wantonly and abominably destroying the
soul of people who never did us an atom of harm in their lives . . . [the
American republic has become] a hollow, resounding, corrupting,
sophisticating torrent of . . . brutal momentum and irrationality.”95 Many
Republicans who joined the anti-imperialists also saw opposing colonial
expansion as the just expression of their party’s anti-slavery roots.96
There were also those who argued that other races were incapable of
governing themselves, and that the United States should keep away from
populations that could debase its own civilization.97 Schurz worried about
“Asiatics,” while the Missouri congressman Champ Clark tried and failed to
imagine “almond eyed, brown skinned United States senators.” What’s
more, he argued, “No matter whether they are fit to govern themselves or
not, they are not fit to govern us.”98 Then there were the elites who offered
that subduing alien races was simply an impossible job that would ruin the
country. The sociologist William Sumner Graham declared that the United
States had never been able to “civilize lower races” and trying to do so
would “lead [the country] to ruin.”99 Senator Donelson Caffery pointed out
a puzzling paradox: “In order to Christianize these savage people we must
put the yoke of despotism on their necks [but] Christianity cannot be
advanced by force.”100
Many businessmen financed the anti-imperialist movement and
subscribed to its views. Andrew Carnegie even toyed with the idea of
personally buying the Philippines and then granting it independence.101 The
rationale of such elites was economic. Military adventurism and the
responsibility of imperialism did not come cheap. The costs of this, it was
feared, would be borne by American farmers and workers. The expense of
subduing and then maintaining the Philippines would take resources away
from domestic industrial development. Moreover, the United States would
encounter problems arising from any trade relations established with
colonized territories. Free trade would push down the value of America’s
agricultural products if goods such as sugar, tobacco, and flax from a
colony were admitted duty free. On the other hand, imposing tariffs on
goods from a colony would ruin its economy and violate the Constitution. If
the United States opened the Philippines to free trade with other nations,
American producers would have pay exorbitant shipping costs compared to
European powers, given the distance of the United States from its colony. If
it closed trade or taxed European goods sold to the Philippines, the United
States could face economic punishment or even be pushed out of the
region.102 Finally, some anti-imperialists argued that the United States
needed to become a great power and lead by example. Following the path
of empire would result in the downfall of free institutions and perhaps even
the country itself. Democrat Senator Benjamin Ryan Tillman announced,
“we assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire.”103
Despite the popularity of the anti-imperialist point of view, the foreign
policy elites were ultimately dominated by the imperialists, who offered
strongly opposing arguments. There were those such as Alfred Thayer
Mahan, of course, who thought the United States needed a large navy and
overseas bases to protect its commercial and strategic interests.104 Then
there were others who thought that the European foreign powers needed to
be challenged, that expansion would develop American character and
strengthen national pride. Still others were businessmen who pushed to
build a commercial empire in Asia and Latin America.105
But, most crucially, highly influential luminaries had dreams of
international greatness and of America taking its rightful place on the world
stage, a place that would be guaranteed by being a colonial power. Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge urged Americans to realize their place “as one of the
great nations of the world.”106 In a passionate speech delivered on the
Senate floor, he also declared, “I do not think the Filipinos are fit for self-
government as we understand it, and I am certain that if we left them alone
the result would be disastrous to them and discreditable to us . . . I hope we
have too much self-respect to hand them over to European powers with the
confession that they can restore peace and order more kindly and justly than
we, and lead the inhabitants on to a larger liberty and a more complete self-
government than we can bestow upon them.”107
The dominant imperialist vision of American greatness equated “the
cause of liberty with the active pursuit of national greatness in world
affairs.”108 Theodore Roosevelt subscribed strongly to this view: “Nations
that expand and nations that do not expand may both ultimately go down,
but the one leaves heirs and a glorious memory, and the other leaves neither.
The Roman expanded and he has left a memory which has profoundly
influenced the history of mankind.”109 In his opinion, colonialism was not
contradictory with American greatness. While he considered some races
sufficiently civilized (Russians, Japanese), others, he thought, needed to be
governed by more “advanced” people. Thus, he believed America (and
other advanced powers) should take on the mantle of imperialism as long as
doing so did not impair its interests. It was simply natural, in his opinion,
that the civilizations that were best suited for expansion and self-
government should have authority over the less civilized parts of the
world.110 Moreover, America was nothing like Spain and would never deny
the Filipinos progress. Rather, it would help make them fit for self-rule.111
He thus explained the post-1898 American colonialism: “It is our duty
toward the people living in barbarism to see that they are freed from their
chains, and we can free them only by destroying barbarism itself. . . .112 We
hope to do what has never before been done for any people of the tropics—
to make them fit for self-government after the fashion of the really free
nations.”113 Others echoed his sense of colonial great power responsibility
and authority, along with the drive to shape perceptions of America in the
world. Senator Albert J. Beveridge (Indiana) declared:
Such [colonial] administration of government is nature’s method for the spread of
civilization. Throughout all history administering peoples have appeared. These advanced
peoples have extended their customs and their culture by the administration of government
to less developed peoples. Thus . . . these backward peoples have evolved those qualities of
mind and character and that mode of living called civilization . . . and now this same duty
that has come to every people who have reached our present state of enlightenment and
power must be performed by the American people.114

Roosevelt, along with Mahan and Lodge, also viewed colonial

acquisitions as a path to domination of the Latin American and Asian
markets.115 While there is controversy over the exact motivations of
President William McKinley that led him to intervene in the Spanish-Cuban
conflict and acquire the Philippines,116 there is evidence he was acutely
sensitive to and influenced by the debate over the United States’ changing
status.117 Even before he took office, the themes of his election campaign
outlined the key US foreign policy goals of spurring commerce and
“civilizing” other peoples around the world.118
The imperialist narratives ultimately prevailed. On February 7, 1899, the
US Senate ratified the provisions of the Treaty of Paris by the exceedingly
slim margin of two votes, and America was soon embroiled in a war to
quash the Filipino insurrection. With the ratification of the treaty, American
power now reached to Asia. The imperialists saw this period as the closing
of the first chapter of American history and the start of a new era of great
power. They posited that victories in international relations were often
decided by violent means in addition to peaceful competition. This was a
new concept, because before this period Americans had viewed war “as an
evil to be avoided not cultivated.”119
The narratives of this time spoke to the United States’ status as a rising
active power. They focused attention on goals that were attainable—
acquiring overseas territories in the pursuit of power in the fashion of the
great powers of the day. They also explained for a domestic audience the
deviation from the hitherto held policy of non-intervention and the flexing
of military muscle as necessary for not just national but international
greatness. They focused attention on the United States’ regional role (the
dominance of markets in Latin America), and its relationship with the
superpower of the day, Great Britain. Imperialists, in fact, often explicitly
emphasized the latter by arguing that the use of military force and
simultaneous cooperation with Great Britain would enable the assumption
of power by the fittest race, the Anglo-Saxons. In Roosevelt’s mind, even
among the more advanced peoples, the English-speaking races were
preeminent.120 Thus, he believed, the Anglo-American alliance needed to
be developed.121 These narratives talked about how the United States could
and should mold the international system because it was its responsibility as
a civilized advanced nation to take on colonies. In short, the narratives in
America at the time acknowledged the current norms of great power,
debated its international responsibilities in that context, and outlined its
relationship with the status quo power(s) and the current international order.
Moreover, they explained for a domestic audience why it should take on (or
refrain from taking on) such responsibilities.

Conclusion
By the late 19th century, as we have seen, the United States was firmly on
the path to great power. It not only strengthened its economic and military
power, but it began behaving like an active power. It globalized its
authority, and shaped perceptions of it as a great power to be. And as it did
so, it was accommodational of the great power norms of the day—it
accepted and conformed to the notion that great power meant imperialism
and the possession of overseas colonies.
As discussed in chapter 1, and in this chapter as well, there has long been
much debate on whether the United States was always an empire, and had
always been colonial.122 It has been argued that its policies toward
indigenous populations and its expansion in the West long smacked of
both.123 Historians including Williams Appleman Williams put forth a
different view, that the economic prowess of the United States was
synonymous with empire because of its colonial exploitation of foreign
markets.124 However, as the work of Elizabeth Hoffman and others points
out, despite its history of suppressing native peoples, the “one and only
period” in which the United States acquired an “actual” formal colonial
empire, as opposed to a “metaphorical” one, was when it took over the
Philippines in 1898.125 In this behavior it was active and accommodational,
in that it behaved precisely as the world of the time would expect of a
colonial great power.126 Eventually, the United States transitioned from an
active to an activist power and began revising the norms and setting the
agenda of great power. This included a rejection of the norm of
colonialism,127 evidenced, for example, by its move to cancel “America’s
membership in the imperialist club by passing the Philippine Autonomy Act
in 1916, followed by the Philippines Independence Act in 1934.”128 The
United States no longer had to act in keeping with the later 19th-century
norms of great power.
The active and accommodational rise of the United States was
accompanied by prolific narratives about great power. The narratives
debated whether the United States should indeed become a colonial great
power, what it would mean for the United States to acquire colonies, or to
intervene in the affairs of other nations. While there was dissent, there was
also justification of why the United States should move away from its long-
held identity of being a non-colonial power. These justifications and their
rebuttals were not organic—rather, they had historical roots and were drawn
from interpretations and reinterpretations of long-held foreign policy ideas
in America.
In these narratives about whether and how to acquire colonial great
power, America was not unique. Japan, a country vastly dissimilar to the
United States in history, culture, government, and people, was also rising in
the same time period. And, as we will see, it too had such narratives, in
addition to its increasing capabilities. And like the United States, it too
subscribed to the norms of the prevailing international order and to the idea
of colonial greatness. But first we need to turn to another case of a country
that rose materially—it became one of the wealthiest nations in Europe, it
began reforming its military, and it already held overseas colonies. Yet this
country, the Netherlands, not only shied away from active behavior, but
displayed reticence that was surprising even when compared with smaller
European nations.

[Link]
3
The Reticence of the Netherlands

By the late 19th century, it was clear that the United States had arrived as a
power to be reckoned with. It had defeated a major power, Spain, and, after
much debate and soul searching, had acquired a colony, the Philippines.
With increasing military capabilities, an expanding economy, and ideas
about acquiring great power, it was now an active rising power, a country
on the path to great power. America would, soon after World War I, upend
the international status quo and become activist. But, in that same era of the
United States’ ascension as an active power, there was another country, a
European nation, that had once been a great power. By the late 19th century,
this country had three of the material attributes we often associate with
rising powers of that era: it held colonies and was considered to be the
second greatest colonial power after Great Britain; it was one of the richest
nations in Europe, with a booming economy; and it began to take steps to
modernize its military and navy and build up its defenses. This country was
the Netherlands. During the years 1870–1910, the Dutch entered what many
have called a “Second Golden Age” (its first Golden Age1 was during the
16th and 17th centuries), yet it never again aspired to achieve great power.2
What is surprising about the Netherlands during this period is not that it
was no longer able to play in the up-and-coming great power league of the
time; it faced strong geopolitical constraints, given the strength of both
Great Britain and Germany. It was that the Dutch, even with lower-risk
opportunities to play a more assertive role, showed little interest in doing
so. They were curiously reticent, almost “passive,” even when compared to
smaller and weaker European countries like Belgium. As one historian
commented, “[Their] determination to play a passive role in world politics
was so strong as to amount almost to an obsession.”3 And interestingly, the
Dutch elites in the late 19th century were convinced that their nation as a
small country should have correspondingly small ambitions. Not only that,
despite already being a highly successful colonial power, they rejected any
notion that their country was imperialist—the very foundation of great
power at that time. Rather, Dutch narratives painted the Netherlands as a
benevolent, even ethical, power that was non-martial, non-aggressive, and
unambitious.

The Netherlands in the 19th-Century World

By the early 19th century, the Netherlands had long ago lost its vaunted
position as one of the European great powers. The century that had marked
it as a European power with international greatness was from the mid-1500s
to the mid-1600s, when the country had constructed new economic
initiatives that made it competitive in the global economy. The Republic
(comprising seven states: Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Holland,
Overijssel, Utrecht, and Zeeland) was an “economic powerhouse,”
dominating maritime commerce and expanding overseas through the Dutch
West India Company (WIC) and the Dutch East India Company (VOC).4
With a modernized navy, domination of overseas trade, and a domestic
flowering of culture, knowledge, and the arts, this period for the
Netherlands is rightly considered a “golden age” and, even today, the Dutch
draw much of their identity from this era of achievement.
The early 19th century, on the other hand, seemed to be an age when the
Netherlands was declining. Particularly, it suffered a blow in 1830 when the
southern provinces of the country, with primarily a Flemish and Walloon
population, erupted in a rebellion against the north. The ensuing civil war
led to the breakaway, creation, and establishment of the kingdom of
Belgium under Leopold I, which was given finality when it was endorsed
and recognized by the other European states at the London Conference later
that year. It would take the Netherlands almost a full decade after the
London Conference to finally accept its decision and recognize Belgian
independence.
Thus, by the mid-nineteenth century, the Dutch had to take stock of the
world around them. The revolt, the subsequent loss of southern territory,
and the creation of an independent Belgium in 1830 was a bitter event,
compelling them to reflect on past days of glory and rethink who they were
as a nation. They now perceived Europe as a world of rivalry between three
great powers—Britain, France, and Prussia. In this world, they had little
means to defend themselves, and yet they needed good economic
relationships with all of their European rivals. The overseas Dutch colonies
were somewhat dependent on British protection, leaving them unable to
afford an explicitly anti-British policy. 5 But neither could they alienate
France or Prussia. Consequently, they adopted a policy of neutrality in
1840, a policy that would stay in place until World War II. The policy
declared Dutch neutrality in peacetime on the rather confident assumption
that the Netherlands was so strategically valuable that, should it ever be
attacked, other European powers would inevitably come to its aid.
But by the late 19th century, the Netherlands had cemented its material
power in three ways—it held on to extremely profitable colonial territories,
particularly Indonesia and islands in the Caribbean, keeping it “among the
first rank of colonial powers”;6 it rapidly industrialized to become one of
the richest countries in Europe; and it undertook significant and expansive
reorganization of the military, as well as investing in its navy.

The Material Rise of the Netherlands

In the 19th century, the Netherlands had a crucial attribute that only the
great powers of the day possessed—it held colonies. Dutch colonial
holdings went back to the 16th century and its Golden Age. With the
founding of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the Dutch West
India Company in 1621, the Netherlands, following the path of the other
European countries of the time, expanded into Africa (South Africa, Gold
Coast), Asia (in Indonesia, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Malacca, Japan, and India),
and the Americas (states on the North American East Coast, the West
Indies, Suriname, Guyana, Tobago, and Brazil).7 Thus, by the late 19th
century, it had already been a colonial power for quite some time, though by
1870 the Netherlands had lost some of these colonies. Dutch territories in
North America and Brazil were lost in the 17th century; South Africa,
Guyana, and Ceylon were lost in the early 19th century; and in 1824,
through the Anglo-Dutch treaty, the Dutch gave up its claims to any
remaining territories in India and Malacca to the British in exchange for
British territories in Sumatra. Nevertheless, despite a reduction in its
colonial holdings, the Netherlands retained extremely profitable colonial
territories—the East Indies, the West Indies, and its Gold Coast territories in
Africa, and it maintained close ties with the Boers in South Africa.
Not only were these colonies profitable, but the Dutch had perfected the
art of exploiting them. In 1830, the Dutch government had established a
highly lucrative “cultivation system” (cultuurstelsel, also sometimes
translated as the “culture system”) in its territory of Indonesia. According to
the rules of this system, a full 20 percent of arable land had to be cultivated
with profitable crops, such as indigo, coffee, and sugar, requisitioned by the
Dutch government. Thus, the native population was taxed in kind as the
crops were turned over to the Dutch for export to Europe. The cultivation
system was incredibly abusive and unjust to the native population. In return
for their labor, the natives received a wage that was determined by the
government, and was completely unrelated to the actual value of the crops
they were forced to cultivate.8 But the cultivation system contributed
substantially to Dutch wealth. The profit from the crops, or batig slot as it
was known, comprised in the 1850s, for example, almost half of all
government revenues. This ruthlessly efficient and exploitative cultivation
system was one of the reasons the Dutch were internationally admired by
the great powers as a colonial model to emulate—they displayed a
remarkable prowess for squeezing every last drop of profit out of their
colonies at the expense of the native population. The French talked of the
Netherlands as a “model for all colonies,” with its “magnificent prosperity”
and its “perfect order.”9 The Germans envied its “exploitation of its rich
colonies” and aspired to the ideal of succeeding in Africa as the Dutch had
done in Indonesia.10 The British published a laudatory volume, Java; or,
How to Manage a Colony: Showing a practical solution of the questions
now affecting British India, which praised the cultivation system as having
magically transformed Java into a model colony.11 Thus, despite its position
by the late 19th century as a “diminutive democracy” in Europe, the
Netherlands was still a “colonial giant” outside of it, a “small mother
country [but] a wealthy colonial empire.”12 It has even been called, during
this time period, the “greatest colonial power after Britain.”13
In addition to holding colonial wealth, the Dutch now also rapidly
improved their economy, moving away from being a primarily agrarian
economy to industrialization. The Netherlands had been industrializing
gradually, more slowly than some of the European great powers.14 But post-
1870, there was a significant economic shift, as the country entered a period
of “modern economic growth.”15 That is, it now enjoyed “virtually
permanent high growth combined with structural economic changes such
that agriculture became relatively less significant while manufacturing’s
share of national income increased.”16 The expansion of industrialization
that led to a boom in the economy was a result of both the liberalization of
international trade, leading to specialization in certain goods (which
benefited parts of Dutch industry), and the rising competitiveness of Dutch
industry as a whole.17 Having lost its industrial connections to Belgium, the
Netherlands adopted a policy of enforced industrialization, driven initially
by steam power. This particularly revolutionized the shipping industry,
which grew at a phenomenal rate, with its merchant marine becoming one
of the largest in the world.18 The country increased its investments in
railways and canals, which stimulated the growth of construction
companies.19 After 1889, there was an increase in the establishment of large
businesses,20 while post-1894 Dutch banking also entered a period of
“unprecedented growth.”21 Even the agricultural sector was able to emerge
and recover in the 1890s from the brief period of severe depression created
by industrialization. Rising urbanization and increases in the population
created a new demand for agricultural products, leading in turn to
innovation in agrarian cultivation methods.22 Besides the domestic market,
the economy diversified and reaped the benefits of international trade.
Economic ties with Germany, for example, were particularly important. The
German demand for both natural resources and Dutch agricultural products
stimulated the Dutch economy.23 As the German economy expanded, so did
the Dutch. Between 1870 and 1910, Dutch foreign trade boomed with both
exports and imports rising rapidly.24 The Dutch would become and remain
“one of the world’s major investors in other countries, despite its small size
. . . recurrently the third or fourth international investor after the [UK], at a
level comparable to Germany and France.”25
Unsurprisingly, Dutch per capita income rose during this time, from
$2,750 in 1870 to $3,850 in 1914. By the early 20th century, both Dutch
GDP per capita and labor productivity were not only roughly on par with
Germany but nearing that of Great Britain.26 Jan Luiten van Zanden and
Arthur van Riel point out that it was actually quite remarkable that the
Dutch economy expanded so swiftly after 1870, given the country’s late
industrialization, and that the base of the previous economic growth—the
agricultural sector—had gone through a period of severe depression.27
With colonial and economic wealth, the Dutch could afford to turn their
attention to the state of their military and navy. Up until the 1860s, the
Dutch had considered France the most powerful continental power and their
“hereditary enemy.”28 A committee to review Dutch defense strategy
convened in 1860 had concluded that, in fact, France was really “the only
important potential enemy.”29 But two important events would lead the
Dutch to both reconsider their strategic position and realize their limits.
First, in 1864, Prussia went to war with Denmark. Even though the United
Kingdom had been a guarantor of Danish independence, it refused to
intervene in the conflict and help Denmark. This led not just to Dutch
uncertainty about the European balance in power and the value of relying
on allies, but also to a decline of trust in the promises of the English.30 The
Dutch leadership now acknowledged that if there were a war, they would
have to be prepared to fight it on their own. Second, and importantly, the
rise of Prussia jolted them. Particularly, the Prussian victories against
France in 1870 shocked the Dutch military establishment, which had always
thought of the French army as superior to the German one. The unified
German empire now posed a serious threat to the Dutch eastern border. As
Willem Bevaart points out, “as the Dutch military let themselves be led by
the French after 1815, [so] they let themselves be led by the Prussians after
1870.”31 Reassessing this geopolitical situation, the Dutch believed they
had four options for increasing their security: rely on complete
demilitarization (which some Dutch pacifists advocated); rely on the
capricious support of the European great powers; shore up their defenses to
make invasion very costly for an attacking power;32 or strengthen the
military and navy.33 After much debate about the logistics, they chose both
of the latter. Post-1870, they thus began the process of strengthening their
defenses, evaluating their defense strategy and reorganizing the military. In
other words, they moved away from preparing for yesterday’s war.34
There was a growing realization that the Dutch army was in dire need of
improvement. The Militaire Spectator, an influential journal that regarded
itself as a marketplace for the expression of different military voices, argued
that the Netherlands needed to learn from the German success of 1870, and
to reorganize the army by turning to the methods, tactics, and training
utilized by the Prussians.35 Military officers advocated for dramatically
expanding the army, increasing its prestige, and involving the entire
population in the defense of the nation. Consequently, there was
considerable military pressure on Dutch politicians to take action.36 While
politicians agreed that investments in the army had become necessary—
materials, technology, organization, and preparation for mobilization all
needed to be overhauled—they were divided about the priorities, the
process by which an overhaul would take place, and whether the
reorganization should indeed mimic that of the Prussians. Despite debates,
between 1870 and 1907 there was a significant overhaul of Dutch defenses,
and the reorganization was very similar to the military organization of
neighboring great powers.37 The overhaul proceeded along four lines—a
reorganization of key structures in the army, the shoring up of fortresses,
investing in rapid mobilization, and a buildup of the navy.
In terms of the army, prior to 1887, Dutch forces consisted of three loose
divisions: one that was made up of volunteers from all over the country; a
national militia relying on conscripts from all over the country (with every
man over the age of 18 drawing lots); and a civil militia organized on a
municipal or village level, which also drew on conscripts. The conscripts
could rely on a replacement system to get out of service. That is, they could
pay someone else to serve in their place, or they could pay someone who
had been given an exemption and swap lottery numbers with them.
Unsurprisingly, this system of organization was deeply problematic. To
begin with, the conscripts were given minimal and irregular training38 and
were not required to stay in the barracks. At the same time, because there
were simply not enough volunteers who could be trained regularly to meet
the military standards of the day, the Dutch effectively lacked a suitable
standing army. Moreover, the replacement system meant that national
service could be easily avoided, especially by the wealthy. Around 20
percent of men escaped military service by paying between 600 and 800
Dutch guilders to be replaced.39 Since the Dutch attributed Prussian
victories to an army which was composed of “the economic and intellectual
leaders” of Germany society,40 the avoidance of service by the Dutch elite
was believed to have led to the deterioration in the quality of the army.41
Moreover, the professionalism of ordinary Prussian soldiers was seen as
worthy of emulation.42
Thus, between 1887 and 1907, the Dutch army was remodeled along
Prussian lines. The volunteer army and national militia were merged to
create a standing army. Conscriptie-achtige dienstplicht (literally
“conscript-ish conscription”) based on the Prussian system was put in place
—men were conscripted or volunteered into the army, trained for two to
three years, and remained in army service for eight years. Moreover,
beginning in 1901, the civil militia was replaced by the Landweer (modeled
after the Prussian Landwehr), which was an army reserves corps,
functioning as both a territorial defense force (which could be mobilized
both before and after the army was called up) and as a border protection
force.43 After eight years of service, professional army soldiers and
conscripts automatically became a member of the Landweer for another
seven years. By 1903, some 67,000 men were serving, and by 1910, this
had increased exponentially to 190,000 men (135,000 in the army, and
55,000 in the Landweer).44 For comparison, in 1910, the United Kingdom,
a great power, had 571,000 men, and the United States, a rising power,
127,000 men.45 Moreover, the officer corps was also significantly enlarged
by introducing conscription. Also, the reorganization finally led to the
abolishing in 1898 of the Dutch “replacement system” that had been
embedded in the structure of the army. This had been one of the biggest
demands of the military who used, as mentioned earlier, both social and
military arguments to support their position. Conscription led to not only a
bigger army but also a stronger one, allegedly due to the “higher” intellect
of the upper classes who could no longer avoid service.46
At the same time, the Dutch invested in military technology and weapons
(introducing the breech-loaded gun, expanding field artillery to become one
of the most modern in Europe, and investing in pioneering weaponry for the
infantry); laid plans for more rapid mobilization (repositioning the army,
investing in railways and the telegraph system, etc.);47 and shored up their
traditional fortress system, which was hitherto, given their lack of military
strength, their primary defense against an invasion. Equally importantly, in
1907, the Dutch, uniquely in Europe, introduced a peacetime command of
the standing army, showing the enlarged significance of its military force.48
The Dutch also turned their attention to the navy, investing in the purchase
of a range of different ships, including panterschepen (armored ships), after
1893. Between 1869 and 1910, the budget for the War Ministry almost
doubled, growing from 14.7 million guilders to 28.7 million guilders;
during this time it comprised from 15 percent to 20 percent of the total
government budget. Meanwhile, the budget for the navy comprised 8 to 12
percent of the total budget (growing from 9.4 million guilders in 1869 to
20.1 million guilders in 1910).49 Due to the increasing trade between the
East Indies and the Netherlands, the Dutch shipping and shipbuilding
industry was revived to the extent that the Netherlands came to possess the
fourth largest maritime fleet in the world,50 with huge growth toward the
later 19th century.51
Thus, the Netherlands possessed lucrative colonies, a booming economy,
and a reformed and strengthened military. Yet despite these material
attributes, the Dutch were peculiarly passive on the world stage. Why?

The Reticence of the Netherlands

Curiously, the Netherlands showed little propensity to behave in a manner
commensurate with its position as one of the richest countries in Europe
with colonial holdings. Not only did it abstain from taking on global
authority or seeking recognition of its growing wealth, but it was reticent to
the point of “turning away from engaging in international power politics,”52
a “colonial giant but a political dwarf.”53
We can particularly observe this through its behavior with respect to
colonialism and colonial territories. Owning large numbers of colonies was,
as we have seen, the hallmark of great power in the late 19th century, and a
source of pride for the countries that owned them. The Netherlands was
acutely aware of this. Yet it displayed surprising caution and reticence with
respect to colonies, passing up opportunities to engage in colonial
expansionism, reducing its number of colonies, and changing its economic
policies for the ones remaining. Since the 1840s, the Dutch government had
formulated a policy of “abstention” from colonial expansion, theorizing that
expensive expeditions would undercut their profits from colonial territories.
But this policy continued into the late 19th century,54 even after the country
was well able to shoulder potential financial risk; and post-1870, the Dutch
passed up opportunities to expand beyond their territorial holdings, and
even bartered away colonial territories. In addition, within its colonies, the
Dutch government re-evaluated its long-administered exploitative policies
of economic extraction—policies that other European powers of the day not
only envied but saw as a profitable model to be emulated—and attempted to
instill what they perceived as non-imperialistic moral policies.
Dutch reticence was on particularly full display with respect to Africa.
Like other European countries, the Netherlands drew from Africa
economically; in addition to its possession of the Gold Coast, it also had
extensive trade interests in other parts of West Africa, as well as in the
Congo. We know from diplomatic reports that Dutch commercial interests
in the Congo were possibly the largest of any European power.55 But,
unlike the other European powers, during the last part of the 19th century it
voluntarily ceded its colonial holdings in Africa, and it also chose to stay
aloof from the European scramble for territories in the continent.
To begin with, between 1870 and 1872, the Netherlands concluded three
treaties by which it ceded its Gold Coast region to Britain, and gave the
latter equal commercial rights in the territory of Siak in Indonesia in
exchange for Britain recognizing Dutch sovereignty over Siak and other
parts of the island of Sumatra. These treaties faced intense Dutch political
opposition. The Dutch Privy Council pointed out during the negotiations,
“It may be true that [the Dutch] can also trade without colonial possessions,
but such an assumption would lead to giving up all our colonies. And what
would the Netherlands be without colonies?”56 One of the most hotly
contested issues was that, at first, the Dutch government did not ask the
British to recognize Dutch sovereignty over the Aceh Sultanate, a territory
within Sumatra where the British had guaranteed independence (indeed the
British would continue to refuse to recognize Aceh as part of the Dutch
sphere of influence). Opponents of the treaties argued that the Dutch should
not cede the Gold Coast unless the British recognized Dutch sovereignty
over the entire Indonesian archipelago plus the island of Borneo. They also
objected that giving Britain rights in Siak would harm Dutch economic
interests. Ultimately, the treaty ceding the Gold Coast passed Parliament by
34–30 votes, but the Siak treaty was defeated by 36–28 votes. The Dutch
government responded by drafting and this time successfully passing
another new treaty that guaranteed Dutch sovereignty in the whole of
Sumatra, including Aceh, while giving British and Dutch trade and shipping
equal status.57 In short, with these three treaties, the Dutch volunteered to
give up colonies in exchange for very little. Later this would be mourned as
“political short-sightedness . . . and turning a blind eye on the promising
future of that land which even non-colonising nations saw as the economic
Jerusalem.”58
The Netherlands also displayed remarkable reticence with respect to the
acquisition of new colonies in Africa. In the 1880s, the colonial expansion
in Africa, or “steeple chase” for colonies, was a race by each European
country to gain territory, cement economic holdings, expand trade, and
increase both its power and prestige. Not only did the Netherlands decline
to enter this race to expand spheres of influence, but “as far as was possible
kept aloof from the partitioning of Africa,” seeming to pursue the “exact
opposite of imperialism in its foreign policies.”59 As historian Maarten
Kuitenbrouwer pointed out, “nobody seemed to regret that the Netherlands
itself [had] definitively renounced the option of acquiring further colonies
in Africa.”60
The Dutch pursued diffident policies even in areas that were key to their
control of the Asian colonies that they did retain. In the 1880s, Egypt and
the use of the Suez Canal became an international issue. The Netherlands,
which relied heavily on the canal to reach its colonies in Asia, was divided
on whether it should actively participate in international negotiations about
the control of the canal; the country compromised by sending a force to
simply protect its Dutch diaspora and goods. In the Congo, where the Dutch
had a large economic stake (in 1890, for example, about 60 percent of all
exports from the Congo went to the Netherlands), the Netherlands
concentrated its diplomacy on obtaining guarantees of free trade and free
navigation of the Congo and Niger rivers. At the seminal Berlin Conference
of 1884,61 the Netherlands played a diffident role. The conference, which
came to be seen as the meeting where the fate of Africa was decided by
Europe, triggered a scramble for African colonial territories. (Kwame
Nkrumah, the former president of Ghana, would famously claim that “the
original carve up of Africa [was] arranged at the Berlin conference.”62) The
great powers of France, Britain, and Germany, along with smaller powers
and declining powers, including Belgium and Portugal, participated
enthusiastically in the agenda for the conference, which included discussing
freedom of trade in the region of the Congo river, freedom of navigation of
both the Congo and Niger rivers, and the setting up of rules for further
occupation of African territory by European powers. The Berlin conference
would cement a colonial empire for Belgium through its control of the
Congo, while the Portuguese, who had an established presence on the
continent, suffered some losses but also made significant gains
(Mozambique and Angola). For European nations, it was a conference “not
of the past but of the future,” a competition with “only winners.”63 But the
Netherlands either caved to demands or stayed aloof. When the British
demanded that the region of the Niger River fell under the British sphere of
influence and should not be considered the same way as the Congo, the
Dutch agreed. The Dutch also accepted Belgium’s assurances of free trade
and promises of exemption of Dutch citizens from import and transit duties.
In return, they recognized Belgian Congo’s sovereignty and definition of
territory. “The small countries had enough opportunities [to play a role in
the Conference], as was proved by Belgium and Portugal,” but the Dutch
did not want to “play a political role” and remained “the only uninvolved
Western European power.”64
Even within Asia, the Netherlands would refuse to make any push to
acquire more colonies. In 1900, during the slicing up of China into Western
spheres of influence, the Dutch government came under pressure from
Dutch officials in China to open up colonial outposts. The Dutch had
participated, albeit in a limited way, in the international quelling of the
Boxer Rebellion, and they had extensive economic interests in China
because of the use of Chinese contract labor in the East Indies. Yet when the
opportunity presented itself to increase its colonial influence, the Dutch
government decided to tamp down any territorial aspirations in China.65
In Southeast Asia, the Netherlands’ behavior as a colonial power was
also markedly unusual. Rather than use the East Indies as a base for
colonial expansion into more of Southeast Asia, the Dutch followed a
process of internal colonial consolidation and extension of power over the
East Indies itself, a territory they controlled. And even this initiative for the
consolidation and extension of power was not spurred by the Dutch
government, but by the local colonial government. In 1873, for example,
the Dutch went to war in Aceh in Indonesia. Prior to the Anglo-Dutch
treaties of 1870–1872, as we saw earlier, the British had guaranteed the
independence of the Sultanate of Aceh in Sumatra. But the signing of these
treaties had given the Dutch control throughout Sumatra in exchange for
their territories in Africa. Shortly afterward, the Dutch declared war on the
Sultanate, citing its sponsorship of piracy and its diplomatic relations with
the United States. The war was long, lasting from 1873 to 1903, and
resulted in terrible casualties.
At first glance, it could seem as if here, in Indonesia, the Dutch behaved
actively, engaging in colonial territorial expansion. But the Aceh war, in
fact, represented something of a puzzle, in that the usual expansive motives
of colonial powers for wars were absent. As Henk Wesseling has pointed
out, the war, initiated by the colonial government, was deeply unpopular not
simply with the tax-paying public, but also even with the Dutch
government. Moreover, it was difficult to discern any economic motives for
the Netherlands to invade Aceh—the war wasn’t driven by a need for
markets or raw materials, or even capital investments. Some historians have
pointed to the existence of petroleum resources as a possible motive, but
those resources were not discovered until about 1895—long after the war
was underway.66 Rather, many argued that the Aceh war represented a
“frontier imperialism”67 at best—the Dutch were simply consolidating their
existing authority in the region, and maneuvering against any potential
British influence. Some others, most notably Dutch historian Maarten
Kuitenbrouwer, have disagreed, pointing out that post-1870, Dutch policies
in its colonies and the Aceh war were remarkably similar to the behavior of
other European imperialists.68
Despite disagreements about whether the Netherlands was imperialistic
in the style of the other European nations, many Dutch academics are
cautiously in agreement when discussing whether the Dutch engaged in
colonial expansionism, particularly since Indonesia was indisputably
already a part of the Dutch colonial empire.69 As the economist J. Thomas
Lindblad acknowledged, if colonial expansion constitutes “formal
annexation of new territories,” then “it follows logically, there was no
Dutch imperialism in South East Asia” in the late 19th century. Rather, he
suggests that “Dutch hegemony” over Indonesia changed in the century
between 1816 and 1914, in that the war established a Dutch, indisputably
colonial, administration. This concept of expansion but only within its own
colony is the core of why the Dutch have been said to be unique among
imperialist countries of that time.70 It was not that the Dutch were not
imperialist, or that they had no commonalities with other European
colonists. But Dutch expansion was different from the way other colonial
European countries expanded—the Netherlands extended its power and
established political domination, but within “already nominally fixed and
recognized boundaries,” and in response to local incidents, rather than as a
grand deliberate initiative for expansion from the Dutch government at The
Hague.71 Moreover, the Dutch would eventually link even this internal
projection of power to the implementation of what it termed an “ethical
policy,” or a policy ostensibly aimed at promoting the welfare and
civilization of the native population,72 distinguishing them further from the
other European colonists. Whereas other European countries, such as the
French, used policies aimed at civilizing the heathen natives (mission
civilisatrice, as it was called by France) to expand and justify conquest
(such arguments, as we have seen, were also advanced by some American
elites), the Dutch implemented the so-called ethical policy in territories that
were already under their colonial occupation, thereby further justifying
Dutch authority.
Moreover, the Dutch government took steps to dismantle existing and
successful economic structures in Indonesia in the late 19th century,
including the highly profitable cultivation system. By 1878, “the traditional
surplus on the budget of the Netherlands Indies [had] turned into a
deficit.”73 As the government retreated, profiteering from the colonies was
instead left to private enterprises.
Thus, in the late 19th century the Dutch entered what could be plausibly
dubbed an age of paradox—a rich country with profitable colonies, but a
peculiarly reticent imperialist. It possessed, as we have seen, many crucial
material resources. In that sense, the Dutch were indisputably European
imperialists—they followed colonial patterns of economic exploitation;
they set up the economic foundations of a colonial state;74 and they
decimated the Javanese peasantry through famine, epidemics, and death
caused by these Dutch colonial policies.75 That wealth was used to power
its military modernization and rejuvenate its society. Even in the arts,
literature, and science, the country during this time birthed initiatives that
revived its lost glorious achievements.76 Some historians call the period
from 1870 to just before the outbreak of World War I an “age of
achievement,” a second Golden Age for the Dutch.77
Despite being a wealthy power, during a time when imperialism and
imperialist expansion were the foreign policy issues of the day, the Dutch
were very strange and reticent imperialists. They engaged in actions
contrary to the norms of the established international order of the day. Not
only did they refuse to participate in the scramble for Africa, they
voluntarily ceded their African colonial holdings. They did not engage in
expansion or consolidation beyond the territories that already were under
their control. They engaged in extension of power only within their
colonies, but not at any behest of the Dutch government. And they ended a
profitable colonial system of enrichment that had earned them the envy of
other European colonial powers, and underlined this colonial policy in
controlled territories with an ostensibly strong commitment to ethics.
Why was this the case? Why did the Netherlands show little interest in
seizing opportunities for further colonization, colonial enrichment, and
fulfilling a promise of again becoming one of the European great powers?
Part of the explanation certainly lies in the Netherlands’ insecurity about its
size, its strategic position with respect to the rise of Prussia, and the
jockeying between the English, Germans, and the French for power. But it
cannot be the whole explanation—it does not explain, for example, why
during the Berlin Conference, the Netherlands, as the second largest
colonial power in the world with significant economic interests in the
Congo, would not play a strong political role and would choose to remain
uninvolved in Africa. As Wesseling wrote, “Its political will to operate as
an imperialist power [in Africa] was non-existent.”78 It also does not
explain its reticence in other parts of the world.
In 1906, historian J. Ellis Barker scornfully wrote of the late 19th-century
Dutch that they lacked the “will” for national success and greatness:
[N]ot inanimate resources but men, make a nation . . . the greatness and prosperity of a
nation depend not upon the size of its territory and its natural resources, and the quantity of
commodities exchanged but upon its ability and upon its will, and principally upon the
latter; for will can create ability but ability cannot create will . . . the history of the
Netherlands is a history of missed opportunities and of opportunities deliberately thrown
away.79

This unduly harsh condemnation is not my argument. No country can

will itself to great power, and neither could the Netherlands, even in the late
19th century, constrained as it was by three European great powers on its
doorstep jockeying for influence.
However, if we look to Dutch narratives of this period to see what the
elites did want, we find an interesting paradox—the Dutch were successful
imperialists who now rejected this very identity. Not only did they lack any
narratives about playing a more active role in international politics, let
alone about regaining great power, but the “traditional self-image of the
Dutch [made] it very difficult for them to consider themselves as an
imperialist nation.”80 This, in turn, helped make them a very cautious,
passive, and reticent player in the international politics of the time, even
when their material strength increased.

Dutch Narratives in the Late 19th Century

What was indeed striking about Dutch narratives during this time was how
little they reflected on what the Netherlands could achieve given its material
capabilities. Active powers that have idea advocacy reconcile their material
capability with the constraints of the international order—they focus
attention on those goals that are perceived to be materially attainable given
the constraints of the current order. They also acknowledge the current
norms of great power and aspire to them, and they explain their purpose and
goals for both a domestic and international audience.
The narratives in the Netherlands, on the other hand, not only did no such
thing, but they seemed both indifferent to their capabilities and rejecting of
the label of great power that they could indeed plausibly lay claim to—
colonial greatness. Instead, Dutch narratives were broadly characterized by
three elements. First, the Dutch had what has been termed a “small state
mentality”—the idea that it was both physically and metaphorically “a
small country with a big past”81 that had to survive the machinations of
bigger powers. Second, the Netherlands drew a strong contrast between
itself as a benevolent and moral country, and the power-hungry and
grasping European nations around it. Third, the Dutch firmly believed
themselves to be non-imperialistic—this, despite both owning and
successfully exploiting colonies. Consequently, the very notion of the
Netherlands as a country that could be assertive, let alone again become or
ever act like a great power, was absent.
By the 19th century, the Dutch had an acute sense that their era of great
achievement was past. The civil war and creation of Belgium in 1830
seemed to deal a final blow to the glories of the Golden Age. Before the
partition, the Dutch had imagined themselves as a kind of Prussia, a solid,
northern, important country.82 But the loss of Belgium shifted their
thinking. As previously mentioned, the Dutch developed a “small state
mentality.” What did this mean? Certainly the Netherlands itself was (and
is) a small country, physically speaking. Its land today comprises only about
13,000 square miles.83 But, curiously, even after 1830 when it lost the
territory of Belgium, its physical size was, in fact, not much different from
its size at the height of its first Golden Age. Yet the Netherlands now
viewed itself differently: it accepted itself as a small state, both physically
and metaphorically, among the European great powers. As one Dutch
academic points out, the Netherlands was just too small to count for much
in either European or world history to the extent that “even modern
historians tend to think disparagingly of their own national history.”84 The
Netherlands was said to have the “touchiness of a small nation with a great
past.”85 Like every other small European country, it had to maneuver to
survive great power machinations—in a sense, the quest to survive trumped
any ambitious desires or even thoughts of again seeking great power. As
Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch prime minister elected to power in 1901,
before the Aceh war had ended, once declared, “To own colonies is an
honor; increases our prestige; brings us into a different position in Europe
than we would have had without them; lets the glory of a famous past shine
over our the weakness of our current nation; and for that reason it should be
regarded as a privilege for which not a few envy us, and whose defence
must therefore be valuable to us.”86 The Dutch “national feeling,” or
vaderland gevoel, which developed in the 19th century was a “heightened
sense of history,” involving a nostalgia for the Golden Age as well as a
sense of lost confidence. Both self-fulfilling and justified, vaderland gevoel
was distinct from nationalism as we conceive of it, for it lacked any
activism or even ideological content.87 But it impacted Dutch beliefs about
their place in the world.
When discussing the Netherlands’ treaties with the British, for example,
Dutch politicians struggled with their own self-image as a great colonial
power but a small state. Many from the Dutch Conservative Party opposed
relinquishing the Gold Coast, and some Liberals joined them. The latter
pointed out the historical and economic significance of the Gold Coast,
while the conservative Dutch newspaper Dagblad spoke for many
Conservative politicians when it blasted the ceding of the Gold Coast as “a
suicidal and short-sighted policy.”88 Debating in Parliament, Conservatives
lamented the mistake the Dutch were making in giving up Africa, “the land
of the future.”89 On the other hand, some Conservatives joined Liberals in
applauding the move. The Liberal newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad
echoed the Liberal position that not only were commerce and free trade
more important than colonies, but that owning colonies “imposed more
obligations than before,” with the colonial power having to bear the
responsibility of “civilizing” the natives.90 Conservative politician Eduard
Herman s’Jacob agreed, asking sardonically, “Where are they—those Dutch
Livingstones—who will risk their lives and property in the course of
Africa’s development and civilization?”91 There was, thus, not necessarily a
sharp ideological divide between Liberals and Conservatives on the treaties
and the Netherlands’ path forward so much as there was a debate. Dutch
elites from both sides weighed the clear cost to the Dutch of ceding Africa
to the British in the absence of both threat and material gains with the
feeling that the Netherlands, as a small country, should make do with
Indonesia, and keep the British out of that territory.
Again during the Berlin Conference, and later when the great powers
held the Suez Convention in Constantinople in 1888 to regulate the use of
the Suez Canal, Dutch angst was on display. At Berlin, a member of the
Dutch Parliament lamented that the country, the second largest colonial
power in Asia and the third largest to use the canal, was making itself
“smaller and less important” than it actually was. Another member of
Parliament questioned why the Netherlands, a country with “a major
[colonial] role to play” did not ally with Spain and Portugal to protect its
colonial and maritime interests.92 Eschewing the bold steps of a fellow
small country, Belgium, which staked its own lucrative claim in the Congo,
the Dutch would confine themselves instead to praising its actions: the
annual report of the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce lauded Belgium’s
King Leopold as “that excellent monarch,” and praised his vision of a free
state with free trade.93
In Constantinople, the Dutch government dithered so much on signing
and ratification that Dutch lawyer Tobias Michael Asser (later awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize for his work in international law) had to take the Dutch
ministerial delegate to task—reminding him that the Netherlands was one
of the “most important” users of the canal and “should not allow itself to be
pushed into the background because of prudence taken to extremes.”94
The Dutch thought of their country in moralistic terms. After significant
struggle, a new liberal constitution had been drafted in 1848. This
constitution curtailed the monarchy, separated church and state, and
established many freedoms, including freedom of the press, direct elections,
and ministerial accountability. These changes had been championed by the
Liberal leader Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, and under his aegis the language of
principles began creeping into Dutch foreign policy. With the glorious past
behind them and having no further pretensions to great power, the Dutch
not only thought of themselves as a moral country, but also correspondingly
as virtuously lacking international ambition. They were different from those
nakedly ambitious Europeans surrounding their small country. Thorbecke
declared, “the Dutch policy, being itself free from lust for power, is the
most impartial judge of other nations’ lust for power.”95 As one historian
wryly pointed out, the Dutch government tended to judge “itself by its
motives, and others by their actions.”96
Now, far from being militaristic, the Dutch national character was said to
have evolved, as Henk te Velde has argued, to be stereotypically burgerlijke
—that is, bourgeois, middle class, and devoted to civic virtues.97 The term
burgerlijke stemmed from Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga, who
summed up the beliefs of the time in his work Spirit of the Netherlands.
While Huizinga wrote his treatise in 1934, the origins of his argument can
be traced to the 19th century. Many intellectuals thought the Dutch middle
class was the “core” of the nation, providing, as the scholar Robert Fruin
pointed out, “reliable but conventional workers” who would “determine the
course of the nation.”98 This bourgeois Dutch national character was the
embodiment of civic freedom and virtues; the Dutch respected the rights
and opinions of others; they were “neat and proper,” “unheroic” and
“lack[ed] military spirit.”99 Even children’s books emphasized that it was
better to be the most moral nation in the world than the most powerful
nation in the world.100
This idea of the civic-minded, moral, and good country that they thought
themselves to be extended to how they believed they were administering, or
should administer, their colonies. By the mid- to late 19th century, the
Dutch had developed a moral, and frankly paternalistic, sense of
responsibility toward their colonies, the culmination of which would be the
abolition of the cultivation system, and the establishment of what was
dubbed the “Ethical Policy.” A movement to understand the plight of the
natives in the Dutch East Indies began during this period, spurred in large
part by Dutchmen who had spent time in the colonies. Among the most
famous of them, a Dutch civil servant in the East Indies colonial
government, E. Douwes Dekker, returned to Europe and in 1860 published
a novel under the nom de plume Multatuli. The novel, Max Havelaar or the
Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, was a damning indictment
of the Dutch government and the exploitative cultivation system. Centered
on a greedy bourgeois Dutch coffee trader, Batavus Droogstroppel, and the
arrival of a new assistant-resident101 with a strong sense of fairness and
justice, Max Havelaar, it exposed the sorry plight of Javanese peasants,
forced to cultivate coffee and squeezed for profit by the local princes at the
behest of the colonial administration. Dekker ended Havelaar with a plea to
King William III to restore justice in the Dutch East Indies. The impact of
Max Havelaar among the Dutch elite cannot be overstated: “There was not
a single educated family in the Netherlands in which it was not read.”102
The novel deeply shocked the Dutch elite, violating as it did their image of
the country as benevolent and civic and non-imperialistic. Abraham Kuyper
spoke for many Dutch elites when he found it “an utter absurdity” to say
that the Dutch in Indonesia were imperialists.103 Havelaar was also
published at a time when sentimentalism as a literary technique had gained
traction; it offered a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Javanese, gave the
readers a window into suffering and how it could be stopped, and
consequently made “intervention a moral imperative.”104
Havelaar would notably influence one of the first architects of the ethical
policy, Conrad Theodor van Deventer, a civil servant and lawyer in the
Dutch East Indies. In 1899, van Deventer penned an article for the liberal
Dutch journal De Gids, titled “A Debt of Honor” (Een Eereschuld). In it he
argued that he believed the Dutch had failed to do their duty in their
colonies, and that while the Dutch government had the right to use revenues
from the colonies to pay their own debts, they also had to look after the
welfare of the Javanese, and stop colonial transfers of money when any
budgetary problems had been resolved. Fundamentally, the Dutch owed the
Javanese “a debt of honor” which was equal to the colonial transfers of
money to the Dutch budget after 1867.105 (The year 1867 was when the
Compatibility Law—Comptabiliteitswet—went into force, mandating a
separate colonial budget that had to be approved by the Dutch parliament.)
van Deventer’s article landed in the Dutch parliament with a bang, leading
to impassioned discussions on future Dutch policy. P. Brooshooft, a Dutch
journalist at the time for several newspapers in the East Indies, averred that
van Deventer’s article was the single most influential piece of writing on
colonial policy since Havelaar.106 Brooshooft went on to argue that the
Dutch had a special duty to care for the Javanese as a “good father” and to
improve their well-being. In return, they could demand two things from the
native population: obedience to Dutch authority and the paying of taxes.107
Administration such as the cultivation system was not wrong per se, he
continued, but stood in need of improvement to minimize exploitation by
private interests.108
Prime Minister Kuyper agreed with such moral sentiments, arguing that
the system of exploitation was morally wrong, and that any reform of the
Dutch colonial system needed to raise the morals of the native population,
make the system profitable for the Dutch and the natives, and eventually
give the colony more autonomy. The Dutch needed to ask themselves not
“ ‘what does Java yield to us?’ but only ‘what does God want us to be to
Java?’ ”109 In 1901, the new queen, Wilhelmina, gave a speech to the nation
making an official statement about the ethical policy. In it she declared:
As a Christian Power the Netherlands are obliged to improve the legal status of the native
Christians on the Indian Archipelago, to provide the Christian mission support on a more
fixed basis, and to base the whole policy of the government on the awareness that the
Netherlands have to fulfill a moral obligation towards the peoples of these regions. In this
respect, our particular attention is drawn to the lesser prosperity of the native population on
Java. I want to set up an investigation into the causes of this. The regulations to protect the
coolies who are under contract, will be strictly enforced. We strive for administrative
decentralisation.110

The thrust of these beliefs, including Havelaar and similar other works,
was not to deny that the Netherlands should own colonies or even to
directly attack the cultivation system, but to advocate for a more fatherly,
benevolent, and gentler approach. As Cees Fasseur points out, the
cultivation system went into decline “not primarily for socio-economic
reasons . . . but because it collided with the liberal ideology which prevailed
more and more in Dutch politics after 1850.”111 This climate led to a spate
of reproaches, and to a search for a more ethical policy that would allow the
Netherlands to continue to profit while civilizing the natives with a rod of
bamboo perhaps, rather than iron. The natives were considered helpless and
in need of Dutch protection, which the Netherlands had a moral obligation
to provide; this was in keeping with its narratives about its own image as a
morally upright and civilized Christian nation.112 And reflecting the beliefs
of this period, histories of Dutch colonialism written in the early 20th
century by Dutch historians largely avoided the terms “imperialism” and
“empire”113 and replaced them with more neutral phrases such as “rounding
of the state,” “the unification of Indonesia,” and “the establishment of
Dutch authority.”114

Conclusion
As we’ve seen, the Netherlands viewed itself as a benevolent, ethical
power,115 and as an exemplar country (gidsland, or literally “good state,”
implying a “guiding state”)116 that was non-martial, non-aggressive, and
unambitious. It could not, therefore, accept the idea of itself as a colonizer
or imperialist in the mold of the colonizing great powers of the day. Even
though, in many respects, the Dutch modus operandi in its colonies was
similar to that of the other colonial powers of the time (post-1870), it was a
“reluctant imperialist.”117 This “reluctance” was different from the
reluctance of some American elites to embrace colonialism and colonies.
The debate in the United States was whether to become a colonial power at
all. In contrast, the Dutch both accepted and profited from their colonies.
Their “reluctance” stemmed instead from their belief that Dutch colonialism
was only very superficially similar to the colonialism of other powers.
Simultaneously, Dutch behavior on the world stage differed from the
other European colonizing nations, despite its status as one of the richest
countries in Europe and the second largest colonial power in the world. The
Netherlands preferred passive over active diplomacy. One set of historians
called Dutch policy during this time one of “passive neutrality.” Indeed,
they continued, “[t]he Dutch developed the small power policy to a point
little short of perfection. [Their] determination to play a passive role in
world politics was so strong as to amount almost to an obsession.”118 Thus,
an issue such as Dutch diplomacy around the Congo question was discussed
only very superficially in Parliament—it simply was not a huge topic of
interest in the 1880s despite the Netherlands’ status. As Wesseling stated,
“No one really cared very much about Africa.” The Berlin Conference
mattered only inasmuch as it was a part of international relations and
forwarding the interests of “civilized nations.”119 The Dutch expanded
power within their areas of territorial control in Southeast Asia, but these
decisions were made in response to local imperatives by the Dutch colonial
government, rather than driven by a policy initiative from The Hague. And
they both hesitated to expand beyond the Dutch East Indies and stayed
aloof from Africa and China, other lucrative areas of colonial opportunity.
Within the East Indies, the Dutch gradually dismantled the highly
profitable cultivation system, which had a huge impact on revenues—by
about 1878, the traditional surplus in this area of the Dutch budget had
turned into a deficit partly as a result of the shift.120 They were still
determined to hold on to and profit from the Dutch East Indies—extending
authority within the colony and establishing a colonial state but at a micro-
level, without intent of expansion beyond the colony.121 But they were
determined to do so in a manner that fit their perception of themselves as a
different kind of colonizer. The ethical policy was declared official doctrine,
“making explicit that the Dutch had the aspiration to ‘elevate’ the colonized
subjects economically and culturally.”122 As historians have pointed out,
this did not actually mean that the Dutch were not exploitative
imperialists,123 even if their practices differed from the other European
powers, but rather that the Dutch narratives of the time painted the
Netherlands as different. The Dutch saw themselves not as modern
imperialists but as the guardians of native tradition and welfare, offering
enlightened and efficient administration.124 The very idea that the
Netherlands could ever again even move toward great power was absent—
the Dutch put their glory days firmly in the past, and moved on by
embracing the notion of themselves as virtuous and moral, a small shining
example to the rest of the world. Good powers could not, by definition, be
imperialists. By the norms of the international order of the day, if they were
not imperialists they could not be great powers. And it was, after all, better
to be a good power than a great power.
The late 19th-century Netherlands is a fascinating and important lens
through which to understand reticence. It shows us not only the problems of
simply using material power as a yardstick to understand rising powers, but
also how some countries are puzzlingly reticent, even when taking into
account other factors such as geopolitical constraints. The Netherlands was
reticent not compared to the great powers of the day. It was reticent given
its opportunities and the behaviors of other European nations. The
Netherlands case also shows us that narratives of great “power-dom,” if you
will, do not necessarily stem from material attributes. The Netherlands was
a great colonial power, but not only did it refuse to describe itself as such, it
eschewed colonial ambition.
Thus, the United States and the Netherlands behaved very differently in
the age of colonial great power. They both acknowledged the norm of the
day, that great power meant owning and exploiting colonies. But they
responded to that norm differently. The United States would ultimately
conform to that norm, and it continued to rise as a great power-to-be. The
Netherlands accepted only a portion of the norm—great powers did hold
colonies and were imperialistic. But in terms of how the Netherlands saw
itself, the country was not imperialistic, despite its colony, and could not
ever be like the implicitly immoral great powers. But as we will see in the
next chapter, the idea of equating colonies with great power was not
confined to Anglo-Saxon elites. Meiji Japan also wholeheartedly embraced
the late 19th-century European-imposed international order. It was an active
rising power. But after World War II, when Japan rose again in terms of
material strength, its embrace of the international order was reticent. And,
by the 1990s, the notion of Japan as a rising power had disappeared, to be
replaced with warnings about the rise of China and India. The vignette of
Japan in two time periods serves as a bridge between the late 19th and late
20th centuries, from a Western century of great power to the beginning of
what has been dubbed “the Asian century.”125

[Link]
4
Meiji Japan and Cold War Japan
A Vignette of Rise and Reticence

Japan presents a fascinating case of a country that rose in at least two

different time periods over the course of a century—1870–1914 and 1960–
1989—but emerged as a great power in only the former. It also behaved
very differently in these two time periods. During the Meiji era of the late
19th century, Japan was an active rising power. By World War I, Japan’s
status as a major power was established—it defeated a Western country
(Russia) in a war in 1905, it joined the World War on the winning side of
the Allies, and after the war was invited to join the newly created League of
Nations in 1920, and the Washington Conference to create the rules of order
in the Pacific in 1921–1922. In the interwar period, Japan was frustrated
with the West, particularly the United States, and turned to activism and
challenged the international order—it exited the League of Nations and the
Washington system, and grew closer to Germany and Italy to form an
alliance during World War II.1 Though World War II ended in Japan’s
defeat, after the war Japan would rise again, and its rise would be
recognized and feared by the international community. But Cold War Japan
would remain reticent and would not fulfill international expectations.
Similar to the cases of active and reticent powers discussed thus far, Japan
developed narratives about becoming a great power during the Meiji period,
but did not in the era after World War II. This chapter is a vignette of Japan,
its similar material rise, its dissimilar behavior, and the presence and
absence of narratives in these two time periods. The contrast between Meiji
Japan and Cold War Japan is an important story for us to touch on for
several reasons. Japan shows us that narratives about becoming a great
power in the style of the great power of the day were not simply a Western
phenomenon in the late 19th century. Moreover, it re-emphasizes that rising
powers do not rise by becoming revisionist. They rise by accepting the
international order. Meiji Japan rose to become a great power not because it
revised the international order, but because it adhered closely to it,
embracing Western norms of great power before it became revisionist. At
the same time, it is not a given that a once great power will always rise
again and produce narratives about great power, even if it has the material
power to do so. Post–World War II Japan was said to be the next great
power to fear. Yet by the late 1980s Japan’s influence had petered out, and
international society turned its eyes instead, as Chapter 5 details, toward
China as the next possible threat to world peace. Meiji Japan and post–
World War II Japan were different not just because they had different
regimes and leaders, but also because the former had narratives about
greatness while the latter did not.

The Rise of Meiji Japan: 1870–1914

From the Tokugawa Regime to the Meiji Restoration
For centuries prior to 1854, Japan was closed to the rest of the world, and
was ruled by the Tokugawa dynasty through a shogunate—a hereditary
military dictatorship in which a shogun (general) ruled in the name of the
Japanese emperor with the help of officials collectively referred to as
bakufu (tent government). Japanese elites had very strongly ethnocentric
perceptions of the world outside of their borders. They regarded the
“Southern barbarians” (Europeans but also Indians and Southeast Asians) as
uncivilized peoples whose culture and morals were beyond the pale.2 But in
1854, a seminal crisis occurred: the American Commander Matthew Perry
led a naval expedition to Japan and used military and diplomatic pressure to
forcibly open the country to the West, ending Japan’s 200-plus years of
isolation. This crisis foreshadowed a series of events, the most important of
which was the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which would eventually lead to
the complete transformation of Japanese society, nation, and state.
Once Japan was opened to the world, it was coerced into signing a series
of treaties with the United States, the British, the Russians, the French, and
the Dutch. These treaties forced it to cede trading rights, open new treaty
ports, extend special legal protections which would allow foreigners to
travel through Japan, and establish both trade and diplomatic relations with
foreign countries, which it had steadfastly refused to do for centuries. With
the end of the policy of isolation, Japanese elites now realized that expelling
the Westerners from their country was a futile quest. As they saw it, the
only alternative remaining to them was to make Japan “as strong as the
foreigners through a policy of ‘national wealth and strength.’ ”3 But this
would require unification of the country and the sweeping away of the
Tokugawa dynasty which had formed the ruling shogunate since the 16th
century.
Thus, in January 1868, a military coup led by rebel samurai toppled the
shogunate. The rebels established the reign of the young Emperor Meiji, the
son and heir of the Emperor Komei who had been a mere figurehead
through whom the shogun and samurai elite had wielded power, as the
rightful ruler of Japan. They claimed to sweep away the traditional
administration and restore imperial rule by setting up a new imperial
government.4
The Meiji Restoration revolutionized Japan. While the actual events of
1868 in fact simply heralded a shift of power between established elites—
the rebellion originally came from lower-ranking samurai, but soon power
in the Meiji court was reconsolidated in the hands of the old samurai elite
who had neither popular support nor representation5—the process that was
the Meiji Restoration eventually demolished the class of samurai warriors
altogether,6 converting the Tokugawa feudal society into a modern
centralized state led by a modernized monarchy.7 Under the Tokugawa
dynasty, Japan had been unified only in a cultural and historical sense rather
than a political one. Not only was there no single government that
maintained order throughout the country, there was also no single political
center to which people pledged total loyalty. Thus, the priority of the Meiji
regime was the consolidation of control over the whole of Japan, and the
creation of the idea of Japan as a single nation under a powerful emperor.
This was a first step toward overcoming the “national humiliation” that
Japan had suffered at the hands of Westerners.8 The Meiji emperor was
reinvented to be the focus of all political loyalty. While many modern
countries of that time were monarchies, the Meiji imperial system was
different. Japanese elites deliberately created a centralized imperial system
whereby the military and bureaucrats were authorized by the sanctity
accorded to Emperor Meiji’s personage—the emperor was made a symbol
of both national unification and legitimacy. This enabled the elite to give
the rapid modernization and reforms that would occur under his aegis an
imperial legitimacy, and thus gain acceptance for them in Japanese society.9
The task of building Japan into a great power began in earnest with
radical reforms implemented in the late 19th century. This meant a complete
military and economic transformation of Japan, and also, importantly, the
acquisition of that hallmark of great power in the 19th century, overseas
colonies.

The Rise of Japan’s Material Power

The Meiji Restoration and Japan’s rapid reform of its military and economy
during this period were nothing short of astonishing. The British historian
John Keegan declared the Meiji reforms to be “one of the most radical
changes of national policy recorded in history.”10 During the Tokugawa era,
Japan had a quasi-feudal society, and its economic development during that
period was considered to be similar to Western Europe during the Middle
Ages. But after the Meiji Restoration, along with sweeping internal reforms
to restructure land, property, and trading rights and demolish the feudal
system, Japan now opened itself up to the Industrial Revolution, and the
corresponding growth of modern capitalism.11 There was now a “feverish
process of modernization.”12 The Meiji government reorganized the
banking system, stabilized and refunded the national debt, and improved
Japan’s international credit standing, while also modernizing the army and
navy, improving transportation and communications, and establishing new
industries.13
Between 1868 and 1878, Japan’s foreign trade more than doubled.14 In
1866 Japan had built its first steamship and initiated steamer service
between Yokohama and Nagasaki. It had also opened its first silk factory,
cotton spinning mills, and factories that would produce cement, sugar, beer,
glass, chemicals and many other goods that appealed to the West. Between
1876 and 1896, mineral production increased sevenfold. Between 1870 and
1872, Japan constructed its first railroad from Tokyo to Yokohama with a
loan from the British. By 1893 Japan had built or acquired 2,000 miles of
operating railway lines, 100,000 tons of steam vessels, 4,000 miles of
telegraph lines and “shipyards, arsenals, foundries, machine shops, and
technical schools,” all established or modernized with the help of foreign
aid and equipment and the advice of foreign experts. The country became a
leading exporter of raw silk (which accounted for up to 42 percent of
Japan’s total exports abroad) as well as tea, rice, copper, coal, and
handicrafts.15
As a result, the 1890s were revolutionary for the Japanese economy.
Building on the foundations of the earlier Meiji years, Japan now entered an
era of industrial output. By 1914 total production and real income in Japan
had increased between 80 percent and 100 percent.16 Its imports and
exports had doubled in the 1890s and doubled again in the 1900s. This
provided valuable foreign exchange with which Japan could buy foreign
machinery, equipment, and raw materials to meet both industrial and
military requirements. One measure of industrial activity, coal consumption,
increased to 15 million tons in 1915 (up from 3.6 million tons in 189617).
Japan was not in the front rank of industrial powers, but its capabilities
were changing rapidly. Clearly, Japan was undergoing an Industrial
Revolution with corresponding increases to its GDP and power.18
Simultaneously, hand in hand with its large-scale industrialization, Japan
undertook a massive revamping of its military. There were two stages of
military reform in the post-Tokugawa period. At first, these reforms were
focused on the idea of national conscription and the modernization—that is,
the Westernization—of the organization, training, and equipment of its
armed forces. Prior to the events of 1868, and struck by the obvious
superiority of Western technology and Western military forces, Japan had
already adopted “defensive Westernization”19—many powerful elites
looked to both Western technology and recruitment practices, relying
particularly heavily on the advice of the French. This would later come in
handy to defeat the shogun who had been forced to open Japan to the West.
But Japan now realized it needed to acquire modern lethal weapons and
transform the samurai, an “army of occupation” that had enjoyed a long
period of peace, into rifle companies.20 Thus, with the Meiji Restoration,
Japan undertook major military reform. In 1871, not coincidentally, the year
when fiefs were abolished and the power to tax became the sole province of
the central government, an Imperial Guard of 10,000 was established that
was to be controlled directly by the central government. In 1873 the Guard
was dissolved, and instead universal conscription for all Japanese men of
the age of twenty and in good physical health was adopted. The army was
now modeled on both the French and the Prussian armies—in the
organization and training of the army, Japan followed the French, while
conscription was based on the Prussian notion of universal military
service.21 In 1882 an Army Staff College was established, and by 1886, the
Japanese army was a “flexible, mobile, offensive force” with seven
divisions that could also operate as independent units. It was an army that
could “mobilize, prepare for and execute large-scale war.”22 Japan also
undertook a major reform of its navy. In 1869 a naval training school had
been set up to train Japanese officers with the help of British officers.
Unsurprisingly, given Britain’s global naval superiority, the navy was
modeled along British lines. By 1875 Japan had launched its first warship,
and by the 1890s a modern fleet began to emerge—by 1894 Japan had 28
ships totaling 57,000 tons, and 24 torpedo boats; by 1903 it had 76 warships
of 250,000 tons and 76 torpedo boats.23 These innovations were not radical
simply because they were new to Japan; rather, they were also radical
because this was the first time such reforms had been enacted on a national
scale.24
It is important to note that economic development and military reform
went hand in hand. That is, Japan’s economic development and
industrialization fueled the military reforms, but the military reforms in turn
also fueled development. The Meiji government tried to standardize and
modernize the manufacture of munitions because acquiring and directly
managing its arsenal allowed it to develop economically but also
strategically. By 1877 almost two-thirds of the government’s total
investments were targeted toward the military.25 Modern transportation,
communication, and the acquisition of heavy industrial technologies were
all seen as intertwined in the goal of building great power. By the eve of
World War I the Japanese had achieved self-sufficiency in the production of
military and naval weapons,26 and its economy was well integrated with the
rest of the world.
Japan, however, was not simply a rising power because it had rapidly
increased its economic and military capabilities. Meiji Japan also began
behaving like a great power-to-be, globalizing its authority and seeking to
shape internal and external perceptions of the nation. And importantly, it
sought that great power symbol of the day: the acquisition of colonies.

Meiji Japan: The Active Path to Great Power

Japan’s path to becoming a colonial power began with its increasing

encroachment on Korea beginning in 1869, would lead to an eventual war
with China in 1894, and would culminate in 1904 with a surprise attack on
and defeat of Russia’s fleet stationed in Port Arthur. The acquisition of
colonial territories through these conflicts would mean that Japan would
eventually be recognized by the West and admitted into the ranks of the
colonial powers.
Japan’s colonial designs on Korea can be traced back to 1869, just after
the Meiji Restoration. Korean officials challenged Japanese authority and
the foundation of the Meiji Restoration by questioning the very idea of
Meiji as an emperor rather than a king. The East Asian regional system had
hitherto been organized around the idea of China and its imperial authority
at the center of a tributary system, with neighboring countries occupying a
lower tier in the hierarchy.27 Thus, for the Koreans, Meiji was a mere king,
for only the Chinese could possibly have an emperor whom neighboring
vassal countries recognized. For the Koreans, changing this perception of
Meiji would cast the Korean monarch as a vassal of the Japanese emperor.28
The Korean refusal to recognize an Emperor Meiji was an inauspicious
greeting of the Meiji Restoration and set the stage for the gradual
deterioration of the bilateral relationship. By 1873, the relationship entered
crisis mode: the Japanese resented Korea’s treatment of its envoys and
merchants, along with Korea’s steadfast denial of the change from
shogunate to imperial rule, with the Korean government refusing even to
accept the official greetings of the Japanese emperor.29
By 1876 the Japanese had used military and naval force to compel Korea
to sign the punitive Treaty of Kanghwa. Under the treaty, Korea was now an
independent and sovereign state; Japan declared that Korea was no longer a
vassal state of China, and as such could no longer look to it for foreign
policy decisions or support. Thus, Japan forced Korea to open three ports
for trade, and to accept Japanese officials in these ports along with the right
of Japanese ships to come to Korean shores for “wood, water, and
shelter.”30 Later treaties forced Korea to accept a diplomatic exchange, and
gave Japan the right to survey Korean waters and the right to
extraterritoriality. Another supplementary treaty went even further:
Japanese could now buy Korean goods with Japanese currency at face
value; there would be no Korean tariffs on Japanese imports and exports;
and in turn there would be no duties levied by Japan on goods going to or
coming from Korea.31 Japan’s early machinations in Korea did not yet
involve territorial control of the country—Japan would not formally annex
Korea until 1910—but they represented Japan’s gradual steps toward
becoming an imperialist country in two important ways. They set the stage
for the war with China and the war with Russia, both of which would yield
colonies for Japan.
In 1890, Prime Minister Yamagata gave a speech to the legislature
arguing that it was crucial for an independent Japan to maintain “a line of
sovereignty and a line of advantage.”32 By this he meant that Japan needed
both a secure homeland and a buffer zone—Korea—to protect it. Moreover,
this buffer zone needed to be protected from both the Chinese and the
Russians.33 Thus, in 1894, when the Korean government asked China to
send troops to help it quell a domestic rebellion, Japan accused Beijing of
intervening in an independent Korea, and in turn, dispatched its own troops
to the country. On August 1, Japan formally declared war on China to great
public approval in Japan. By 1895 Japan had won the war and had imposed
on China the punitive Treaty of Shimonoseki. The war and the defeat of
China were an utter shock to the regional balance of power. The Treaty of
Shimonoseki, which gave Japan vast rights, heralded its changing regional
status—no longer was it the little brother to China. Instead, China was
forced to allow Japan special commercial rights, pay it an indemnity of
nearly ¥350 million, and recognize Korea’s independence. Moreover, the
treaty yielded a rich prize and symbol of great power—colonies. Japan
obtained the Pescadore islands, Taiwan, and the Liaodong Peninsula, which
was the southern part of Manchuria.34 Japan had begun a colonial empire.
However, while Japan was allowed to retain Taiwan as a colony, the
Western powers—Russia, Germany, and France, in what was to be dubbed
the “Triple Intervention”—forced Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula to
China in exchange for an increase in indemnity. Lacking the military
strength at the time to challenge them, Japan reluctantly agreed. But the
issue was far from settled. The following years saw the development of a
rivalry between Russia and Japan in Korea, with the Russians adopting the
role of the protector of the Korean king. Moreover, by 1898 Russia also
secured its own control over the Liaodong Peninsula by moving Russian
troops into Manchuria after the Boxer Rebellion in China—a rebellion that
Japan had helped end by contributing troops to the international force—and
then failed to follow a promised timetable for withdrawing the troops. By
1904 Japan was incensed by both Russian control over Korea and Russian
control of Liaodong, which the Japanese had been forced to give up just a
decade before.
Thus, on February 8, 1904, Japan embarked on its second imperialist war
by launching a surprise attack on Russia’s fleet stationed in Port Arthur, at
the very southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. In hindsight, the hostilities
between Russia and Japan that would culminate in the 1904 war had been
building for decades. While the immediate purpose of the war was to
protect Japanese interests from Russian encroachment in Manchuria, the
underlying and more important reason was Japan’s fixation on maintaining
its rights in Korea. Military action against Russia was in a sense inevitable
when that country would not acknowledge the special rights that Japan had
in Korea. And controlling Korea, the Japanese had long believed, was
crucial to Japan becoming a great power. While Taiwan was Japan’s first
colonial territory, the first step on the road to empire, “the heart” of Japan’s
strategic colonial concerns was in Korea.35
Japan decisively won the war against Russia, obtaining Russia’s rights in
southern Manchuria/Liaodong Peninsula, its recognition of Japan’s interests
in Korea, and sovereignty, in perpetuity, over the southern half of Sakhalin
Island. It is difficult to overstate the international importance of Japan’s
victory. Defeating China had changed the distribution of regional power and
hierarchy in East Asia, but defeating Russia put Japan firmly within sight of
great power. This was the late 19th–early 20th century world where owning
colonies had often been justified by the great powers that held them as “the
white man’s burden.” A “non-white” nation defeating a “white” nation was
“stunning” to the West.36 This defeat of a Western great power by a small
Asian country was the final step in sealing Japan’s reputation as a colonial
power. It not only heralded the arrival of Japan as a great power-to-be, but
also overturned the racial notions of the time that great powers could
emerge only from the West.
Thus, Meiji Japan’s economic and military modernization in the late 19th
century was accompanied by Japan’s acquisition of colonies. This was
active—not revisionist—behavior. Japan was attempting to globalize its
authority and shape both domestic and international perceptions of its rise,
but in a manner that not only was accommodational of prevailing great
power norms and the international order, but also was seen as
accommodational by the great powers.

Active and Accommodational of Great Power Norms

As Japan became active, launched its imperialist wars, and began acquiring
the symbol of great power, colonies, it was exceedingly careful to do so,
both domestically and internationally, according to established Western
symbolic and legal norms, practices, and administrative styles.
From the very beginning of the Meiji Restoration, Japan was keenly
aware of Western great power, and sought to adopt its mores within the
country, both symbolically and militarily. Once the Emperor Meiji was
established as a symbol of unification, the Japanese government installed
visibly Western symbols of the nation-state, including a flag, a national
anthem, and national holidays such as the emperor’s birthday.37 Moreover,
they reformed their military in the style of Western militaries of the day.
Acquiring Western weapons, technology, and training became crucial to
their military advancement.
In the years after its forced opening to the West, when anti-foreign
sentiment ran high, Japan banned any assaults on foreigners, and launched a
propaganda campaign to educate the people on abandoning what were seen
as the old, bad habits of being anti-foreigner. This in turn allowed
foreigners to travel freely through Japan, not needing any of the special
systems of legal protections that were included by the West in treaties
imposed upon Japan. This would later allow Japan to push the Western
great powers for treaty revisions leaving out these special protections.38
Internationally, Japan was meticulous about conducting itself—and being
seen to conduct itself—by the prevailing laws of the international order,
including the way it conducted war. For example, Japan adopted the first
Geneva Convention, in 1864, as well as the Brussels declaration of 1874
and the Hague convention of 1899, governing the humanitarian treatment of
prisoners and rule of conduct during conventional warfare. It also
established a Japanese Red Cross, allowing impartial treatment of war
wounded. Subsequently, in its 1904 war with Russia, Japan made an
immense and intensely public effort to display legal military behavior and
“civilized” standards. When the war started, the Japanese government
issued regulations on how to treat enemy prisoners of war (POWs)
humanely. Wounded Russian soldiers received prompt and efficient medical
treatment, and captured POWs were “thoroughly looked after.”39 Moreover,
Japan ensured that there were observers from the West who could testify to
Japan’s embrace of the laws set by great powers.40 The treaties that Japan
imposed upon Korea and China were the same kind of treaties that were the
hallmark of the West, both in terms of legal structures and in terms of the
humiliation of the countries in question. Japan proclaimed that the treaties
were in accordance with “the law of nations,” even as they privileged Japan
at the expense of Korea and China. The Treaty of Kanghwa’s imposition of
the right of Japanese ships to come to shore in Korea for wood, water, and
shelter emulated Commodore Perry’s “wood and water treaty” when Japan
opened its ports. Later impositions of Japan’s right to survey Korean coastal
waters and Japan’s right to extraterritoriality emulated the 1858 Harris
treaty that the United States had imposed upon Japan.41
Japan fit the definition of being accommodational not simply because it,
too, along with the Western powers, aspired to hold and exploit overseas
possessions of its own. Once Japan acquired colonies, it administered them
domestically and justified them internationally according to the legal and
political norms set by the other imperialist powers. Japan launched reforms
in both Taiwan and Korea that were along the lines of colonial
administrations set up by Western powers. The historian Mark Peattie
points out that the Japanese transformed Taiwan from an “embarrassment to
a colonial showcase” by adopting European colonial policies to
administrate and develop the island and extract resources.42 Similarly, in
Korea, Japan set up an extractive colony; that is, the Korean economy was
developed for Japan’s advantage.43 Japan sought to build and control
railroad lines, telegraph lines, mines, and even the postal service in Korea.
On top of that, as Japan extended its influence in Korea, it sought to depict
itself as bringing Western legal order to a country that lacked civilized laws.
Consequently, Japan completely reordered Korea’s legal codes and judicial
system,44 incorporating European notions of criminal law, and operating
courts according to the European three-tiered trial system.45 Even prisons
were structured according to established Western laws.46 Japan’s colonies
therefore also had a clear distinction, just like European colonies, between
the colonizer and the colonized. Moreover, Japan, as we will see when we
examine Japanese idea advocacy, went to great lengths to establish that it
was bringing “civilization” to inferior peoples, just as the European powers
had claimed to have done.
It is important to note here that although Japan’s behavior was
accommodational of prevailing great power norms, this should not be taken
to mean that Japan’s imperialism was exactly the same as Western
imperialism. Unlike most of the geographically distant colonized territories
held by Western countries, Japan’s imperialism centered on territories
contiguous to it. Moreover, in line with its rapid domestic transformation,
Japan’s imperial expansion was also quicker than that of Western countries.
Yet colonization it was, not mere conquest. Just like the Western colonizing
nations, Japan created and expanded its sphere of influence, instituted
patterns of economic and political exploitation, and created racial, political,
and economic hierarchies of difference between itself and its colonized
populations.
It is equally important to point out that Japan’s active behavior was not a
predetermined outcome of its growing material might. Japan’s imperialist
wars and colonizing undoubtedly strengthened its security and its economic
strength. However, the wars it undertook were also risky wars. Japan
attempted to extend its influence beyond its borders to acquire colonies at a
time when no Western great power recognized its rights in the region. Even
Asian countries questioned Japan’s assumption of authority, as the authority
in the region stemmed from the personage of the Chinese emperor. The war
with Russia was a particular risk—Japan was substantially weaker than
Russia militarily when it initiated war. Russia was capable of mobilizing an
army of 4.5 million men, while the Japanese army numbered about 850,000.
Even in naval strength, Russia far outstripped Japan—it had the fourth
largest navy in the world in tonnage (510,000 tonnage to Japan’s
260,000).47
Moreover, as historian Peter Duus shows, the industrialization of Japan
“did not impel the Japanese leaders to adopt imperialist policy . . . but
merely empowered them to do so.” In other words, while industrialization
was necessary for Japan to acquire colonies, it did not make that acquisition
inevitable.48 Noted historian Akira Iriye agrees, calling the Russo-Japanese
war a “quintessentially imperialistic war,” fought as it was between two
countries over issues outside of each country’s boundaries at the expense of
other ethnicities who had no say in the matter at all. The war was not a
product of economic interests—Japanese trade with Korea was not so
extensive that it needed to defend it at that point. Even Japan’s interests in
Manchuria did not occupy a substantial portion of its total trade.49 It was
also not obvious that in order to modernize, Japan would have had to
acquire Western ways and conform to Western norms and order. We can see
the contrasting example of another Asian country, China, which also
modernized, but slowly, reluctantly, and resentfully. When China also
adopted Western weapons, for example, they rejected the Western
civilization from which such military technology emanated. Japan, on the
other hand, as we will see, “acted as if the superiority of Western arms were
an integral part of Western military institutions and Western civilization, as
if to adopt Western weapons [also] demanded Westernization.”50
To understand Japan’s behavior, we need to understand that Japan was
behaving like a great power-to-be. In addition to modernizing and
strengthening its military and undertaking rapid economic and industrial
development, Japan was also globalizing its authority. With the acquisition
of colonies, Japan had unquestionably joined the ranks of the imperialist
powers and began behaving like them overseas.51 Both domestically and
internationally, it was seeking to change the narrative of how Japan was
perceived—as a small inferior Asian country—and to gain recognition as a
great power in the making. Owning colonies was a crucial part of this
process. Japan’s accommodational behavior was accompanied by beliefs
about how to be a great power in the late 19th-century world. Historians
such as Iriye have argued that a war such as the one with Russia in 1904–
1905 could in fact be seen as a product of the belief among Japanese elites
that this was the only way the country could both show that it was
modernizing and becoming a modern great power.52 Thus, if we turn now to
observe some of these powerful beliefs that were prevalent among the elite
during the Meiji Japan period, we find that Japan, like the United States in
the late 19th century, also had idea advocacy. Along with the acquisition of
material power, Japanese elites were putting forth new narratives about
Japan’s appropriate behavior as a great power-to-be, and this included
owning colonies.

Meiji Japan and the Narratives of Attaining Great Power

What were some of the narratives that were driving the discourse in Japan
during this time? The Japanese elite who took control during the Meiji
Restoration were driven by two broad beliefs—that in order to become a
great power Japan needed to Westernize, and that Japan needed to gain the
recognition of the other great powers of the day. These two beliefs were
interrelated. The other great powers of the day were all Western powers.
Ergo, Japan needed to become a great power in the mold of the West. And
the beliefs shaped subsequent narratives about how to gain great power—
narratives pertaining to Japan’s military, to economic development, and
crucially, to colonialism. Japanese elites believed, as we will see, that Japan
needed to acquire colonies, needed to impose the kinds of humiliating
treaties that the West had imposed on Japan, needed to justify its
governance of the colonies to the West, and needed to display racial
superiority over the colonized. In other words, Japan was extremely
accommodational of the prevailing international order and the norms of
great power. As Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru believed, “The nation and
the people must be made to look like the European nations and European
peoples.”53
After the Meiji Restoration, when Japanese elites undertook rapid
military and economic modernization, they turned, as we have seen, to the
West for guidance. Not only were they determined to acquire Western
weapons and know-how, but they, in turn, accepted that using Western
technology would result not just in a complete revamping of Japan’s
military, but also in large-scale industrialization.54 This was the beginning
of a larger process of Westernization, as Japan eventually adopted even
“Western science, Western morals . . . [and] Western dress.”55
After the opening up of Japan, influential intellectuals like Sakuma
Shozan and Yoshida Shoin argued that learning from the foreigners was
rational. Sakuma Shozan put forth that Japan needed to study the Western
military arts to become a great power. Yoshida Shoin called for sending
talented Japanese abroad to study in the West, with “learning encompassing
all knowledge,” in the hopes that they would come back and disseminate
what they had learned.56 Later Meiji leaders would adopt these calls
because they believed that conformance to Western standards and practices
would gain Japan acceptance into international society.57
In 1870, for example, two prominent military officers, Yamagata
Aritomo (later prime minister of Japan) and Saigo Tsugumichi came back to
Japan after a tour of Europe, where they had been sent to study the military
establishments of leading powers. They would both (particularly Yamagata,
who was a leading voice in the Japanese military until his death in 1922) be
instrumental in building the modern Japanese army. Saigo Tsugumichi often
expressed his admiration of the French army and Napoleon. And Yamagata
Aritomo believed that while the French army was worthy of praise, it was
overconfident, and it was rather the quiet strength of the Prussians that
needed to be emulated.58 Eventually such beliefs were what pushed Japan
to emulate the British to organize their navy, the French to train their army,
and the Prussians to organize and operationalize their land forces. Japanese
naval training schools would be staffed with British officers, and they
would recruit French and Prussian officers to train their armies and staff
their military academies.
The ultimate goals of Japanese leaders became to “catch up and surpass
the West,” and to combine “Western technology with Japanese spirit.”59
Thus, the Japanese slogan of “enrich the country, strengthen the military”
(fukoku kyohei) became popular not only to emphasize military and
economic development, but also to change the fabric of Japan. Elites such
as Japanese entrepreneur Godai Saisuke of the powerful Satsuma clan wrote
that Western countries were dominating the world because they were rich
nations with strong armies.60 This pronouncement became the official and
public endorsement of Western military and economic development.
Another Japanese motto infusing the process of Meiji modernization was
“being civilized”—it meant accepting Western civilization as both positive
and the fashion of the day. Over time, the Japanese began to accept even the
parts of Western civilization that were not related to either the military or
the economy. The ideas of freedom, Christianity, and civil rights began to
be introduced to Japan by elites like pastor Ozaki Hiromichi, and scholars
and politicians Tsuda Masamichi and Kato Hiroyuki.61 Kato Hiroyuki
believed, for example, that an absence of civil rights indicated a lack of
civilization, while Tsuda Masamichi suggested that the government expose
the Japanese to Christianity because it was the predominant religion of a
“civilized” people.62
The Japanese began to, in a sense, now consider themselves Western, and
therefore different from the other Asian countries. Not only that, some
Japanese emphasized that Japan should not identify itself as an Asian
country at all. Like European elites, Japanese elites too now looked down
upon other Asian countries as inferior to them. One of the most important
intellectuals of the time, Fukuzawa Yukichi, famously counseled his
countrymen to “quit Asia and join the West,” for, he said, other Asians were
too backward to reform themselves, and if Japan identified with them they
would only be tarred with the same “brush of Asian backwardness.”63
Another intellectual, Hinohara Shozo, wrote an article for Fukazawa
Yukichi’s newspaper in 1894 titled “Japan must not be an oriental country.”
In it he exhorted Japan to become civilized and strong like Europe by
adopting Western ways.64 Greatness meant leaving Asia behind in order to,
as statesman Ito Hirobumi declared in 1899, become the “most civilized
country in the far east.”65
In such narratives, Japanese citizens were encouraged to triumph over
lesser Asian nations just as Western great powers had done. Fukazawa
Yukichi penned an article titled “Oppression Can Be Pleasant” in which he
argued that he did not feel sorry for the Chinese in Hong Kong for their
suffering under British colonial rule, and that if Japan were to acquire a
navy similar to the British they would be able to control the Chinese even
more effectively than the British had.66 Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese
war was celebrated as the victory of Japanese modernity over Chinese
backwardness. No wonder, then, that Japan in its triumph imposed on China
the same kind of humiliating treaties—being required to withdraw from
Korea, pay large sums of money, relinquish Taiwan, and cede to Japan the
Liaodong Peninsula in southern Manchuria—that were the hallmark of
European great powers.67
But the narratives in Japan about Westernization were not completely
homogenous, nor did all Japanese accept the complete Westernization of
Japanese society. The Society for Political Education, formed by a group of
young Japanese men, feared that the path toward Western civilization could
result in Japan “forfeit[ing] its national character and destroy[ing] [the
traditional] elements of Japanese society.”68 A predominant belief which
married traditional identities with a changing Japan was that the traditional
Japanese “spirit” could be combined with Western technology (Japanese
began to use the expression wakon yosai, “the Japanese spirit, the Western
skill”) to produce superior results. That is, the Japanese remained superior
to the West in morality, and thus could remain Japanese at heart even while
Westernizing69 and becoming a Western-style imperialist power.
But whether trying to strike a balance between Westernizing and
retaining a Japanese tradition, or advocating complete Westernization, with
regard to the norms of the international order that had been built by the
European great powers, Japanese narratives were strikingly
accommodational. For Japanese elites, the path forward meant accepting the
rules of the current international order and placing great emphasis on “the
laws of the world.” Japan diligently reworked Western civil codes into
Japanese, transforming international terms into Japanese practice.70 And
advocating Japan’s adherence to these laws—laws created by the West and
used to maintain the current international order—became integral to Japan’s
rise. The Japanese believed that accepting these laws of the Western great
powers would help it “assert its prestige in the world.”71 One specific way
to assert its prestige was to own and administer colonies in ways that were
politically and culturally in sync with Western norms, which would also
“legitimate [Japan’s] imperialist expansion.”72 Japan would acquire and
exploit its colonies legally—in the same manner as other imperialist powers
—because that was the path to becoming (and being accepted as) a great
power. As Iriye points out, “No amount of apologetic writing alters the fact
that between 1880 and 1895 Japan established colonial enclaves and
spheres of dominance over Korea, Taiwan, and parts of China. . . . [Colonial
domination] was not an end in itself, a premeditated goal for its own sake,
but an aspect of Japan’s development in a world environment defined by the
major powers.”73 If the West could perfect the art of establishing colonial
protectorates and successfully use them for their enrichment, it was
perfectly reasonable for the Japanese to follow suit, just as they had done in
their military and economic development, and to establish their own
“civilized” credentials. Colonial expansion would help Japan overcome its
inferior status, and restore “imperial prestige.” Japanese elites, thus, saw
Japan’s role with regard to colonies as both “tutor and military hegemon.”74
An important initial step on this path was making, as colonizers did, a
strong distinction between themselves as a great country and those whom
they would colonize. Thus, embracing Social Darwinism became very
popular in Japan in the years after it acquired colonies. Japanese elites were
obsessed with ranking their country in the hierarchy of nations, and they
strongly differentiated themselves from the native populations of Taiwan
and Korea.75 Unlike the United States, there were no bitter divisions in
Japan’s narratives about whether or not to become a colonizing country.
There were dissenters who criticized Japan’s imperialistic adventures, but
they were the minority. Rather, the give and take of ideas were about why
Japan should colonize, and how aggressively, and how it should administer
its colonies and treat the people under its rule.
Politicians like Takekoshi Yosaburo asserted that, like the Western
powers who had long shouldered the responsibility of colonizing and
civilizing the world, Japan too was now rising as a nation to do its part and
participate “in this great and glorious work.”76 Journalist Shiga Shigetaka
declared that Japan should mark the accession and death anniversaries of
the first emperor annually by annexing unclaimed territory, an act that
would “excite an expeditionary spirit and the demoralized Japanese race.”77
Ukita Kazutami, another prominent intellectual, wrote in 1902 that
imperialism was not only the fashion of the day but also an excellent way to
build national strength.78 There were colonization societies organized by
leading politicians of the time which urged colonization through peaceful
methods by encouraging Japanese emigration to the colonies.79 Spreading
their civilization through colonization was a way of cementing their
position as a modern power—in their own eyes and in the eyes of the West.
The Japanese historian and intellectual Tokutomi Soho declared before
the Sino-Japanese war, “Our future history will be the history of the
establishment by the Japanese of new Japans everywhere in the world.”80
The Sino-Japanese war was redefined by politicians such as Ito Hirobumi
(the first Japanese resident-general of Korea, and later prime minister of
Japan) as the Korean War of Independence, in which Japan had acted as a
“friend” to Korea.81 Sidestepping the issue of whether the Koreans
deserved a say in their own affairs, Japan’s imperialist adventures and wars
with China and Russia were presented as entirely necessary for Korea’s
well-being, which was in keeping with the prevalent great power norm of
enlightened exploitation. As Ito stated, “Watching Russia try to annex [the
Liaodong peninsula] who became alarmed for the sake of [Korea]? For the
fate of the Orient? It was Japan. Japan took up arms and sacrificed life and
property.”82
When Japan was forced to relinquish the Liaodong Peninsula after the
war, it displayed even more intense efforts to show it was a civilized
Western great power that could uphold all of the trappings that came with
that role. Japanese colonial bureaucrats like Kodama Gentaro and Goto
Shimpei launched reforms in Taiwan that emphasized “colonial order and
efficiency” in the service of the universal task of civilization, turning it into
a “colonial showcase.”83 Using “biological principles” of social Darwinism,
Goto Shimpei spoke of a “hundred year plan” to evolve Taiwanese society,
whereby the natives would be gradually “evolved” toward becoming more
civilized.84 Similar sentiments accompanied the governing and reform of
Korea. When the Japanese “opened” Korea in 1876, they did so in ways
that echoed Perry’s expedition to Japan while touting the benefits of the
“civilization” they were bringing to the Koreans.85 “The Koreans can be
slowly and gradually led in the direction of progress,” said Japanese
historian and legislature member Takekoshi Yosaburo.86 There were also
those who saw Japan’s colonial responsibilities as including humane
policies to bolster its reputation as a responsible colonial power.87
Intellectuals such as Nitobe Inazo (who was the first occupant of the
position of chair of colonial studies established at Tokyo University in
1908) framed Japanese expansion within the context of global colonialism
and pondered the merits of specific European colonial systems in terms of
how Japan might apply them.88 Thus the Japanese elite debated not whether
Korea (or other Japanese colonies) should be reformed, but how it should
be.89
Such narratives in Meiji Japan correspond with how we have seen idea
advocacy play out in other settings—they focused on materially attainable
goals given the constraints of the international order; they acknowledged
the prevalent norms of great power, and how Japan needed to acquire global
authority; and they explained Japan’s increasing involvement in the world
for both a domestic and international audience. Japan rose by acting like a
great power-to-be and accommodating, not revising, the norms of the
international order of the time. This would change in the interwar period
with Japan’s turn to activism. But after World War II, Japan’s next rise
played out very differently.

Post–World War II: The Rise of Cold War Japan

After the devastation of World War II, one would scarcely have expected
that Japan, a defeated nation, would rise again like the proverbial phoenix.
But rise it did. Japan recovered from the devastation of war to become the
world’s second-ranked economic power. In 1979, Japan was ranked the
“number one” country in the world.90 The historian Paul Kennedy argued
that Japan would be the next new world power,91 while Newsweek
magazine went even further, suggesting that Japan was going to become the
next superpower, “supplanting America as the colossus of the Pacific.”92
Japan’s rise was seen as an astounding development during the Cold War
era. In a very short period of time, not only had a vanquished nation
transformed itself into a country seemingly on the path to great power, but
international perceptions of it transformed from enemy to ally to increasing
threat.
Japan’s near-miraculous rise needs to be understood in the context of
American dominance of the Cold War world. After its defeat in World War
II, from 1945 until 1952, Japan was controlled by the “Allied Occupation.”
But the name was misleading because in effect the occupation was entirely
controlled by the United States, and the influence of the other victorious
powers was negligible.93 The United States was determined to enact
policies that would bring postwar Japan within its sphere of influence,
modeling changes in Japan after American institutions.
Thus, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, who was
given the title of “Supreme Commander” encapsulating the massive amount
of authority he held, Japanese political, economic, and societal structures
were completely “revolutionized” to both modernize Japan and ensure that
it would never again commit aggression.94 That the United States
introduced (or imposed, as some would term it)95 a new democratic system
and a new constitution to Japan, and in doing so embarked upon an
unprecedented experiment in “induced democratization,” is well known.96
The new constitution, supported by Japanese liberals, included many new
democratic provisions, such as implementing extensive women’s and labor
union rights. But, in addition, it included provisions designed not only to
democratize the economy but also to weaken the old conservative elite—for
example, by redistributing land and breaking up the trusts (large industrial
and banking single-family-dominated combinations known as zaibatsu) that
had driven the country’s pre-war economic growth—even as the United
States declared it would not bear any responsibility to either rehabilitate or
strengthen the Japanese economy.97 But Japan’s extensive traditional civil
bureaucracy that ran the daily administration of the country was left in
place, as was the emperor, whose role was rewritten as a constitutional
monarch, absolved of any responsibility for the war. The continuity of this
civil bureaucracy meant that in the postwar era it was Japan’s conservative
elite that would eventually re-emerge to refashion Japan’s politics,
economics, and society. And it was under this elite that Japan would
undertake extensive reforms, putting in place institutions that would result
in high rates of economic growth. This elite would also seize opportunities
provided by the later economic patronage of the United States, when Japan
became a key component of its security policy in the Asia-Pacific region.
The resulting high level of growth would astonish the world, and
specifically the United States, which had not expected Japan to catapult
again into the first rank of developed countries.

The Material Rise of Japan

After the war, the reforms of the occupation era created an environment ripe
for economic change—the breaking up of the zaibatsu freed the Japanese
economy from family domination, the number of enterprises increased, and
a strong labor movement developed. But actual economic change was a
result of what the political scientist Chalmers Johnson has called a “plan-
rational” rather than “market-rational” system. Johnson explains that unlike,
for example, economic growth in the United States, the role of Japan’s
bureaucracy as the driver of planned development and industrialization was
crucial.98 The Japanese bureaucracy strongly promoted particular ideas (in
other words, plans or goals) for economic growth, and there was an
expectation created that Japanese businesses would respond to these ideas.
In return, the government would reward these businesses by facilitating
access to capital, and approving their plans to procure foreign technology or
establish joint ventures.99 Accordingly, Japanese planners put forward a
national plan of “priority production” that pushed for growth in four
industries—iron and steel, coal mining, electricity, and shipbuilding—by
making them the recipient of 50 to 60 percent of all government subsidies
and grants, and by making capital available to small businesses and
investors.100
To formulate and drive the details of this economic planning, Japan
created several crucial bureaucratic organizations. One of the most
important and powerful was the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI). In keeping with the plan-rational system, MITI was “an
economic bureaucracy but not a bureaucracy of economists . . . [instead it
was dominated by] nationalistic political officials,” and dubbed the
“greatest concentration of brain power in Japan.”101 MITI’s goal was to
make Japan more competitive in the export market, promote modern
technology, and allow for mergers and collaborations among the largest
firms. Moreover, it had the power to allocate all foreign exchange, which
meant that MITI could now influence the growth rate of the different
industries as well as their capability to acquire new technology. MITI was
also allowed to limit, restrict, and control investment from abroad, as well
as the rights to own and participate in business in Japan.
In addition to MITI, the government also established the Japan
Development Bank, which eventually was able, because of its access to the
savings from the nation’s postal system, to compile savings that were four
times the size of the world’s largest commercial bank. Consequently, the
Japan Development Bank became the most important financial tool for the
economic development of the country, working with MITI to finance
industries for long-term growth. Another powerful Japanese ministry, the
Ministry of Finance, enacted policies that would provide low-cost capital to
leading industries, prod development particularly of industries that were
seen as critical, impose high protectionist tariffs, reform the tax system in
favor of growth, minimize the risks of adopting new technology, expand
productive capacity by making the state the guarantor, relax restrictions on
collusive behavior such as cartels, and limit foreign imports.102
In short, together the Japanese bureaucracy and bank implemented a
detailed and far-reaching strategy that completely revamped the postwar
national economy. Facilitating huge amounts of domestic investment,
procuring modern technology, and enacting protectionist policies led to
high export-driven growth.
In addition to these farsighted government-driven economic policies,
many have argued that Japan’s economic development was supported and
encouraged by the United States. The United States both directly and
indirectly created an international environment in which Japan’s economic
policies could flourish. The United States not only pushed for postwar
treaties that secured for Japan most favored nation (MFN) trade status,
allowed for unrestricted development of its industries, and made any war
reparations voluntary,103 but also provided economic patronage by, for
example, arranging a series of low-interest loans which gave Japan the
much-needed capital required for domestic investment.104 This was not
altruistic—Japan’s postwar recovery was a crucial component of America’s
security policy.105 What the United States did not expect was that Japan’s
economy would not just recover but would grow in leaps and bounds to
catch up with the first rank of developed countries of the day.
Thus, only a decade after the war had ended, the Japanese economy
returned to pre-war levels. And after this initial recovery, amazingly,
Japan’s growth accelerated—the average growth rate between 1945 and
1958 was 7.1 percent, and between 1959 and 1970, it was 9.1 percent. In
terms of the real GDP growth rate between 1959 and 1970, it was above 10
percent in eight out of the ten years.106 Economic growth was also
accompanied by extraordinary rates of increase in asset and land prices.107
The Economist magazine dubbed these astonishing achievements “the
Japanese economic miracle.”108 By 1970, Japan not only had the third
largest economy but was considered one of the most developed countries in
the world. And it had achieved this by propelling itself from below average
levels of development to the first ranks of the world economy in just a
couple of decades.109
Japan’s economic miracle transformed it, in the minds of international
society, into a challenger state. By 1990, it was the “greatest creditor
nation” in the history of the world, as well as the number one donor of
foreign aid.110 Aid policy had begun as reparation arrangements after World
War II, whereby Japan negotiated “economic cooperation” arrangements.111
But then, after the OPEC oil shock of 1973–1974, Japan expanded its aid
policy as a tool that sought alternative sources of oil and energy in the Third
World—following the oil crisis, Japan’s aid dollars, which had been mostly
flowing to Asia, now were directed toward Africa, Latin America, and the
Middle East, places that could provide Japan with diversified sources of
energy.112 There was a proliferation of books in the West that cast Japan as
a danger to the world. The Enigma of Japanese Power by Karel van
Wolferen, for example, argued that amoral Japanese elites wielded massive
power and remained virtually unaccountable, posing a danger to the world;
Agents of Influence by Pat Choate warned, in a “bombshell of a book” as a
U.S. News & World Report article blared, that Japan was out to dominate
the United States through nefarious interference in American politics.
Perhaps the most well-known was the novel Rising Sun by Michael
Crichton; in this best-selling thriller, Crichton depicted Japan as out to
systematically destroy American businesses. Newspapers too wondered
whether Japan was the new threat; “The Danger from Japan” was one
headline from the New York Times in 1985,113 while another wondered in
1992 whether Japan was “out to get us.”114 A Newsweek article in 1989
conducted a poll showing that a majority of Americans believed that Japan
was as much of a threat as the Soviet Union.115 Yet, curiously, as many
Japan experts noted in the context of their own research, during this time
Japan remained a reticent power in many respects—militarily, politically,
and arguably, even economically.

Japan’s Puzzling Reticence on the World Stage

Japan’s reticence was not just on display in the postwar era when it was a
defeated power, but also when it was hailed and feared as a rising power.
Perhaps the most glaring aspect of Japan’s reticence was its pacifist policies
and its consistent refusal to project military strength.
Originally, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Japan’s lack of
rearmament was understandable in that this stance was imposed upon it
during postwar negotiations. After the war, the United States was
determined to avoid a militarily resurgent Japan. As a result, US-negotiated
treaties included a clause by which Japan pledged to always avoid any kind
of rearming that could be construed as threatening.116 The rearmament
clause was reinforced during the writing of Japan’s constitution, which took
place during the American occupation. The constitution included an article,
Article 9, that stated that Japan would “forever renounce war as a sovereign
right,” and that it would never maintain “land, sea, and air forces” or other
instruments of war. Instead, Japan’s security would depend on the “peace-
loving peoples of the world.”117 The Japanese government would
eventually insert amendments to Article 9 that allowed for the
establishment of a Self-Defense Force.
But there were two changes that occurred that could have spurred a more
active role—Japan’s growing wealth, and America’s interest in having
Japan become a participatory ally in East Asia.
From the dismal years just after World War II, it rapidly became the case
that Japan could well afford to translate its economic wealth into military
power. Yet Japan steadfastly refused to rearm and develop its military. As
we’ve seen, by 1955, its economy was back to pre-war levels,118 and by the
1970s and 1980s it was one of the richest countries the world. In absolute
terms, Japan’s defense budget was quite substantial—its aggregate spending
made it one of the top two or three countries in defense spending.119 Its
budget was one of the smallest among industrialized countries—its defense
budget was only 1 percent of its GDP as compared to other great powers
who typically spend 1.5 to 3 percent of their GDP on defense. Moreover, it
was an anomaly, because it spent substantially less on defense than we
would expect of a country of its size and wealth.120 Not only that, Japan’s
defense spending was paltry compared even to its neighbors with whom it
had uneasy relationships—by the mid-1980s China’s defense spending was
at least 80 percent of Japan’s defense spending.121 Japan’s distribution of
financial resources in its military was also significantly uneven. While it
had top-notch mine-sweeping and anti-submarine capabilities, for example,
it completely lacked capability in key areas like nuclear weapons and
nuclear-powered submarines, and it lagged far behind much smaller
economies in necessary equipment for its ground army and air force.122
Even though Japan’s neighborhood was not particularly friendly to it,
Japan was incapable of launching offensive operations; it could not, for
example, have carried out preemptive or retaliatory strikes against North
Korean missile bases. In addition, its defensive operations also left much to
be desired; it had limited ability to defend its vital sea lanes of
communication and its shipping lanes, nor did it develop an adequate air
defense system.123 In short, during those years, Japan decided that its
national interests could best be pursued by building industrial strength and
transforming Japan into a powerful trading state. And its national security
policy remained severely restricted. It refused to acquire “offensive”
weapons such as long-range strategic bombers; it avoided acquiring power
projection capabilities; and it adopted three non-nuclear principles (it would
not own, manufacture, or allow the direction of nuclear weapons in its
territory).124
On top of inadequate defense spending, Japanese leaders also
consistently chose not to step up to the security role that the United States
had envisioned for them. By the 1950s, the United States had modified its
own position on the issue of Japan’s security approach, admitting, as Vice
President Richard Nixon did in 1953, that the disarming of Japan and the
imposition of Article 9 were “mistakes”;125 the outbreak of the Korean War
made the United States determined to forge a favorable security structure in
the Pacific, and consequently Japan was now seen as important for
American interests. The United States wanted Japan to help maintain the
balance of power in Asia, and to play a role in containing communism in
the region. The United States envisioned that Japan would engage in limited
rearmament and contribute to providing for its own security. Japan, in this
vision, astonishingly a mere five years after the end of World War II, was
no longer the United States’ enemy, but instead, an important ally during
the Cold War fight against communism. All of this was codified in a
security treaty the United States signed with Japan in 1952. The treaty
allowed the United States to establish military bases in Japan to prevent
internal domestic rebellions, to protect Japan from external attacks, and to
keep the peace in East Asia. In 1960, this treaty was revised to remove the
United States’ right to intervene in Japan’s domestic affairs, but the military
bases remained.
Given the imbalance in the bilateral relationship and Japan’s economic
state in the immediate postwar years, it was perhaps not surprising that
Japan, during its early years of economic recovery, outsourced its own
security and defense to the United States, and played a limited role in
events like the Korean War. During the war, the Japanese government was
concerned about the danger of Cold War politics that could force it to spend
its then limited resources on rearmament rather than economic
rehabilitation.126 Thus, despite American encouragement, Japan made only
“minimal concessions” of passive cooperation with the United States—
allowing the American bases on Japanese territory, upgrading its National
Police Reserve to a National Security Force (from 75,000 men 110,000
men), and undertaking very limited rearmament—in return for which the
United States would end the occupation early, giving Japan the opportunity
to focus on its own economic recovery while guaranteeing its security in the
long run.127 But what was surprising was that, even as the Japanese
economy grew, Japan did not play the larger role expected by the United
States under the American security umbrella. Japan’s reticence in stepping
up meant that it constantly took the risk of testing its alliance with the
United States; two prominent examples of this were when it limited its
participation and backing of the United States in the Vietnam War in the
mid-1960s, and in the Gulf War in the early 1990s.
In the first example, other than the provision of bases, Japan helped the
United States very minimally, doing just enough (sending medical aid to
Saigon in 1964 at US request, for example) to avoid seriously harming the
Japan-US alliance.128 American critics complained that Japan was failing to
pull its weight as an ally, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk explicitly called
on Japan to expand its armed forces and double its annual expenditure of
$100 million on American military equipment.129 The US government even
offered a number of concessions to induce greater Japanese cooperation.
The United States proposed selling American military equipment, like air
defense missiles, on terms very favorable to Japan, and promised to boost
American military procurement from Japanese industry, offering to place
orders for vehicles, aircraft parts, and navy vessels with Japanese firms. In
return, the United States asked for more Japanese grant aid to Vietnam and
any other non-communist country in Southeast Asia, but with little
result.130 Instead, the Japanese government made noises about their
approval of American actions and hinted at political and economic
alternatives to extensive military help, but made clear that Japan would not
play a role in the conflict.131 By 1966, the American ambassador to Tokyo,
U. Alexis Johnson, expressed worry that the security and economic ties
between the United States and Japan were badly frayed because, as he put
it, Japan took “benefits” from the United States but shunned
“responsibility.”132
A quarter of a century later, during the first Gulf War, Japan had another
prominent opportunity to step up to the plate as a full-fledged US ally.
Instead, its response to that war displayed its reticence on a very public
stage. Under Operation Desert Shield the United States and its allies, as
well as many countries in the Arab League, decided to send forces to
intervene. Even though the international community almost unilaterally
condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and intervention took place under
the aegis of the United Nations, Japan waffled rather than acting decisively.
Despite initially condemning Iraq and imposing sanctions, the Japanese
government remained paralyzed in contributing to this multinational force.
President Bush had to personally pressure the Japanese government to
contribute any financial support and equipment for the United States and its
allies.133 It took much pressure from the United States for Japan to put
together a comprehensive aid plan. And it failed to provide even a modest
amount of manpower—in striking contrast to neighbors like Korea and the
Philippines, which provided 150 medics, and 190 doctors and nurses,
respectively.134 When Japan did agree belatedly to financially contribute, it
was not enough, forcing the United States to again request its ally to step
up. Moreover, Japan did not contribute any members of its Self-Defense
Force to the coalition, and plans to deploy the Air Self-Defense Force to
help with transporting refugees, weapons, and personnel were scuttled.135
Finally, in response to rising international criticism, it provided even more
finances as well as, after much debate, minesweepers.136 As Yoichi
Funabashi (then a journalist and now the chairman of the Asia-Pacific
Initiative) disgustedly noted at the time:
A crisis almost always reveals the reality, and the Persian Gulf crisis revealed the real
Japan. In the moment of truth, an economic superpower found itself merely an automatic
teller machine—one that needed a kick before dispensing the cash. The notion that
economic power inevitably translates into geopolitical influence turned out to be a
materialist illusion.137

Japan faced harsh criticism for its reticence—the fact that Japan had been
so reluctant to help the coalition was extremely noticeable,138 and was
highlighted when Kuwait omitted Japan from its expression of thanks to the
international community.139
Japan’s “passive diplomacy” was not confined to its role as a US ally; it
also involved hesitancy in decision-making, as well as passivity in
negotiating style in international institutions, where it was more likely to
accommodate than push back, and often deferred important diplomatic
decisions.140 By the 1980s, Japan had become, as we have seen, one of the
largest donors of foreign aid in the world. Yet it was not strategic with that
aid. Nor did it take a leading role in times of crisis, as in the example of the
1990 Gulf War, where aid could have enhanced its reputation. Its puzzling
reticence even stretched to economic diplomacy. While Japan was clearly
an important aid donor, if measured by criteria other than aid volume
Japan’s contributions were not impressive. In 1988 Japan’s overseas aid was
only 0.32 percent of GNP, which placed it twelfth of eighteen donor nations
within the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC); to place
this in context, the average aid from DAC countries was about 0.35 percent.
In aid spent per capita Japan again ranked a poor twelfth, while its share of
grants to other countries ranked last among the DAC nations.141
Despite its wealth, Japan also held back from taking on leadership roles
in international economic institutions and multilateral settings. Kent Calder,
former special advisor to the US ambassador to Japan and Japan chair at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, famously dubbed it a
“reactive state.” He argued that Japan, through the 1970s and particularly
the 1980s, deployed a foreign economic policy that was a mixture of
“hesitancy and pragmatism.” It failed to undertake any major independent
economic initiatives even though it had the strength to do so, and it reacted
(as opposed to acted) only in response to outside pressure, as opposed to
acting of its own volition. It remained reluctant to take the lead on
international initiatives; it consistently gave in to pressure, particularly from
the United States; and it was often passive at major financial conferences.
For example, in 1971, under some pressure, Japan agreed to a nominal
change of 16.88 percent in the parity value of the yen, which was not only
the largest realignment imposed on any country, but also the first
revaluation of the yen since 1949.142 Calder argued that Japan was
particularly hesitant to take the lead on strategic and trade interests that
would have benefited from multilateral leadership.143 W. W. Rostow
agreed, stating that Japan simply did not take on trade responsibility,144
while Charles Kindleberger declared that Japan had “no appetite for world
responsibility.”145 Calder also suggests that while during the 1950s and
1960s Japan’s passivity could at times be explained by its postwar
relationship with the United States, that became less true in the 1970s.
Unlike other reactive states like South Korea, Japan was in a strong
economic position. It had no external debt and an expansive domestic
market; in addition, it was the world’s largest creditor nation, and supplied
close to $100 billion annually in capital exports to cover the fiscal deficit of
the United States. Yet Japan refused to use this international clout to take a
position as an economic leader.146
Thus Japan’s reticence despite its economic wealth was puzzling. It was
claimed that “no responsible decision-maker in postwar Japan” would
attempt to “convert accumulated economic wealth into military might.”147
But it also did not shore up its defenses—the defense spending that it did
undertake was woefully inadequate. As a result, Japan was not even close to
being “a world-class military power”; in fact, by any conventional measure
of military strength, it “ranked far behind its major industrial
competitors.”148 Some have pointed out that Japan’s provision of security
should not be seen in traditional terms of defense spending—that, in fact,
Japan’s security was adequate because it “passed the buck” and relied on
the United States for its security149 or because it engaged in “mercantilist
realism” by becoming techno-economically competitive in order to balance
the United States.150 However, it was not just that Japan consistently
“under-provided” for its own security, but that it also incurred substantial
risks in doing so.151 Moreover, as we have seen, there were junctures at
which Japan could have acted differently and stepped up to support the
United States and strengthened its alliance at the same time—but it
refrained. Attention to techno-economic competitiveness did not preclude
increasing the defense budget. If anything, it should have enhanced Japan’s
competitiveness against the United States. Japan was considered a bona fide
rising power. And if rising powers are challenger states, then they should
use all necessary resources to gain an edge over the status quo great power.
As Heginbotham and Samuels concede, “Japan had become very rich and
could easily have become very strong as well.”152 But yet it resisted—
refusing not just entreaties from the United States (before it realized the
pace of Japan’s economic growth would make it a rival) but also from its
own domestic businesses and MITI, which thought that rearmament could
be an engine of reconstruction and development.153
To understand its reticence, we can turn to a set of beliefs—very different
from those of the Meiji era—that existed in Japan in the postwar years.
These beliefs were not about Japan becoming a great power as recognized
by the current international order. In short, Cold War Japan lacked idea
advocacy.

Narratives of Pacifism, Reassurance, and Recovery

As mentioned earlier, Japan’s conservative elite were resilient enough to
survive into the postwar era. This was partly because during the occupation
the Americans left the civilian bureaucracy intact.154 It was also because,
since there had been little effective domestic opposition to the war in Japan,
it was difficult after the war to identify who had been an active supporter of
the regime and who had not.155 Thus, the prewar elite were able to take
leadership positions in postwar politics. This was to have profound
consequences for Japanese foreign policy ideas in the postwar era.
One of the most important conservatives to emerge during that time was
Yoshida Shigeru. Not only was Yoshida Shigeru an immensely influential
leader, but he also was able to install a powerful group of sympathetic
supporters in both the ruling party and in the bureaucracy to continue his
policies, even after he left office.156 Yoshida articulated ideas that would
govern Japanese foreign policy for decades after the war. This set of ideas
came to be known as the Yoshida Doctrine. To begin with, Yoshida’s main
concern was to gain Japan’s acceptance in international society, and he
believed this could be achieved by showing that Japan was committed to
peace. This resulted in three intertwined ideas: pacifism, reassurance, and
recovery. Japan would associate as closely as possible with one of the great
powers of the day, the United States. In his view, just as the United States’
close and subordinate association with the United Kingdom had eventually
served its long-term interests, so Japan would serve its long-term interests
by subordinating itself and aligning closely with the United States.157 As
we’ve seen, in the Cold War era, the United States saw Japan as an
important strategic partner to contain communism; and the Americans came
to regret the disarming of Japan. But Yoshida refused to entertain the idea
of either rearmament or a regional alliance with Asian neighbors, seeing
Japan as culturally and politically distinctive from its Asian neighbors. He
also rejected the idea of any war guilt or reparations. He believed instead
that commitment to democracy and pacifism by rejecting re-militarization
would keep Japan out of Cold War politics and aid in its recovery. Thus,
when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles demanded that Japan be part of
a regional defense system, Yoshida refused. Instead, he confounded Dulles
by invoking Japan’s constitution, inspired by “US ideals and the lessons of
defeat,”158 and pointing out the effect that a re-militarized Japan would
have on its Asian neighbors.159 He ended up offering minimal concessions
to the United States in exchange for a quick end to the occupation and aid in
Japan’s economic recovery, believing this would guarantee Japan’s security
interests in the long run and enable it to concentrate on economic
development.160
It was not that Yoshida’s ideas met with uniform acceptance. Other
conservatives as well as liberals disagreed with him. Political scientist
Thomas Berger identifies three broad political groups of elites who debated
Japan’s future—the left idealists, the centrists, and the right idealists. The
right idealists were critical of the pre-war militarists who they believed had
in the 1930s forced Japan into an undesirable war, and they wished to return
to the late Meiji period social and political system with a centralization of
authority and strong sense of national pride but with a modern economy.
Left idealists were extremely critical of Japan’s traditions and past and
believed that Japan should proceed as a “peace nation” that opposed war
because only it understood the true horrors of an atomic bombing. The
centrists such as Yoshida wanted to hew as closely as possible to the
American way of doing things and to focus entirely on economic
reconstruction.161 Conservative politicians such as Ashida Hitoshi, for
example, thought that the Korean War posed a strong danger to Japan and
that Japan should step up and be prepared to defend itself. They believed it
would be cowardly for the Japanese to rely on other powers to preserve the
nation’s security. Leftist liberals demanded, on the other hand, that Japan
stay neutral during the Cold War and that US bases be removed from
Japanese soil.162 However, there were many who supported Yoshida’s
limited engagement with the United States, and thought that Japan should
concentrate on building its industries so it could become a powerful trading
state. In the words of one, “An army in uniform is not the only sort of army.
Scientific technology and fighting spirit under a business suit will be our
underground army.”163 This doctrine would narrow Japan’s sense of self
and national purpose so completely that the US ambassador to Japan stated
in the 1950s that “Japan has no basic convictions for or against the free
world.”164
Post-Yoshida, Japanese leaders would take the Yoshida Doctrine, which
had been meant as a way to recover from the war, and parlay it into broader
beliefs about Japanese interests in the Cold War era. Japan was to play a
mercantilist role to gain power. Power was not seen as building a military
but as mastering international economic competition. Prime Minister Ikeda
Hayato, who was elected in 1960, “deflected attention from the defense
question” with a popular plan to double Japanese incomes within a decade.
He also undertook a “studied humility” in foreign affairs which he called
“low-posture politics.”165 Such low-posture politics meant that during the
Vietnam War, Japan provided support in a limited way to the United States,
as we’ve seen. The prime minister at the time, Sato Eisaku, stated that
Japan was prevented by the constitution from sending military assistance,
but that he would be happy if he could “provide something more than moral
support.”166 Fukuda Tokuyasu, director general of the Japan Defense
Agency, told American Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara that
“[Japan] very much appreciate[s] the US efforts in Southeast Asia . . . [but]
Japan’s constitution and domestic attitude inhibit actions in this regard.”167
And indeed, the “domestic attitude” of Japanese elite was largely
vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War, seeing Vietnam as a victim of
American bullying. The Sato government often referred to anti-war
sentiment as a reason for not doing all that the United States asked.168
Rather, Japan continued its policy of concentrating on its economy. As a
MITI bureaucrat named Amayo Naohiro wrote, Japan was a cultural state,
on the one hand hewing to the principles of liberalism, democracy, and
peace, and on the other “pouring its strength” into economic growth.169 A
powerful prime minister, Miyazawa Kiichi, insisted that Japan was
“special” and did not have to play a “normal” role in international politics.
“The Japanese people have gambled their future in a great experiment, the
first of its kind in human history.”170 As a trading state, Japan had to have
some defense capability to protect its economic interests, but it would
continue to be a “peace nation” which would neither threaten its neighbors
nor expand its role in the US-Japan alliance.171
The Yoshida Doctrine remained largely unchallenged until the advent of
Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro. Nakasone, who held the office of prime
minister from 1982 to 1987, decided that Japan needed a sense of national
purpose beyond economic growth. It would provide an exemplary model
for other countries. Japan needed to take on leadership in international
politics and transform the role that it had been playing. He rooted his ideas
in a brainstorming session organized in the 1970s by Prime Minister Ohira
Masayoshi, who had assembled Japan’s intellectual leaders to “remake”
Japan. The Ohira research group emphasized neoconservative beliefs that
included a conviction that Japan needed to promote Japanese culture by
returning to its own values rather than aping the West.
Thus, drawing on such ideas, Nakasone sought a more active era for
Japanese foreign policy. He stressed that Japan’s capitalist policies had
worked in terms of facilitating its recovery but had now outlived their
usefulness and were leading the country toward weak and inefficient
industries. Japan now needed to move to a leadership role in global
economics. But resistance from both the bureaucracy and from political
groups—conservatives as well as leftists—meant that Nakasone’s agenda
did not move forward. Particularly, since Japan enjoyed high economic
standards, most were reluctant to tamper with any of the institutions of the
postwar order, including national security policy.172 Japanese foreign policy
still remained entrenched in the centrist conservative beliefs of the Yoshida
era.173
Even more interestingly, the Japanese elite from all sides of the political
spectrum came to believe that not only were the Japanese not a martial
culture but that they had never even had a martial culture—rather, Japan
was “dragged” into World War II, and because they were not good at
playing the game of Machiavellian power politics, they lost.174 For Japan to
play the game of world politics, elites believed the country had to rely on its
hierarchical dependency on the United States. Thus, despite being one of
the “haves,” Japan did not see itself as a “rule-maker” in the world.175
Instead, it thought of itself as a “middle power rather than a great power,”
without the heft to participate in political decision-making processes in the
international realm.176
In one respect, we could argue that Cold War Japan did not
wholeheartedly accept the norms of great power in the current international
order. It rejected the idea, for example, that it needed to re-militarize in
conjunction with its economic might in order to attain great power. The idea
of security multilateralism was not welcome, and rather Japan relied on the
United States for its security. And while Japan did not wholly reject
multilateralism and the idea of leadership in international institutions, it
often fell short in leadership roles. This lack of responsibility led to
international criticism on multiple occasions, such as during the Gulf War
crisis, when Japan’s entire purpose of power was questioned.177 In short,
Japan’s beliefs about its role in the world lacked idea advocacy: it simply
did not have the narratives of a great power-to-be.

Conclusion
Meiji Japan and Cold War Japan provide fascinating contrasting snapshots
of the same country in two different time periods—a country that was
determined to rise by the rules of great power in the late 19th century
refused to play by the same in the mid- and late 20th century. In both
periods, Japan was considered a rising power by international society. In the
first period, it lived up to the role and became an active power. In the other,
it stayed reticent. The ideas in both periods were not entirely disconnected
from each other; as political scientist Richard Samuels has pointed out,
Kato Tomosaburo, who was vice minister of the Meiji Japan navy and one
of Japan’s most remarkable naval strategists, once stated in an uncanny
foreshadow of the Yoshida Doctrine that “no matter how well prepared we
may be militarily, this will be of little use unless we develop our civilian
industrial power, promote our trade, and develop our natural resources
fully.”178 But Meiji Japan was not only prepared to develop both its
economic and military might, it was willing to act as a great power-to-be. It
upheld the rules of international order and trappings of great power at that
time, which included the great power responsibility of owning and
operating colonies. Cold War Japan did not. It focused entirely on its
economic prowess, hoping to change the rules of the game by becoming a
powerful trading state. It lacked both military capability and idea advocacy.
Despite international fears that Japan would very soon begin translating its
economic might into military strength and revisionism, Japan in fact stayed
reticent. And perhaps one can speculate here that Japan in a sense lost its
chance in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Japan began to lose its material edge—
between July 16 and October 1 in 1990, Japan’s economic boom went bust.
The Nikkei index dropped by ¥12,951, approximately 40 percent, showing
that expectations about the continued strength of the Japanese economy had
been artificially inflated.179 Now, international society’s speculation about
the next rising power turned instead to two newcomers—China and India.

[Link]
5
The Active Rise of China

In 1992, Barber Conable and David M. Lampton published an article in

Foreign Affairs that carried a stark warning. They argued that the United
States was dangerously underestimating China—that Americans
comfortably but erroneously assumed the collapse of the Soviet Union
meant that China no longer held any strategic value.1 The following year,
New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, in an article titled “The Rise of
China,” wrote that the only group in America paying “serious attention” to
China was the business community.2 In today’s world, with the 2017
National Security Strategy document of the Trump administration labeling
China the United States’ number one adversary, these warnings seem
prescient. Even Chinese historians have talked of China’s rise as inevitable,
a part of a longer arc of power transition. The historian Wang Gungwu
famously observed that this is China’s fourth rise; the sheer size of China
and the consequent “political weight” bestowed upon it, he argued, “cannot
be wished away.”3 But in the very early 1990s, at the time these warnings
were published, any discussion of China’s rise was not only unusual, but
also superfluous. For the United States, fixated as it had been on Japan as
the next challenger, China was neither an adversary nor even a rival.
Instead, China was a developing country with an authoritarian regime,
and beyond that, after the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, also a
pariah state. Yet a mere two decades later, in 2008, the New York Times
would be pointing out, “No one worries much about Japan taking over the
world today. When we wring our hands, it’s China we fear.”4 Thus,
somewhere in those years of the 1990s and 2000s, China shifted, in the
American mainstream perception, from poor pariah to a “rising economic
superpower.”5 By 2002, the journal Foreign Affairs had collected all of its
pertinent articles on China and republished them as a volume titled Rising
China. The debate was not whether China was rising; rather, it was whether
China would be a challenger power or maintain the status quo. And the
world, in turn, debated how it should respond: should China be treated as a
threat or as an opportunity?6 Buried in such angst-ridden questions about
the rise of a possible threatening power lie bigger questions: What
categorized China as a rising power? And was its behavior indeed
revisionist?
If we look at China in the 1990s we find a shift in both military and
economic power. China’s economic reforms, initiated by Deng Xiaoping’s
politics of opening and reform (gaige kaifang) in the 1980s, had resulted in
a booming economy. China had also begun to expand its military
capabilities, and it already owned that ultimate post–World War II military
capability—nuclear weapons. But material power was not the only
difference between pre- and post-1990s China. China’s behavior on the
world stage also began to change. While this behavior was scrutinized as a
possible threat to the post–Cold War world, as we will see, much of it was
in line with the behavior we have, in this book, come to expect of active
rising powers. China shifted from focusing on bilateralism and denouncing
American hegemony to accepting multilateralism, the foundation of the
post–Cold War international order. Not only did China began integrating
itself into global institutions, it, crucially, took on leadership roles. In the
1990s, China began to control, direct, and impact the processes of
multilateralism. Its behavior was active—it globalized its authority
according to the great power norms of the day, and it began to shape
perceptions of its rise. When China participated in the processes of
multilateralism it took pains to be accommodational, even when being
accommodational did not necessarily serve its security and economic
interests. And the process of its rise did not just encompass an increase in
material power; rather, it was also at this time that its elites began to engage
in narratives about what it meant for China to become a great power in the
coming decades.

The Rise of China in a Multilateral World

After the end of World War II, the world saw the dramatic proliferation of
international regimes and institutions. Whether it was the establishment of
overarching political and diplomatic institutions (including the United
Nations and later the European Union), the creation of economic and trade
institutions (such as the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, the World
Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund), the production
of disarmament regimes (the Missile Technology Control Regime, the
Chemical Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
[CTBT], and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), or the generation of
human rights institutions (the International Covenant on Economic Social
and Cultural Rights, the Convention against Torture, and the International
Criminal Court), international institutions now dominated and changed the
way countries interacted and conducted business with each other. By the
1990s, globalization was the word of the day. And the collapse of the Soviet
Union meant that these multilateral processes were now dominated by a
single superpower, the United States. Thus, even more perhaps than during
the Cold War, when dominating regional alliances and winning proxy wars
were essential components of power, being able to take a leadership role
and control, direct, and impact the processes of globalization through these
institutions became crucial for attaining great power. At the same time, the
worry about the rise of Japan as the next great power to fear was fading.
But discussions about a possible China threat were creating new anxiety.
“China threat” theory, as it was known, became the phrase du jour of the
1990s, a product of those worried about new challengers to the Western
liberal order. Journalists, academics, and policy analysts in the West and in
Asia now debated the consequences of a resurgent China. Some
unequivocally decided that China was the next challenger to the United
States and its network of global and regional allies. They saw China as a
revisionist state and a threat to the status quo. The American journalist
Charles Krauthammer, for example, declared China a “bully” that the
United States needed to purposefully contain while also simultaneously
taking steps to undermine the Communist Party of China.7 Others, while
implicitly acknowledging China as a threat, envisioned engaging rather than
containing China.8 Policymakers, thus, debated whether the Clinton
administration’s “strategic engagement” policy underestimated the growing
China threat.9 Behind China threat theories there was an early impetus. The
hope of China eventually democratizing had been crushed by the Chinese
response to the events of June 4, 1989, in Tiananmen Square. The massacre
in Tiananmen Square reminded the world, and in particular the West, not
only that China was an authoritarian state, but that democratization and the
idea of China eventually becoming “just like us” was a pipe dream. China’s
evident authoritarianism was to now provide a grim backdrop to its rising
capabilities, as the world worried whether China would upend the liberal
international order, particularly because the 1990s saw both unprecedented
economic growth and rising military investment within China.

The Material Rise of China

The opening up of post-Mao China is a well-known story. Under the

visionary leadership of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, China undertook
extensive reforms to its economy. As a result of the reforms, China
radically transformed in the decade of the 1990s. The material
circumstances of millions of Chinese briskly improved, China’s
accumulated capital soared, and urbanization rapidly increased, giving rise
to a huge middle class. China also expanded its international financial and
trade roles.10 By 2001, its trade with the rest of the world comprised $500
billion (expanding from $20 billion in the late 1970s), with China becoming
the world’s sixth largest exporter and sixth largest importer,11 accounting
for almost 24 percent of world GDP growth.12 Remarkably, it moved from
accounting for less than 1 percent of global trade in 1980 to about 6 percent
by 2003. By the early 2000s, China’s own economy was averaging an
astonishing almost 8 percent GDP growth.13 In a nutshell, China’s
economic growth was a jaw-dropping phenomenon, uplifting as it did a
poor country into the ranks of the world economic powerhouses, and
prompting one policy analyst to declare it “one of the most important and
far-reaching developments in the last half millennium.”14
Equally significantly, China began investing in its military, alarming its
neighbors and the United States. The official defense budget for China in
1993 was stated as $7.3 billion, but as the Washington Post pointed out, “no
serious analyst accepts that. . . . The official budget does not include the
costs of arms procurement or R&D. Nor does it include profits generated
from the vast commercial operations of the People’s Liberation Army
(PLA). In recent years, the PLA has become by far the largest economic
conglomerate in China and one of the biggest in Asia.”15 Absent any
official Chinese documents or white papers released during this time,
analysts combed Chinese sources and prepared comprehensive reports to
build a more accurate picture of Chinese military buildup. The resulting
figures did nothing to soothe those fearing the rise of a new challenger.
The International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) estimated that in
1992 China’s defense expenditures were over $21 billion.16 RAND,
accounting for purchasing power parity, argued that China’s defense
expenditures by 1994 actually stood at around $140 billion.17 By 1996, IISS
and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) were
estimating that the PLA’s total spending was in the range of $28–$36
billion, four or five times the officially stated figures.18 Its military
modernization included acquiring or building weapons systems that would
enable China to project power beyond its shores—Russian SU-27 fighter
aircraft, in-flight refueling technology, Russian Kilo class submarines,
buying or building aircraft carriers;19 modernization of its intermediate-
range ballistic missile (IRBM) force, and submarine launched ballistic
missiles (SLBMs). China also developed the capability to meet a range of
threats, including conventional land invasion, nuclear attacks, air-to-air
engagement over land and sea, and naval sea battles.20 For the decade
between 1989 and 1999, SIPRI estimated that on average, China’s military
expenditures hovered steadily around 2 percent of its total GDP.21
Although China’s military budget and expenditures were indeed
increasing, it is also important to understand this increase within some
context. Its capabilities were nowhere on par with the United States at the
time,22 and moreover, its defense budget was “a fraction” of the budget of
developed countries.23 However, the concern was that this was merely the
“takeoff phase” in the military buildup of a rising power that would
eventually challenge the region and the world.24 Moreover, the fact that the
increasing Chinese military investment came in the post–Cold War era—a
period of relative peace, when other nuclear powers were reducing their
military investments25—and at a time when China did not face an
immediate national security threat raised misgivings around the world.
All of this must be understood in the context, too, of the ever-present
specter of Tiananmen. The Washington Post, for example, explicitly
invoked the Tiananmen Square incident to emphasize the seriousness of
China’s arms buildup, pointing out, “The West [was] about to be
unpleasantly surprised by the emergence of a non-democratic military
superpower in the world arena, armed with the most modern advanced
nuclear and conventional arms” and that “since the Tiananmen Square
massacre, the official Chinese defense budget [had] increased every year at
double the rates. It is now more than double the pre-1989 figure.”26
Similarly, China’s neighbors also either viewed China warily, as “an
emerging [strategic] player who would eventually replace Japan,”27 or with
open anxiety. As Singapore prime minister Goh Tok Chong remarked in
1995, “It is important to bring into the open this underlying sense of
discomfort, even insecurity, about the political and military ambitions of
China.”28
China was not simply on its way to becoming an economic powerhouse
and building up its military prowess and power-projection capabilities, it
was also changing its behavior on the world stage. This change was noted
quite extensively by China experts, but its significance was overlooked in
the international arena, focused as the world was on China’s altering
capabilities and authoritarian regime. China in the 1990s was markedly
different from 1980s China, not only in capabilities, but also, and equally
importantly, in behavior. This behavior was, moreover, accommodational of
the norms of great power at the time.

China Rises: The Active Path to Great Power

Let’s take a closer look at the striking transition in China’s international

behavior from the 1980s to the 1990s. In the 1980s, China’s economic
reforms had begun to transform its domestic structure and economy.
However, China was not yet a player on the world stage. Despite some steps
to take part in, for example, educational and scientific knowledge
exchanges abroad, China’s focus was inward. It was not simply that it
couldn’t be a global player, but also that it refrained from attempting to be
one. Although Deng Xiaoping was willing to open China up to the world,
he was very wary of becoming enmeshed in US-led and created
international institutions that could be used against China to constrain it or
force it to act against its interests. “Beijing sought many of the rights and
privileges of a great power [but] without accepting most of the attendant
obligations and responsibilities.”29 This dynamic was evident at many
levels. China rarely undertook diplomatic initiatives; it played little role in
the United Nations; it was not a member of many international institutions;
other than its ongoing commitment to the “Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence” (conceived by prime ministers Zhou Enlai and Jawaharlal
Nehru, this pact affirmed Chinese and Indian commitment to non-
interference, equality, and peace), it made little effort to promote neighborly
ties, and it remained untethered to any major security regimes. In short,
China eschewed any leadership or prominent roles on the global stage.
In the 1990s, however, this behavior began to change, and by the early
2000s the pace had quickened. Setting aside the role of passive player in
world politics, China began to take steps not just to integrate into many
institutions and regimes in the world order, but also to put forth initiatives
in which it assumed the role of leader in various aspects of international
issues. There were multiple new and overlapping kinds of behavior—from
bilateral cooperation and participation to the expansion and initiation of
economic, diplomatic, and security ties. The fact that this behavior was
different from the past decade was noted and commented upon by many
China experts. David Shambaugh dubbed it China “going global.”30 Evan
Medeiros and M. Taylor Fravel called it a “stark departure from more than a
decade of Chinese passivity.”31
One of the most important steps China took was to expand and deepen its
bilateral relationships and establish multilateral networks. In the years 1988
to 1994, China established or normalized bilateral ties with eighteen
countries, as well as with the new countries that emerged from the
disintegrated Soviet Union.32 Some of the transformation of its bilateral
relationships occurred through the settlement of border disputes, including
with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Russia, Tajikistan, and Vietnam.
From the mid-1990s onward, China also began to deepen these bilateral
relationships, by establishing what it called “partnerships” at different levels
of engagement with various countries.33 The partnerships involved both
economic and security collaborations, and reflected China’s anxiety about
the United States’ network of regional alliances. The China-Russia
relationship which began in the mid-1990s is a case in point. Between 1992
and 1996 the Sino-Russian relationship undertook a dramatic
transformation. It changed from a “friendly” relationship to a “constructive
partnership” to a “strategic partnership.”34 Since China and its relationship
with the Soviet Union had soured and split in the 1960s, many issues, both
broad and specific—including differing interpretations of history, opposing
ideologies, mutual insecurity, Chinese illegal immigrants, and border
disputes—had made strong bilateral ties unthinkable. Thus, rapprochement
involved several steps including, importantly, the settling of several
contested border territories. Determined to improve ties, the Chinese stayed
flexible on the settlements, resulting eventually in treaties in 1997 and
1998, and a final border deal in 2004.35 At the same time, Russian arms
sales and technology transfers to China rapidly increased, and by 2005 the
Chinese and Russians were conducting joint military exercises, code-named
“peace mission,” in Vladivostok and the Shandong Peninsula. According to
the Beijing Review, they were “the largest scale military exercises the PLA
[had] ever launched with foreign Armed Forces.”36 Improving Sino-
Russian bilateral ties were highlighted by a twenty-year renewable
friendship treaty signed in 2001 by both President Jiang Zemin and
President Vladimir Putin—an unthinkable occurrence a decade prior.
In addition to improving bilateral ties with neighbors, China also reached
out to the European Union and even NATO, initiating political dialogues
and formal conversations. By 2003, China and the European Union were
committed to building an “all around strategic partnership,” undercutting
the arms embargo that the EU had placed on China after the Tiananmen
Square massacre in 1989. Trade with the EU rapidly climbed, and China
soon became second only to the United States in terms of the European
Union’s foreign trade. China also embarked upon a number of projects with
the EU including, importantly, participation in Galileo, the EU civilian
global navigation satellite system.37
Most significantly of all, China began to actively integrate itself into the
existing international regimes in compelling ways. Economically,
diplomatically, and politically, it took steps to enmesh itself in existing
global trade, diplomatic, and security regimes by joining various treaties,
increasing its participation in multilateral organizations, and spearheading
the creation of new institutions. At the end of 1989, China was a member of
12 percent of all intergovernmental organizations. By 1997 this had
increased to 20 percent.38 By the end of the 1990s, China was a member of
several hundred international organizations and regimes, including the
Nonproliferation Treaty (1992), the United Nations Convention on the Law
of the Sea (1996), the International Covenant on Economic Social and
Cultural Rights, and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC, 1989), and the
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). (ASEAN stands for the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations.) But China was by no means content during this
time to be a passive player in these institutions. Its changing relations with
ASEAN in the 1990s present a case of how China not only deepened
relationships with regional neighbors, but also became an active member of
international institutions and took on leadership responsibilities.
In 1994 ASEAN established the ARF for its members and invited
partners. The ARF was the first regional Asia-Pacific multilateral institution
for dialogues on peace and security in the Indo-Pacific that could lead to
cooperation between countries that had a stake in the region. China was
initially suspicious of the ARF as a tool of American influence, but by 1997
it had become an active participant in the institution as well as the Track II
(unofficial) dialogues that complemented official proceedings.39 In 1997
China helped to initiate the ASEAN + 3 forum, which comprised annual
meetings between China, Japan, South Korea, and the ten members of
ASEAN. In 2001 China initiated ASEAN + 1, which resulted in a
groundbreaking agreement in 2002, the China-ASEAN Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA). CAFTA, which was formalized in 2004, was the
world’s largest free trade agreement, covering 1.7 billion people in China
and Southeast Asia.40 China pushed for the launch of the annual Boao
Forum, which held its first meeting in 2001 on Hainan Island, bringing
together business leaders and government officials for a regional dialogue.
By 2003 more than 1,000 delegates from around the region were attending
the meetings. China also initiated the idea of using the ARF to increase
communication among the militaries of Asian countries. And in 2002,
China espoused the idea of a defense ministers’ dialogue within the
framework of the ARF, an idea that had originally been suggested by US
diplomats.41 As a result of this participation and these initiatives,
economically China became “the new game in town,”42 nudging Japan
away from its financial role. There were now both increasing investment in
China and increasing Chinese investment in Asia; China’s investment in
ASEAN grew from $400 million in the 1980s to $2.9 billion in 2002, while
61 percent of China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) came from Asia.
Moreover, China’s decision to tolerate trade deficits with countries in the
region ($23 billion deficit with South Korea, $16.4 billion deficit with
ASEAN) increased the growing economic interdependence with China at
the core.43
In central Asia, China spearheaded the creation of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2001. It included Russia, Kyrgyzstan,
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. (The first four of these had met in
Shanghai in 1996 and 1997 to reach agreements with regard to border
security and confidence-building measures. But China then took a leading
role to expand this forum—including Uzbekistan—into the SCO.) The SCO
became the world’s first security forum that did not include the United
States.44 Together, the SCO members vowed to “combat terrorism,
separatism, and religious extremism.” While the Sino-Russian relationship
was the core of the SCO, the SCO also served to expand China’s energy and
economic trade with other Central Asian countries.
The 1990s also saw China significantly alter its behavior when it came to
security institutions and regimes. China continued to remain non-aligned
and did not embrace multilateral security alliances, but it began to indicate
that it accepted the underlying norms of existing security institutions. While
this behavior had begun in the 1980s, when China shifted from completely
rejecting any arms control measures to endorsing some arms control
positions and institutions such as the Conference on Disarmament and the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), by the very early 1990s
China had still not joined most major international non-proliferation
regimes and negotiations. During the decade of the 1990s, however, China’s
participation both increased and deepened. It joined many major
international arms control and non-proliferation treaties, and introduced a
variety of domestic regulations that governed the exports of nuclear,
chemical, and dual-use materials and technologies. It signed the Non-
Proliferation Treaty (1992) and the CTBT (1996), signed and ratified the
Chemical Weapons Convention (1993, 1997), and joined the Nuclear
Suppliers Group (2004). In 1996 it also pledged not to provide assistance to
unsafeguarded nuclear facilities and began dialogue with other multilateral
export control regimes like the Missile Technology Control Regime, the
Australia Group, and the Wassenaar Arrangement.45
But again, as in the case of trade regimes, China did not simply assume
the role of a passive member. Between the late 1990s and 2002, it also
undertook various diplomatic initiatives through these treaties and
conventions to push for a consensus that US missile defense plans were a
threat to the already existing global arms control and non-proliferation
regimes. At the United Nations, China rallied many Global South countries
to push through a non-binding resolution that would sustain the 1972 Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty and prevent the weaponization of outer space.46 In
1997, it established a new Department of Arms Control and Disarmament
within its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, showing its commitment to
instituting an export control system. It also created a China Arms Control
and Disarmament Association in 2001 to coordinate China’s emerging
NGO arms-control research programs.47
With its participation in current institutions and assumption of leadership
roles, China also upped its game diplomatically. China’s top leaders began
taking a more active role in international summits, forums, and meetings. In
the 1990s, Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, and Li Peng increased their travel
tremendously within Asia and outside of the continent. The launch of the
Asian European Meeting (ASEM) by ASEAN in 1996 in Thailand (to bring
together the European Union, European Commission, ASEAN countries,
and China, Japan, and South Korea) was first attended by Chinese prime
minister Li Peng, and subsequent meetings were consistently attended by
official Chinese representatives. This diplomatic commitment increased
even more in the 2000s. In 2001, China offered to host the ASEM Foreign
Ministers meeting in Beijing. In 2003, President Hu Jintao and Prime
Minister Wen Jiabao traveled to Indonesia for ASEAN talks. Within forty-
four hours, Wen attended twenty meetings, proposed twenty-nine
collaborative proposals, and signed a wide variety of diplomatic
agreements.48 The international diplomacy by top Chinese leaders stood in
contrast to the style of Mao, who went abroad only twice in his life, to the
Soviet Union, and of Deng, who also traveled abroad very rarely.
Toward the late 1990s and early 2000s, China also began to try its hand
at peacemaking. During the 1993–1994 nuclear crisis with North Korea, it
was a passive onlooker. But this was to change. China began by
participating during the Four-Party Talks (the multilateral dialogue effort
with North Korea, South Korea, and the United States to negotiate a lasting
peace) in 1997 and 1998. By 1999, China was hosting. In January 2003,
when North Korea initiated another crisis by withdrawing from the Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and beginning again to operate its nuclear
facilities, China took on a more noticeably active role to rein in North
Korea. China shuffled troops around the Sino-Korean border; it suspended
vital oil shipments to North Korea; and it sent high-level envoys to the
country. And, crucially, it decided to broker direct talks between the United
States and North Korea. By April 2003, China had held more than sixty
meetings with North Korean officials and had transmitted over fifty
messages between Beijing and Pyongyang and between Beijing and
Washington. It is also rumored that China secretly sent Vice Premier Qian
Qichen to North Korea to discuss a way out of the crisis with Kim Jong-
Il.49 The failure of tripartite talks between China, North Korea, and the
United States led China to initiate and host the Six-Party Talks (involving
China, Russia, Japan, the United States, South Korea, and North Korea).
Between 2003 and 2006, the Chinese government “remained a central
driving force” for the Six-Party Talks, and hosted all four rounds of the
forum, helping Sino-US relations reach a “mini-climax.”50
In another example of the switch to active peacemaking diplomacy,
China also reversed its attitude toward peacekeeping. When China assumed
its seat at the United Nations in 1971, it completely rejected the idea of
involvement with UN peacekeeping. But, two decades later, in 1992, China
sent its first peacekeeping troops to the United Nations Transitional
Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). By 1999, China had increased its troop
commitments to peacekeeping, as evidenced by the size of the contingent it
sent to East Timor. It also changed the quality of its participation,
dispatching “highly trained and sought after enabler troops—the
logisticians, engineers, and medical teams that provide the backbone for
peacekeeping missions in the field.”51 By the early 2000s, China was
deploying combat troops, representing a “major breakthrough” from
previous patterns of deployment.52

Active and Accommodational of Great Power Norms

All in all, it was clear that from the 1990s onward China had begun to
completely redefine its role in the international system. As political scientist
Andrew Nathan has pointed out, “[China] moved from a position of almost
no participation in international regimes” to one where it “participates in
almost all of the major international regimes in which it is eligible to
participate.”53 But it was not simply that its behavior changed. Rather, its
behavior changed in very specific ways. China was beginning to acquire
global authority and to shape both internal and external perceptions of its
rise. If we look at the kinds of behavior that China undertook in the 1990s
(and accelerated in the early 2000s), what we find is that the behavior was
accommodational of the great power norms of the day. Great power by the
late 20th century meant the exercise of power through multilateralism and
international institutions. Great power was not simply a recognition of a
country’s capabilities, but also a recognition of a country’s ability to set the
global agenda through institutions. And with its new behavior, China was
making its first attempts to control, direct, and impact the processes of
globalization.
Some of the behavior China undertook was expected, that is, it was
behavior that benefited it not only in terms of security,54 but also
economically (regional integration with ASEAN or creating the SCO, for
example). But China also undertook important actions that were quite
puzzling and difficult to understand if seen only from the point of view of
increasing material power and fortifying its security and economic interests.
However, these actions can be understood if seen as efforts to be
accommodational of established international norms.
To begin with, there were no international institutions that China joined,
only to violate the rules thereof. 55 Nor was it the case that China only took
part in international regimes and agreements that it perceived, as some have
argued, as yielding concrete material and security benefits.56 Consider, for
example, China’s efforts to settle border disputes; the terms reached on a
number of these settlements were not necessarily favorable to China—in
some cases it even lost up to half the territory at stake.57 Thus, these
settlements did not necessarily benefit China materially, but they increased
its global authority by showcasing its willingness to behave “responsibly,”
contrasting with perceptions of it as a threatening actor in bilateral and
multilateral settings. In other important cases, China committed itself to
settling disputes peacefully—one example is the contestation over the
Paracel, Spratly, and Senkaku islands—by drawing on international law. To
this end, it even signed a code of conduct with ASEAN in 2002 that was
based mostly on language drafted by ASEAN rather than China, which
again showed its willingness to be accommodational of international
order.58
In one of the biggest and most dramatic about-faces59 in its behavior,
China also signed onto many arms-control regimes in the 1990s, as
mentioned earlier. From once condemning the arms-control institutions as
serving to consolidate the hegemony of two superpowers, it now began
cooperating with international efforts to curtail the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, including in friendly governments like North Korea and Iran.60 It
participated in and even took the lead on curtailing arms exports with the
result that the “scope, content, and frequency of its export of sensitive
weapons-related items declined.”61 In the area of nuclear arms control, it
aligned its views on arms control with that of the United Kingdom and
France, declared open support for the norm of non-proliferation, and
importantly, as noted earlier, it signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992,
signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, and signed
the CTBT in 1996.62 As Nicola Leveringhaus and Kate Sullivan de Estrada
point out, this behavior was surprisingly “conformist”; before the 1990s,
China had not just stayed away from the arms control regimes but had been
a “vocal outsider,” even supplying nuclear assistance to other socialist
countries.63 Signing onto arms control treaties like the CTBT thus came at a
price. Such arms control measures not only placed limits on testing, but also
risked domestic stability, as military hardliners in the Chinese government
were against it.64 Similarly, China displayed surprising cooperation with
and commitment to space regimes that governed the “peaceful and orderly
use of outer space,” even when geopolitical rivalry was at stake.65
China displayed surprising cooperation in terms of economics, trade, and
diplomacy as well. As China’s investment in Southeast Asia grew, it
tolerated huge trade deficits with Asian countries, and it made political
compromises with ASEAN—for example, Beijing signed political
agreements with ASEAN, such as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties
in the South China Sea, where it pledged self-restraint.66 During the Asian
financial crisis of 1997–1998, despite being protected by its own currency
control and large foreign exchange reserves which helped buffer its
economy, China took steps to assist Southeast Asian countries by not
devaluing its currency and by offering aid packages and loans at low
interest rates.67 Even China’s hosting of the Four Party talks was
noteworthy—NATO had just mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in
Belgrade, leading to immense Chinese hostility toward the United States.
Yet, China refrained from using the international platform afforded by the
talks to condemn the United States.68 Moreover, it found a voice to protest
actions through the established norms of international institutions and rules
(for example, when it protested US missile defense) rather than outside of
them.
Thus, in many aspects, China began to play by the post–Cold War rules
of great power rather than resist them. Its behavior changed in the 1990s
when it moved to join, comply with, and lead international institutions and
regimes. In short, it was an active rising power. And like the United States
before it, the process of its active rise was accompanied not only by
increasing military and economic power, but also by narratives about how
to become a great power.

Narratives of Attaining Great Power

It was not that 1980s China did not have a conception about China’s place
in the international system. Nor was it that China did not think of itself as a
great civilization. On the contrary, China had always been acutely aware of
its great power past. But, even within China, discourse on China’s rise was
uncommon until the mid-1990s. A simple search of the CNKI archives, the
database of Chinese-language journals and newspapers, reveals that the
earliest explicit reference to China’s modern rise (jueqi) does not appear
until 1994.69 But once such discourse appeared, narratives also proliferated
on what it meant for China to be on the path to great power. The narratives
were about China regaining great power, the notion that China needed to
recalibrate its role globally, and about conceiving what the current
international system itself held for China. Aptly perhaps, in 1994, the
Chinese scholar Ye Zicheng offered the phrase “China’s great power
consciousness” (daguo yishi), which he said China was just beginning to
develop, even while he cautioned that it was not really yet a great power.70
During the Cold War, China had viewed the distribution of power in the
world in very stark terms. China saw the Cold War world as divided by the
domination of hegemonic powers. These hegemonic powers strove for
global domination by constraining others. Thus, one important guiding
principle in the 1980s was the idea that China needed to aggressively
counter “hegemonism” (baquan zhuyi). Anti-hegemonism (fanba), the
successor to the Maoist principle of anti-imperialism, primarily meant
guiding Chinese foreign policy opposition to the superpower status of the
United States. But in the 1990s, Chinese government statements dropped
anti-hegemonism as a prominent idea in Chinese foreign policy, indicating
that its most foundational foreign policy goals had shifted.71 What did this
shift in ideas mean, and which ideas replaced it?
Most importantly, there was an increasing recognition among Chinese
elites of the forces of global interdependence (xianghu yicun).
Interdependence was hardly mentioned as a concept or considered
important prior to the 1990s. Indeed, China had, in the past, even belittled
the liberal international order and its institutions.72 Writing in Foreign
Affairs, American academic and noted China scholar Michael Oksenberg
noted of the 1980s, “The prevalent stated Chinese conceptual framework
leaves little room for notions of interdependence and subordination of
national independence to international norms and regimes—ideas likely to
be central to the American search in the 1990s for a new international
order.”73 Chinese academics began flagging the significance of global
interdependence in the early 1990s, pointing out, for example, that countries
were facing many common problems and challenges,74 and that it was
important to address global interdependence with foresight because
participation would make China a truly global partner.75 By the mid-1990s,
such beliefs had picked up steam. Prominent Chinese academics such as
Wang Yizhou (Peking University) were emphasizing that China needed to
start thinking globally in order to transform itself in accordance with the
processes of globalization.76 Liu Jingbo (PLA National Defense University)
argued that China’s development simply could not occur in isolation.77
Wang Jisi (Peking University) offered that Chinese officials were now
exploring ideas of the “Asian path of modernization”—that modernization
was not equivalent to Westernization, and that international interaction
would benefit China.78
At the same time, Chinese elites remained wary, asserting that
interdependence did not imply that “the economic security of sovereign
states” should be undermined, nor that there “should be discrimination in
international trade or attempts to use currency and financial levers to
impose political and economic conditions which violate the legitimate
national interests of any particular country.”79 Yet while beliefs differed on
the exact nature of interdependence and how it could constrain China, there
is no doubt that Chinese elites increasingly understood that interdependence
was crucial to China’s rise. General beliefs about the importance of
interdependence in terms of China’s approach can be divided into two broad
types of narratives.
The first category of narratives was a response to how China perceived
its external situation and threats to its changing position: these narratives
attempted to underline how China was not a threat to the United States, its
neighbors, or the international order. The second category of narratives
framed what China’s role could be, given external realities. Underlying both
of these two categories was the belief that a stable external environment
would enable China to focus on its economic development, would serve as
a way to create an image of China as a rising power promoting peace and
cooperation,80 and importantly, would bolster recognition of China’s
position as a major power operating within rather than outside the
parameters of the current international order. In short, China’s apparent
willingness to integrate into the international order became an explicit way
of communicating that China could and would behave like a great power-
to-be. These narratives together assured the world, and the United States
and its neighbors, in particular, that a rising China would not be a
challenger to fear; showed how China could gain influence in the world;
and defined its image in the international system.
Responding to the international situation in the 1990s, and the
proliferation of “China threat theories (zhongguo weixielun) in the United
States, narratives began to percolate in China about its benign path to great
power. Elites began to emphasize that it was not a threat to the current
international order, and that indeed it accepted many aspects of it. Shortly
after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, speaking at the Fourteenth
Party Congress, Jiang Zemin stated that “China abides strictly by the
charter of the United Nations and the acknowledged norms of international
relations. . . . Differences and disputes between nations should be resolved
peacefully through negotiation, in compliance with the United Nations
charter and the norms of international law, and force or the threat of force
should not be used.”81 The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, always
a tenet of Chinese foreign policy, were given renewed emphasis in the
1990s. Reassuring the United States that a rising China would not be a
threat became key.
China had long adhered to the inevitability of multipolarity (duojihua),
arguing that eventually the world would become a multipolar one. But now,
Chinese elites also asked what the nature of that multipolarity would be:
whether regional powers would be able to form a pole or whether a pole
would consist of just the United States, Russia, and China. By the late
1990s, there was a consensus that the world was both unipolar and
multipolar (yi chao duo qiang).82 In such a world, where China was gaining
a voice but the United States remained a crucial deterrent to it gaining great
power, it became important to ensure China’s path to great power within the
constraints of the current order while limiting American antagonism. Thus,
China was still often harshly critical of United States’ policies and remained
wary of attempts to “Westernize” China and turn it into a “Western
dependency”; it also often emphasized a “consciousness of suffering”83 and
memories of victimization at the hands of imperialism84 as a key part of
Chinese identity. But China also now began to combine this with other
narratives: rather than promoting “anti-hegemonism,” China began to
emphasize that engagement with the United States was critical to its
growing influence. In 1992, Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen declared
that China and the United States should not antagonize each other, and that
China, in fact, represented an opportunity for Americans.85 The ideas about
normalizing the relationship and engaging the United States after the low
point of Tiananmen were so important that they survived despite serious
bilateral friction over events such as the Taiwan crisis in 1995–199686 and
the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
China was also very eager to reassure its neighbors that it did not pose a
threat to the region. Accordingly, it re-emphasized its “good neighbor”
policy (mulin zhengce). The “good neighbor” policy was begun in the
1980s alongside China’s economic reform to help it develop friendly
relations with the surrounding countries and create a supportive regional
environment for its economic modernization.87 In the 1990s, in addition to
promoting cooperation, the “good neighbor” policy also now meant
explicitly reassuring its neighbors that China would support the current
norms of the international system. The “good neighbor” policy both
harkened back to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and put forth
new ideas. Broadly, the policy had four ideas: sovereign equality, peaceful
coexistence, seeking common ground while resolving differences, and
seeking a peaceful settlement of territorial border disputes.88 While the
former two ideas originated in the Five Principles, the latter two promoted a
new approach to the region. This approach meant an emphasis on frequent
high-level communications and active bilateral relationships, participation
in and promotion of regional security dialogues and economic cooperation,
a calm response to changes in neighboring countries, and maintenance of
peace and stability in the region.89 From 1997, China also offered the idea
of a “new type of security relations” (xin anquan guan). The “new security
concept” emphasized that countries could ensure collective security by
cooperating with each other.90 Some elites saw it in even more ambitious
terms. They saw this concept as a rejection of the narrative that threats to
security (anquan weixie) were the result of differences in the military
strength (junshili de chaju) of countries.91 Under this new concept, common
interests (gongtong de anquan liyi), mutual trust (xianghu xinren), and
economic development (jingji fazhan) were the foundations of international
security (guoji anquan de jichu).92 Moreover, “a new type of security
relations” was put forth as a Chinese concept, even while cautioning that in
taking such a lead, China should beware of inciting suspicions (yixin) and
wariness (jiexin) of itself.93 At the same time, along with the narrative that
China was not a threat to the current international order and was rather a
peaceful and cooperative large nation, there was also now a proliferation of
narratives about how China could adapt and leverage influence in the
international system.
China began to endorse the idea of multilateralism (duobian zhuyi)—
another shift, as previous Chinese Communist Party policy had been to
promote bilateralism over multilateralism. But Jiang Zemin now explicitly
embraced multilateralism in Chinese foreign policy.94 This was compatible
with previous Chinese beliefs about great power and the acquisition of
power and influence. The Chinese conception of hegemony, at its core,
included the belief that the hegemons use their resources to direct and
control the behavior of other countries.95 Thus, multilateralism and the use
and control of international institutions were now cast as an important way
for China to play a leading role in the international system.
In 1991, an article by academic Zhang Wu noted how ASEAN countries
had begun to develop multilateral military ties to strengthen regional
security cooperation.96 A few years later, in March 1994, Prime Minister Li
Peng declared China’s support for dialogues on security and cooperation in
the Asia-Pacific region, and in May of that year, Foreign Minister Qian
Qichen promised for the first time that China would play an active role in
the ARF.97 Later that year, Qian went on to outline China’s ideas on
regional multilateralism. He reiterated that China was committed to
dialogues and consultation on the basis of some foundational principles:
that all countries would be equal and respectful of each other’s sovereignty
as per the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence; that no country would
aim to become a hegemon, organize into military blocs, or seek spheres of
influence; that countries would adopt a fair approach to disarmament and
arms control, would prevent nuclear proliferation, and would settle
territorial and border disputes and other differences peacefully without the
use of force.98 There were also voices of caution on multilateralism,
particularly multilateral security efforts: multilateral security, some
suggested, could only be built once cooperative relations between major
powers had been established. Others believed that efforts to promote
multilateral security were not the answer to solving major disputes in the
region.99 Yet the contesting ideas on multilateralism leaned toward
accepting rather than rejecting multilateralism. Accepting multilateralism
would be linked by the late 1990s and early 2000s to another related
narrative: how China could be a responsible great power.
China conceiving of itself as a responsible great power is often attributed
in the West to US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick.100 In 2005,
Zoellick had famously called for China to become a “responsible
international stakeholder” in the international system. But, in fact, Chinese
elites were discussing the idea of China’s responsibility as a great power in
the international system many years prior to Zoellick’s urging. As early as
1992, in a speech to the US Foreign Policy Association, Qian Qichen
characterized China as a “responsible great power” (fuzeren de daguo).101
This was the first time that any senior Chinese leader had explicitly tied
together the concept of “responsibility” and “great power.”102 As an article
in the Chinese journal World Economics and Politics explicitly titled
“China’s Responsibility as a Great Power and Its Regional Strategy”
pointed out in 2003, Chinese academics had been discussing the objectives
of China as a responsible great power since the 1990s.103 But ideas about
how China could be a responsible great power would multiply by the
middle of the first decade of the 2000s. Responsibility as a great power was
discussed with reference to three connected elements: great power
responsibility as a whole, China’s responsibility as a great power in
particular, and the importance of multilateralism in showcasing China’s
willingness to act responsibly.
One argument strand was that modern-day great powers who took on
responsibility were different from traditional great powers precisely because
they recognized that today’s international community is characterized by
pluralism, coexistence, and interdependence.104 And since China was an
influential power in the world, a great power that needed to step up to its
responsibilities and obligations, it could play a crucial role in maintaining
peace and stability through participating in multilateral cooperation.105
Thus, responsibility was explicitly tied to China’s own role in
multilateralism.
Given China’s authoritarian regime, some may argue that these beliefs
about great power did not represent idea advocacy (elite narratives debating
and discussing the path to great power), but rather were simply imposed
from the top. This would be a mistake. It is true that unlike the United
States in the late nineteenth century, China was not and is not a democratic
rising power. Domestic ideas in China were and continue to be subject to
state approval. This does not mean, however, that these narratives were
indistinguishable from state propaganda, but rather that they had to exist
with the blessing of the Chinese Communist Party.106 The passionate and
public debates that existed within the United States when it was rising
would be hard to duplicate in China today, and were hard to duplicate in the
1990s. And some of these narratives could also have been solicited by the
Chinese government. But this also does not imply elite consensus in China.
Rather, just as in the United States as an active rising power, there were
divisions among Chinese elites about China’s path to great power.
The emergence and demise of the “peaceful rise” theory under President
Hu Jintao in the early 2000s illustrates not only some of the narratives that
had crystallized in China in the 1990s about the path to great power, but
also how these narratives built upon preexisting foundations, and could be
interpreted in varying ways. Hu Jintao took office at a time when China’s
rise was, like that of the United States in 1898, undisputed. In 2002, shortly
after Hu Jintao came to power, one of his confidants, Zheng Bijian, visited
the United States and became concerned about the pervasive “China threat”
theories. On Zheng’s return, he put forth the concept for the “development
path of China’s peaceful rise” (zhongguo heping jueqi fazhan de daolu). His
idea was approved by Hu Jintao, and the theory of China’s “peaceful rise”
(heping jueqi) was advanced. Some contend that the idea predated Zheng
and Hu and had already been prevalent in academic and think tank circles,
particularly in Shanghai. Whatever the origin of the idea, it was clear that it
was a new type of belief about China’s changing status, and it led to
diverging elite ideas about its implications.
At its most basic, the idea of a peaceful rise was meant to convey that
China would avoid the path of previous colonialists and imperialists,
because it would not pursue expansion and instead would promote peace,
cooperation, and development. Thus, unlike historical power transitions, the
coming power transition would not be conflictual. The idea had three
concepts that emanated from the leadership: developing socialist economic
and political institutions, fostering Chinese civilization, and creating an
appropriate social environment to guarantee that China would rise
peacefully without seeking hegemony. These elements of “peaceful rise”
were not simply accepted as a given by the Chinese epistemic community.
Rather, there was much discussion and a range of different narratives
among elite scholars and policy analysts about what exactly “peaceful rise”
meant, what China’s behavior in the international system should be, and
whether China’s “peaceful rise” was even possible. But all of this happened
under the governmental umbrella of permissible discussion.
A survey of the flagship journal of the China Institutes of Contemporary
International Relations (CICIR),107 one of China’s most powerful think
tanks affiliated with the government, for the years 2004–2005, as well as
interviews conducted by the author, reveal a range of narratives on the
concept. For example, some writers emphasized that a “peaceful rise” was
dependent on China’s external environment and that China had a
responsibility to shape that environment. Some located responsibility in
reputation—in order to effect a peaceful rise, China needed to increase its
national power yet maintain the image of a responsible great power for the
international community. Others emphasized that China needed to go
beyond a mere projection of image, and not only maintain a commitment to
peace, but create a framework to do so within the constraints and rules of
the international system. But there were also skeptics who deviated from
these narratives. They were not only more pessimistic about China’s ability
to control its rise, but also skeptical of even the possibility of a peaceful
power transition. Still others believed a peaceful rise to be conditional not
on China’s policies as much as on the existence of an opportune
geopolitical structure. Other naysayers believed that the United States
would never tolerate the rise of China, making the question of a peaceful
rise moot.108
However, within a few years, the theory of “peaceful rise” fell out of
favor and was replaced by discussions of “peaceful development” (heping
fazhan). The first wind of this came when Hu Jintao in a speech in April
2004 mentioned “peace and stability” and “peaceful coexistence” but not
“peaceful rise.” Rather, he emphasized that China would follow the road of
“peaceful development.” The consensus was that the leadership made the
decision to allow the discussion of “peaceful rise” in academic circles but
no longer use it in “leadership speeches, or government and Party
documents.”109 The opacity of decision-making means that we do not know
exactly what transpired and exactly why “peaceful rise” was replaced. An
interviewee said in conversation with the author that he believes it was a
deliberate decision reached at the highest levels. (Others, including China
policy analysts Bonnie Glaser and Evan Medeiros, have suggested that the
“demise” of peaceful rise was due to passivity more than anything else.)
Other interviewees suggested that the reasons could have been prosaic (for
instance, Zheng Bijian falling out of favor) but were most likely related to
domestic belief disputes about the appropriateness of the concept.
Some believed the word “rise” in “peaceful rise” unsettled China’s
neighbors. Others thought that “rise” (jueqi) itself was an immodest term—
it was acceptable for foreigners to talk of China’s rise, but immodest for the
Chinese themselves to do so. Some suggested that there should be more
focus on the idea of China as “a responsible stakeholder.” Peaceful
development as a concept did not generate as much of a divergence of
narratives as peaceful rise. Some did attempt to root out specific differences
between the two concepts of peaceful rise and peaceful development, tying
each concept to the relative pace of change of China’s status—whether it
was or was not rising quickly. A search of the articles in the Contemporary
International Relations journal for 2005 reveals more usage of “peaceful
development,” but also shows that the two terms were often used almost
interchangeably.110
The narratives that proliferated and were debated in China in the 1990s
showcased very particular kinds of beliefs. They reconciled China’s
capabilities with the constraints of the international order, focusing
particular attention on those goals perceived to be materially attainable
within such constraints. Crucially, they acknowledged the current norms of
great power by outlining China’s acquisition of global authority within the
framework of these norms and defining its relationship with the status quo
great power (the United States) and the current international order. The
narratives tried to shape perceptions of China’s role in the international
system, presenting China as a great power-to-be in order to expand its
influence. And finally, these narratives explained the purpose and goals of
China’s increasing international involvement for its domestic public.
These narratives were accommodational of the great power norms of the
current international order—the ability to set the global agenda through
multilateralism and the dominance of institutions—and an acknowledgment
that, to actively rise to be a great power and be recognized as such, China
needed to first behave in accordance with these norms. Thus, behavior such
as Chinese peacemaking actions in North Korea in the 1990s, for example,
should also be understood in the light of narratives that emphasized the
need for China to build and prioritize a multilateral security cooperation
mechanism (duobian anquan hezuo jizhi) over bilateral ties in Northeast
Asia to tackle the security crisis.111 And China’s leadership behavior within
international institutions can be seen in the context of its understanding that
international regimes, laws, and institutions were an important “new
element” (xin de yaosu) in international politics. Thus, to act like the “great
powers” (daguo), China had to use multilateral mechanisms over unilateral
action.112 Even Chinese assistance to Southeast Asia during the financial
crisis of 1997–1998 can be understood in the context of these narratives
about great power; American academic David Shambaugh argues that
acting responsibly (not devaluing its currency and offering aid packages and
low-interest loans) helped China begin to reshape its image in Asia as a
responsible great power rather than an aloof country.113

Conclusion
Just as in the case of the United States over a century ago, Chinese
narratives about attaining great power were not organic, and had historical
roots; nor, despite China’s authoritarian political system, were they
homogenous. There were avid discussions of China’s role in the post–Cold
War world that built upon and refined preexisting ideas. To take one
example, the collapse of the Soviet Union made China feel insecure and
vulnerable,114 uncertain as it was about the United States’ long-term
strategy with regard to China. Some feared the United States wanted “to
eliminate communism from the face of the earth” 115 and have the entire
world follow the Western model of democracy and freedom,116 while others
believed that it was the United States’ comprehensive national power
(zonghe guoli) and international dominance that would probably lead to a
post–Cold War expansionist strategy.117 Underlying these fears was the
belief that the United States would be a superpower enmeshed in Asia for
some time to come and that it needed to be “managed.” Thus, China’s
perception that the United States is out to “curtail” China’s political
interests and “harm” it continued to play a strong role in China’s foreign
policy.118 The famous maxim attributed to Deng Xiaoping, “taoguang
yanghui” or “conceal one’s strengths and bide time,” was an outcome of
how China perceived its external threat environment, and it was explicitly
adopted by Jiang Zemin as a guiding principle. But the narratives in China
in the 1990s both encompassed more than mere threat perception vis-à-vis
the United States and its neighbors and offered varying ideas on China’s
response.
The United States needed to be engaged, and China needed to show that
it accepted the US-led international order with its ideas of interdependence
and multilateralism. It was the promotion of regionalism and multilateral
action that could establish China’s image as a “responsible regional great
power” (fuzeren de diqu daguo), and the strategic use of multilateral
mechanisms in Asia would help China gain this recognition from other
countries.119 Whether some saw such ideas as an important tactic for China
to gain power in other arenas or as connected to soft power, whether they
believed they needed to pay lip service to great power norms or whether
they truly believed that only by accepting such norms could China regain
great power, accommodating the great power norms of multilateralism and
independence was underlined either implicitly or explicitly as a necessary
part of great power behavior. Thus, the narratives were not simply reactive
but also proactive, and even an entrenched maxim like “conceal one’s
strength and bide one’s time” or “peaceful rise” versus “peaceful
development” generated many differing interpretations. China’s active
behavior in the early 1990s foreshadowed, as we will see in this book’s
conclusion, its tentative steps toward activism almost three decades later.
The move to active behavior in the 1990s was not the natural product of
China’s increasing material power. If we turn now to another country hailed
as a rising power during these years of the 1990s, we find a different story.
India was a reticent power, reluctant to embrace multilateralism, and often
reluctant to buy into the norms of great power. In the process, it frustrated
even those countries who were eager to cooperate with it and help it rise to
counter China.

[Link]
6
The Reticence of India

The post–Cold War world saw the material emergence of not one but two
possible great powers-to-be. China, as we have discussed in the previous
chapter, was one of them. With China marked as a challenger to this new
post–Cold War world, international society fretted about whether this rising
power would maintain or upend the status quo. At the same time, another
country was also beginning to be acclaimed as a rising power. That country
was India. But unlike the reaction to China’s rise, the reaction to India’s rise
was more circumspect—while some said India should not be
underestimated,1 others feted it as a welcome “counterweight” to the China
threat. While India had always been seen as a regional heavyweight and as
a leading voice among developing countries, perceptions of it in the 1990s
began to shift.
Like China, India had begun policies of economic reform that led to
substantial economic growth in the 1990s. It, too, had increased its military
spending substantially. And crucially, in 1998, India conducted five nuclear
tests, including a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb of 43 kilotons. To put that
in context, this bomb was almost three times more powerful than the bomb
that was detonated in Hiroshima.2 With Operation Shakti (“strength”), as
the nuclear tests were dubbed, India was now a bona fide nuclear weapons
state, a part of the exclusive nuclear club of which China also was a
member. Thus, pointing to its armed forces, military potential, and changing
economy, combined with its large population and geographical size,
international society predicted that India too would begin to achieve great
power.
Yet curiously, India behaved quite differently from China. Although
conscious of its great civilization, it seemed not to seize opportunities that
would be consistent with great power behavior in the post–Cold War era.
Nor did it even pay lip service to notions of multilateralism and great power
responsibility and leadership in international institutions that China
embraced. India, in short, was reticent. And if we look at the foreign policy
ideas in India at that time, rather than narratives about how to attain great
power, we find much continuity from the Cold War era—ideas that spoke to
India’s past as a non-aligned country and that didn’t conform to what were
seen as Western-imposed expectations about great power.

The Material Rise of India

After gaining independence in 1947, following 200 years of British rule,
India emerged as the world’s largest democracy, with leaders at its helm
who had gained global recognition for their anti-colonial credentials. It was
expected that India would quickly grow out of poverty. But in the years
following 1947, India decided to pursue a Soviet-style economic model of
central planning under the leadership of its first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, who was sympathetic to socialism. Taking advice from Soviet
experts, India set up a planning strategy, with regular Five-Year Plans
commencing in 1951. It expanded its public sector and subjected its private
sector to very strict quotas and licenses. As a result, particularly compared
to the East Asian countries, India fared badly. In the 1950s and 1960s its
GDP grew at just 3.5% per year, while its GDP per capita grew at 1% per
year—such a growth rate for an emerging economy, as India was at that
time, was abysmally low by most measures, especially considering that its
population was increasing at the same time at 2.5% per year.3 Consequently,
India began to be seen as a basket case of poverty and economic
dysfunction.4 By the late 1980s, Ramesh Thakur, a former assistant
secretary-general of the United Nations, points out, “India cut a sorry
figure. . . wracked by economic stagnation, political turmoil, and social
ferment.”5
Yet at the same time there were starting to be glimmers of change.
Between 1985 and 1990, India underwent substantial economic
liberalization. This included a massive depreciation of the rupee, expansive
fiscal policies, and borrowing abroad. As a result, exports increased
substantially, and the growth rate increased to 4.8% between 1987 and
1988, and to 7.6% per year between 1988 and 1991.6
In 1991, the government of Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao decided
to implement “historic” economic reforms that would decisively move the
country away from central planning and socialism, and “change [India] and
the world.”7 An important first step was to appoint as his finance minister
Dr. Manmohan Singh, an economist. Together, Rao and Singh ushered in
“an era of more systematic reforms.”8 As Singh commented, paraphrasing
Victor Hugo while presenting his transformational budget to parliament in
1991, “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.”9
With changes of government during the 1990s, and particularly the
election of coalition governments, the reform process was affected, and
growth slowed slightly. But the economy and reforms picked up again in
1996, when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee came to power. Vajpayee
implemented further reforms that would open the Indian economy to both
foreign and domestic competition and build up its infrastructure.10
These economic reforms transformed India, radically changing the
economic system that had been in place for decades.11 Consequently,
between 1993 and 1997, India enjoyed “a handsome growth rate of 7.1 per
cent . . . [which] placed the economy on a long-term growth trajectory of 6
per cent.”12 Even during the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1999, the Indian
economy was more resilient than other Asian nations. Average GDP growth
slowed down slightly to 5.7% during the years 1997–2003. But it picked up
again, and between 2005 and 2008, it grew at a whopping rate of almost
9%.13 In effect, India’s economy almost quadrupled in size, and by the early
2000s it was projected that India would become one of the fastest growing
economies in the world.
India’s military reforms began decades before the economic reforms. The
watershed moment for India’s military came when it was overwhelmingly
defeated in 1962 in its border war with China. Prior to 1962, the Indian
military had been “in shambles.” The former British Indian colonial army
had been divided between India and Pakistan. After independence in 1947,
the finances that the Indian government diverted to the military were
“minimal.” The army was also stretched thin with commitments to the
United Nations in both Gaza and the Congo, as well as with dealing with
insurgencies in India’s Northeast.14 After the humiliating defeat by China,
India not only changed its threat perception, but also began rapidly
increasing its military power. It formulated a strategic doctrine, reorganized
and equipped its armed forces, improved its R&D sector, and built a base
for its military nuclear program. Moreover, it began cooperating with
Western countries in joint exercises, defense planning, and modernizing its
services. By 1971, India had completely reconstructed its military, which
was obvious when it intervened in Pakistan’s civil war. Pakistani Bengalis
were located in the non-contiguous territory of East Pakistan, which
declared independence from West Pakistan. India’s intervention on the
behalf of the East Pakistani Bengalis tipped the balance in their favor. India
won a formidable victory: Pakistan lost the territory of East Pakistan, which
now became a new country, Bangladesh.
Indian military spending substantially increased again in the 1980s under
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, whose hawkish policies led to Indian
military activism at home and in the region. The defense budget more than
doubled, from $4.09 billion in 1982 to $9.89 billion in 1988–1989.15
Between 1986 and 1990 defense expenditures reached a high of between
2.97% and 3.37% of the GDP.16 The spending on war-fighting capability
grew at a rate of 12% every single year from about the mid-1980s to
1993.17 In the 1990s and early 2000s defense expenditure as a percentage of
the GDP fell and hovered between 2.54% and 2.39%, while defense
expenditure as a proportion of government expenditure fell from about
9.68% in the 1980s to about 7.99% in the 1990s.18 Despite this dip, there
were three important developments. First, India massively expanded its
R&D. Second, it focused on modernization. Finally, as mentioned earlier,
India tested thermonuclear devices to become a declared nuclear weapons
state.
India’s defense industries and the associated research organizations
became, in the 1990s, the largest in the developing world, along with
China’s. Spending on R&D by the Indian government’s Defense Research
and Development Organization (DRDO) increased throughout the decade.19
Moreover, R&D spending by the Defense Public Sector Undertakings
(DPSUs), which produced sophisticated weapon systems and platforms,
also increased rapidly. Companies such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited
(HAL), one of the largest of the DPSUs, increased their spending to a level
that was almost one-fifth of the cost of the work undertaken by the
government DRDO.20 Despite the absence of a formal military-industrial
complex, India’s military and its associated bureaucracies constituted one of
the largest single sectors of the Indian economy; the military accounted for
almost 10% of the organized sector of the labor force.21
As the Indian government liberalized the economy and drew away from
socialism, it also enabled reforms in the defense industry, outlining codes of
conduct and methods of inviting private participation. Whereas private
industries in India had previously been all but barred from entering into
defense production, their roles limited to producing spare parts and similar
minor contributions, now they started to become an integral part of the
defense industry. By 2001 the government had allowed, subject to issuance
of licenses, 100% participation by the private sector in defense production
and foreign direct investment of up to 26% in the defense industry.
Moreover, the government began awarding licenses to domestic companies
to produce military vehicles and weapon systems.22
Unlike China’s People’s Liberation Army, which had to undertake a
comprehensive modernization program, the Indian Army already had
relatively modern equipment. And it doubled in strength from 1.2 million
soldiers in 1990 to 2.3 million in 2000.23 During the 1990s, the government
was focused on the modernization of India’s navy and its ballistic missile
program, and, to a lesser extent, its air force. Modernizing its air force
involved upgrading existing aircraft, spurring indigenous domestic aircraft
production, and buying aircraft from other countries. In terms of its navy,
India’s plans were clearly more ambitious. In addition to upgrading its two
aircraft carriers, India vastly expanded its undersea capabilities, including
drawing up plans to add nuclear-powered boats and to procure nuclear-
powered attack submarines and cruise missile submarines. This naval
modernization plan was a clear indication that India was developing a blue
water navy that would be able to operate far from home and project
significant power in the region.24
Finally, India had begun by the late 1980s and early 1990s to develop
short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (Prithvi and Agni) and
satellite-launch vehicles which seemed to indicate that a change in India’s
nuclear policy was imminent.25 In 1998, on May 11 and 13, India shocked
the world and embarrassed US intelligence agencies when it detonated five
nuclear devices. While India’s nuclear program predated 1998, its earlier
test, in 1974, had been of a small 5-kiloton device which Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi referred to as a PNE, or “peaceful nuclear explosion.” India
had then halted all testing for over two decades, until the May 11 tests,
when Prime Minister Vajpayee released a terse statement:
I have a brief announcement to make. Today at 1545 hours, India conducted three
underground nuclear tests in the Pokhran range. The tests conducted today were with a
fission device, a low yield device, and a thermonuclear device. The measured yields are in
line with expected values. Measurements have confirmed that there was no release of
radioactivity into the atmosphere. These were contained explosions like in the experiment
conducted in May 1974. I warmly congratulate the scientists and engineers who have
carried out the successful tests.26

Two more tests followed, two days later. Together, the five tests heralded
India’s entry into the club of nuclear weapons states. Already the dominant
military power in South Asia, with Operation Shakti, India was now also an
overtly nuclear power. By the spring of 1998, therefore, shifting global
perceptions of India had been cemented. India was no longer a beggar state,
an economic basket case, or simply just a regional power, and the nuclear
tests seemed the crowning glory of the country’s rapid ascent as a rising
power.

The Acknowledgment of India’s Rise

It is important to mention here that China and India were viewed in
different ways by the world around them. Thanks to Indian leaders such as
Nehru (who had forged an international reputation as a renowned anti-
colonial nationalist and diplomat) and India’s robust democratic system,
India had the advantage of a certain status in international society that
China lacked. Rather than being seen as a pariah state with a dictatorial and
belligerent leader, India was hailed as a moral force to be reckoned with in
the developing world. Subsequently, during the Cold War, India
spearheaded the non-aligned movement (NAM) which brought together
many of the newly decolonized countries and offered them an alternative to
joining either of the Cold War superpower blocs. India’s leadership in NAM
established it as fiercely independent from both superpowers and the
squabbles of Cold War politics. Even when it eventually leaned toward the
Soviet Union, India’s frosty relationship with the United States never turned
hostile.27 Situationally, India’s position in international society had been
diplomatically powerful for many decades. Yet, despite being too large and
too visible among developing world countries to ignore, in the decades
following independence two important factors had held it back from being
counted as a rising power. The first was its economy, and the second was its
military capabilities.
But by the end of the 1980s, there was the beginning of an international
acknowledgment of a difference in this material power. India was starting to
matter well beyond its region, and even beyond its company of developing
countries. The change in power capability first had immediate
consequences in India’s neighborhood. Thus, South Asian countries began
referring to its rise even before the West. In 1987, Sri Lankan president J. R.
Jayewardene, for example, called India “a great power in the region.”28 But
within a couple of years, countries beyond South Asia, particularly Western
countries, also began to acknowledge the coming power transition. In 1989,
for example, The Sydney Morning Herald declared that India was “the third
rising power” after Japan and China.29 The Christian Science Monitor
predicted in 1991, “India is the world’s most populous democracy and a
rising power in world affairs. . . . With a wealthy and highly skilled middle-
class. . . . [It] has been engaged in a steady military buildup, which has
greatly strengthened its land and air forces and created the most powerful
navy in the Third World. In addition, India is widely believed to possess the
capability to produce and deploy nuclear weapons. . . . [Its] future course . .
. will have vital consequences for the United States and the world.”30
Such references to India’s rising power took off in the 1990s, spurred by
the country’s economic transformation, its boosted defense capabilities, and
particularly, its nuclear tests. By the early 2000s, despite its domestic
troubles, despite the fact that it lagged behind China on many metrics, India
had arrived as a rising power, and was repeatedly heralded as a
counterweight to China. Teresita Schaffer, former US deputy assistant
secretary of state for the Near East and South Asia, pointed out in 2002 that
the United States’ increased interest in and attention to India since the late
1990s was a reflection of “its economic expansion and position as Asia’s
newest rising power.”31 But it was also more than that. India was a robust,
diverse democracy, the only other country that could rival China in both
size and population in Asia, while maintaining a commitment to liberal
democratic norms. It seemed in many ways that India was a “natural”
partner for those committed to the current liberal international order, and
the United States, as the upholder of that liberal international order, would
of course have a vested interest in India: “It was time,” as one US expert
asserted, “to play the India card” and use it to “counter the adverse effects
of China’s rise.”32
Thus, unlike China, India’s heralded rise was not accompanied by
international chatter about India’s threat to the status quo. Rather, other than
its immediate neighbors who had always eyed it with suspicion, India
enjoyed the somewhat oxymoronic reputation of being a benign rising
power,33 and its arrival on the global scene was largely welcomed,
especially by the United States. Yet, despite the capabilities, both economic
and military, and despite the presence of a superpower that was eager to
welcome it as a partner, India’s rise often seemed stymied. US-Indian
relations, which had always followed a pattern of attraction and repellence
since Indian independence in 1947, continued to develop painfully slowly.
Many Asian countries, particularly those in ASEAN34 and Japan, while on
the one hand welcoming the thought of a counterbalancing power in Asia,
also found the effort to build a relationship with India particularly slow.
India’s bilateral relationships in its neighborhood continued to be fractious
and contentious. Although India participated in multilateral institutions and
the multilateral order, and had always done so, it did not display the same
desire as China did to take on leadership roles, even though it had
substantially increased its economic clout. And even when participating in
multilateral settings such as those offered by ASEAN institutions or the
United Nations, Indian continued to emphasize and prioritize bilateral over
multilateral relationships. There was little attempt to parlay its bilateral
relationships into strength in multilateral settings, such as China did, for
example, when it set up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Nor did
Indian officials embrace the idea of taking on leadership responsibility
through institutions. Rather, many vehemently rejected it.
Why was India different? To understand this, we need to first turn to
some of India’s foreign policy behavior in the 1990s to understand how this
behavior was reticent rather than active.

The Reticence of India

As we have seen in previous chapters, active rising powers have engaged in
three kinds of behavior: they have increased their economic and military
power, they have globalized authority, and they have attempted to shape
perceptions of their changing status. By the 1990s, India had certainly
engaged in the first kind of behavior. It had increased its economic and
military power significantly compared to the previous decades and had also
taken the momentous step of becoming a nuclear weapons state. But it
displayed curious reticence when it came to the second and third kinds of
behavior. China engaged in all of these behaviors in the 1990s. So did the
United States in the late 19th century. And so did Meiji Japan. Particularly,
we should expect, as we saw with China, that a rising power in the 1990s
would attempt to take on roles and display behavior that would enable it to
control, direct, and impact the processes of globalization, particularly
through multilateralism and international institutions, the bywords of great
power in the post–Cold War world. India was different. It is not that India’s
foreign policy behavior did not change. It did. However, other than
increasing its capabilities, it did not fully embrace the behaviors of a great
power to be. It was reticent.
In order to understand its reticent behavior, we need to first understand
India’s complex approach to multilateralism. On the one hand, India’s
participation in international institutions long predated China’s. Unlike
China, during the Cold War, India embraced multilateralism in some ways.
Multilateral institutions like the United Nations were particularly key to
Indian foreign policy. For example, after the first war with Pakistan, Nehru
approached the United Nations to resolve the Kashmir conflict (which
backfired on him when the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire to be
followed by a plebiscite in the territory—a plebiscite which India would
reject). India was also one of the biggest contributors to UN peacekeeping.
NAM was a multilateral institution, which India had been instrumental in
building, and through which India had pushed for cooperation among
developing countries to resist superpower politics. On the other hand, India,
despite its participation in international institutions, was reluctant to engage
in economic, security, or diplomatic multilateralism with respect to its own
relationships with other countries: where its own relationships were
concerned, India consistently preferred bilateral negotiations. Vehemently
opposed to hegemonic interference and any suggestion of superpower
involvement, India viewed the norm of multilateralism suspiciously.
When the Cold War ended, the relevance of NAM declined. NAM was
premised on the existence of superpowers. Now, not only was the world
unipolar, but in this unipolar world India would significantly increase its
material strength, changing its bargaining power on the world stage. A
logical step would have been for India to adapt NAM to the changed
geopolitical context. But India did not evolve and develop a new approach
for NAM; neither did it adjust its attitude toward multilateralism, in terms
of security or economics. By contrast, China was carving out a role where it
would lead and where it would act—not simply react—in its relationships.
Particularly given the geopolitical constraints and tense relationships in its
immediate neighborhood, it was important for India to globalize its
authority and shape perceptions of its rise by forging relationships outside
the region, with willing actors that would enable it to integrate into
multilateral institutions and assume leadership. For a country that had, often
to its annoyance, been defined internationally by its warring relationship
with Pakistan and economically as a basket case, these outside
relationships, along with its changing economic and military capabilities,
offered a way to reset its foreign policy behavior and its reputation in the
post–Cold War world.
Two of these relationships were particularly crucial—its relationship with
the sole remaining superpower, and with the Southeast Asian region,
particularly ASEAN. The United States and the ASEAN countries were
eager to transform their relationship with a materially rising power, and
they offered India the opportunity to signal its acceptance of the post–Cold
War international order and of norms of great power, and particularly to
take part in multilateral relationships and agenda setting. These
relationships had been fractious throughout the Cold War era and needed to
now be reconfigured to display India’s leadership and clout in the current
system of great powers. And indeed some shifts did occur. Nevertheless,
despite some change, these relationships did not develop in the 1990s and
early 2000s as one would have expected. As we will see, there was
significant frustration on the part of India’s partners, and constant attempts
at and references to “resetting” the relationships.

Seesawing Relations with the United States

The trajectory of Indo-US relations has always puzzled observers in both

countries. Despite India’s bona fide credentials as a democracy,
Washington’s supply of both aid (after independence in 1947) and arms
(during India’s 1962 war with China), and the lack of ideological or
historical enmity between the two, the two countries never drew close
during the Cold War. Indeed, after 1947, despite the commitment to non-
alignment and overtures from the United States, India ended up leaning
toward the Soviet Union, a superpower its leaders both admired and courted
from almost immediately after independence. US diplomat Dennis Kux, in
his seminal 1994 book Estranged Democracies, placed the blame on India’s
and the US’s conflicting views on non-alignment: India’s ostensible
commitment to non-alignment, combined with the United States’ suspicion
of that view, resulted in a testy bilateral relationship.35
In the 1980s, some scholars saw hopeful signs of an improving
relationship between the two countries. The United States surpassed the
Soviet Union to become India’s largest trading partner between 1983 and
1984. In the fall of 1984, the two countries signed a Memorandum of
Understanding that was touted as the path to deepening bilateral
cooperation through increased economic exchanges, transfers of US
technology, and defense cooperation.36
With the end of the Cold War, the United States and India shared deep
mutual interests, spurred by the loss, for India, of a valuable and powerful
partner (the Soviet Union); the rise of China, a country that India
considered its number one adversary; India’s ongoing commitment to
democratic ideals; and the economic liberalization that would make India a
huge and attractive market. Yet the Indo-US relationship did not follow a
steady and deepening upward trajectory. This is particularly important if we
consider that given these interests India, arguably, needed the United States
more than the other way around. In India’s case, not only could many of its
post–Cold War interests be served by the United States, but the United
States as the sole remaining superpower was eager to both counterbalance
China and to welcome India’s rise.
Yet the relationship proceeded in fits and starts, seesawing back and
forth. In key instances, where opportunities for taking steps to engage in or
support security or economic multilateralism opened up, India proved
reluctant and slow to change traditional positions in order to accommodate
the United States. In 1991, for example, India’s response to the Gulf crisis
was openly unsupportive of the United States. The Gulf crisis unfolded in
the summer of 1990 when Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ordered the
invasion of neighboring Kuwait. It was a key moment in the new post–Cold
War world and defined what US president George H. W. Bush referred to as
the “new world order”—the United States took the initiative to lead a
multilateral intervention, legitimized by the UN Security Council.37 While
being “less than forthright” in its condemnation of the Iraqi invasion, India
was quick to condemn US actions.38 Indian foreign minister I. K. Gujral
expressed displeasure that “the great issues of the day” were being “decided
in the capitals of a few major powers.”39 When the United States pushed for
the authorization of force through the UN Security Council, India refused to
join the American-led forces, arguing that the US-led multinational force
was “neither a UN force nor a peacekeeping one.”40 When it emerged that
the Indian government had allowed US warplanes to refuel on Indian soil
en route from the Philippines to the Gulf, political opposition in India was
so intense that it nearly toppled the ruling minority party, and Prime
Minister Chandra Shekhar had to cease all assistance—infuriating the
United States, which saw support from developing countries as crucial to
the war.41 In comparison, China, which had spent all of the 1980s
vociferously opposing multilateral interventions, acted differently. China
was still in the early stages of shifting its position on multilateralism. Prior
to the beginning of the Gulf War, China, a permanent member of the
Security Council, supported UNSC660, the Security Council resolution
which condemned Iraq and demanded that it withdraw from Kuwait. Once
the intervention began, China abstained on UNSC678, which authorized the
use of force against Iraq. As Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen
explained, China wanted the United Nations to avoid acting hastily where
military action against a member state was concerned, but it would not cast
a negative vote and scuttle the multilateral action.42 In effect, in an
important post–Cold War crisis that utilized multilateral norms, the Chinese
government, in contrast to India, stayed neutral, and much of the Chinese
public rooted for the United States.43
In 1992, in a step forward, India and the United States undertook joint
naval exercises for the first time. But this, in turn, led to a backlash from
many Indian parliamentarians.44 By 1994, in a flashback to the historically
tense relationship, Bill Clinton had referred more than once to the “bad
relations” between India and the United States.45 But over the next four
years, the two governments took a series of small diplomatic steps to
interact with each other. Still, there was such opposition in India to a close
relationship with the United States that these initiatives were rarely made
public. In an unusual step, in 1997 Joseph Ralston, then vice chairman of
the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a visit to India, the first by such an
official since 1953. Yet despite the Pentagon’s eagerness to build a
relationship with India, its enthusiasm, Ralston stated, ended up being
“glazed over” by Indian officials.46
With the 1998 nuclear tests, India-US relations took another nosedive.
US intelligence agencies had utterly failed to detect India’s plans for the
tests. Clinton publicly denounced the tests in strong terms, stating that for
India to engage in behavior that “recalls the very worst events of the 20th
century on the edge of the 21st century, when everybody else is trying to
leave the nuclear age behind, is just wrong. It is just wrong.”47 India, for its
part, had never accepted the non-proliferation regime dictated by the United
States, deeming it exclusionary, and so such condemnation fell on deaf ears.
Still, the relationship again crept forward because, despite the sanctions
imposed by the United States after the nuclear tests, back-channel
communications continued between the two countries,48 as the Clinton
administration slowly seemed to reconcile itself to the tests.
A year later, when war broke out between India and Pakistan in the
Kargil district of Kashmir, the US government took the unusual step of
strongly siding with India. India was “flabbergasted” by this unconditional
support.49 India-US relations again seemed on the upswing. The US
government’s “unambiguous and uncomplicated” response to Kargil was
seen as a “game changer.”50 In a sense, the Americans re-prioritized their
interests simply to inculcate a better relationship with India—the
commitment to non-proliferation became less important than the bilateral
relationship.51 Ashley Tellis, who was a senior advisor to the undersecretary
of state for political affairs during this time, points out the “often
remarkable generosity of the United States towards India [during this
period] . . . a largess rooted as much in its own interests as in its
disproportionate advantage in relative power vis-à-vis India.”52 While
“generosity,” whether rooted in self-interest or otherwise, may be a loaded
word, there is no doubt that the United States made strong attempts during
the 1990s to rectify its past coolness toward India and to reshape the history
of estrangement.
In return, India did make some concessions to the United States—
agreeing, for example, to regular back-channel meetings between US
deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott and Indian minister of external
affairs Jaswant Singh. But it was apparent that the United States was a more
eager partner than India. Indian experts, for their part, continued to suspect
that the US government did not have an empathetic understanding of India’s
security interests and that its ultimate goal was to deprive India of its right
to leave its nuclear option open, an option which was “one of the least
expensive security guarantees.”53
With the advent of the George W. Bush administration, a government
both politically and ideologically different from the Clinton administration,
the United States’ push to improve the relationship with India continued,
and was centered more predominantly with the Americans than with the
Indians. Senior Bush administration officials like Condoleezza Rice,
Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, and Robert Blackwill were committed to
cementing India’s status as a “natural ally,” a phrase that would be
increasingly used to describe it. When the Bush administration began its
intervention in Afghanistan post–9/11, it allied itself with Pakistan and
accepted that country’s support. However, to assuage India, Donald
Rumsfeld traveled there to personally reassure the Indian government that
the Pakistan alliance was not a snub and did not mean that India would be
marginalized to its rival’s advantage.54 In other words, the United States
worked to show India its continued commitment to the bilateral
relationship.55
But then another crisis for this renewed relationship occurred during the
2003 US invasion of Iraq. India maintained consistent official opposition to
the US intervention, citing its general reluctance to back any unilateral
action without the approval of the United Nations. Even the eventual UN
authorization of a multinational force did not change this position.56 (Later,
India also chose to remain uninvolved in reconstruction.) The Indian
Parliament “deplored” (or “condemned”—the Hindi word ninda can be
translated as either) the invasion, and many in the Indian opposition parties
called it naked aggression.
India’s decision not to support the US-led intervention in Iraq deeply
disappointed the Americans. Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of
defense, allegedly called India’s behavior “devious” and yet “ingenious.”57
India made it clear that, UN mandate or no UN mandate, it was not sending
troops to Iraq, a refusal that seemed to point, for US officials, to its old
reputation as “a won’t-do country” that “never missed an opportunity to
miss an opportunity.”58 Post-invasion, India objected when the UN Security
Council, through Resolution 1483, asked member states to “contribute to
stability and security in Iraq by contributing personnel, equipment and other
resources under the Authority.”59 Since “the Authority” referred to the joint
command of the United States and the United Kingdom, India balked.
Jaswant Singh argued forcefully that India could not “and must not be in
Iraq as part of an occupying force.”60 With India’s refusal to take part in
both the intervention and the reconstruction of Iraq, Prime Minister
Vajpayee signaled that India was no lackey of a superpower.61 The
relationship would only publicly seesaw back up in 2008, when the Bush
administration offered India a groundbreaking nuclear deal. The 123
Agreement, as it was known, bound the United States and India in a civil
nuclear agreement. Even though India was not a signatory to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it was offered the same benefits as other
leading nuclear weapons states. This essentially bestowed upon India
legitimacy as a nuclear weapons state. The Americans approached India,
stated Tellis, who was intimately involved in negotiating the deal, as a “part
of the solution to nuclear proliferation rather than as part of the problem.”62
Historian Rudra Chaudhuri points out that the “determination” of senior US
officials like Blackwill and Rice, as well as Nicholas Burns (the
undersecretary of state for political affairs), Philip Zelikow (executive
director of the 9/11 Commission), and Tellis, proved “vital” to the success
of the deal.63 In what Indian commentators called “the deal of the
century,”64 the Bush administration was ultimately able to provide the
waivers that India would need to engage in international nuclear commerce.
But even the nuclear deal, a watershed in the relationship and in a sense the
ultimate proof of American responsiveness to India’s security interests, did
not result in a close relationship.
If we turn to India’s relationship with Southeast Asian countries, and
ASEAN, we see some similar patterns.

Looking East . . . Sometimes

In an apparent shift away from the policies of the Cold War era, India
reached out to Southeast Asia, particularly ASEAN, in the early 1990s.
However, despite India’s ample economic, political, and security interests in
the region, it remained reticent in fully developing the relationship. This
was in spite of the eagerness of Southeast Asian countries to ally with India
as a way to balance out China’s growing presence in the region. As Indian
ambassador Rajiv Sikri, former secretary (east), later acknowledged in an
interview, “ASEAN wanted closer ties with India to balance the influence
of China. Singapore [as a prominent ASEAN country] played a particularly
important role in creating awareness of India’s strategic importance.”65
In 1991, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao initiated India’s “Look East”
policy (LEP), and in 1994, emphasized its importance with a speech in
Singapore.66 The policy was meant to be a new strategic vision for the
post–Cold War world and to move India’s priorities beyond its
neighborhood to the greater Southeast Asian region. The plan was to make
India, particularly its Northeast region, politically and commercially
attractive to the Southeast Asian countries, especially ASEAN, and also to
reach out to Japan and Korea, thus embedding India as a vital partner for
the region. At the same time, with its economic reforms, India meant to
emulate the Southeast Asian miracle model of growth. Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh pointed out that Korea and India had the same GDP per
capita in the 1950s, but that India had been left behind. “The dynamism of
the [Asia-Pacific] . . . shall [lead it to] soon be the tiger economy of the
world. We want to be participants in this process.”67 India, in other words,
needed to emulate South Korea. The announcement of the LEP was indeed
a significant foreign policy outreach on India’s part; during the Cold War,
India had, somewhat snootily, looked upon the Southeast Asian countries as
American stooges with propped-up authoritarian regimes.68
In the beginning, LEP did garner India some important policy successes.
India began as a dialogue partner of ASEAN, but was soon upgraded to a
summit level partner, a closer relationship. India was able to increase its
strategic and security cooperation in the Southeast Asian region to protect
sea lanes and pool resources in the war against terrorism. Indian and
ASEAN navies also began conducting naval exercises together starting in
1991, while India began hosting the navies from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
and the ASEAN countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand
in a joint exercise called Milan. India and Singapore also began the first
joint exercises in Singaporean waters in 2003; India and Indonesia
conducted joint exercises in 2004. Since 2000 the Indian navy has deployed
warships, tankers, and submarines to conduct bilateral exercises with Japan,
South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam through mechanisms like
the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Regional Cooperation
Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia
(ReCAAP). India and ASEAN members also worked together to tackle
insurgency, pollution, drug trafficking, and safety of the sea lanes of
communication (SLOC).
Through LEP, India was also able to develop better economic ties with
Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In 1997, India and Thailand
launched the Bangladesh-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand economic cooperation
(BIMSTEC) to increase trade and tourism in the Bay of Bengal region.69
While the ASEAN countries received only 3.6% of India’s exports to the
world in 1980, by 1992 this had increased to nearly 6%. Particularly, trade
with Malaysia and Singapore increased rapidly.70 In 2002 ASEAN leaders
held the first separate ASEAN-India summit, showcasing the importance
they gave to the relationship with India.71 In 2005 India attended the first
annual regional forum of the East Asia Summit (EAS), where it endorsed an
enlarged ASEAN free trade agreement. India also negotiated a number of
bilateral free trade agreements.
Yet, despite these achievements, India’s supposed turn toward Southeast
Asia was, in the words of one observer, “clogged.”72 From optimism at its
inception, progress was frustratingly slow. ASEAN was consistently
frustrated with what it felt was India’s fluctuating commitment to the
relationship73 and its passivity in multilateral settings and institutions. For
example, India accepted an invitation to join the ARF, but then, other than
“[its] initial enthusiasm to join the multilateral process so that it would not
be left out of developments of this important region, there [did not seem to
be] much deliberation or thinking that [went] into the whole process of
multilateral institutionalism and its role in the future.”74 India seemed to be
unsure of what its role “should be in the ARF and how it should approach
[it] as a forum.”75 One question that came up repeatedly in the annual
forums was each country’s responsibility in protecting the Straits of
Malacca from piracy. Yet on this important question of securing a vital sea
lane between India and ASEAN, India remained “inactive and
noncommittal. . . . It took India 9 annual meetings before it could finally
offer, in July 2004, ‘any help in principle’ in securing the Straits of
Malacca.”76 While bilateral relationships improved with certain countries,
multilateral initiatives such as BIMSTEC “fell flat” and were considered
“less than a grand success.”77 Agreeing to a road map for an ASEAN-India
free trade agreement took over twenty meetings over the course of five
years, with regular political interventions.78 In 2003 one expert pointed out,
in his analysis of the ninth ASEAN summit, that “aside from the ancient
cultural linkages and a modern demand for South Asian labor, ASEAN and
India have little to offer each other in terms of trade.”79 This was because,
although trade between India and ASEAN continued to increase ($10
billion by 2001), it “paled by comparison” with ASEAN-China trade ($55
billion in 2001). ASEAN countries continued to perceive India, unlike
China, as not being serious about implementing economic reforms.80 Others
pointed out that although ASEAN lay at the “core” of India’s LEP, India
continued to “remain a rudimentary power in terms of defense and security
engagements” with ASEAN countries.81 And since India also remained
wholly uninvolved in the “Northeast Asian security matrix” (the crises with
North Korea being an issue of great importance for stability in the ASEAN
region), its position in Southeast Asia as a security actor or provider was
limited.82
Importantly, India also failed to develop its own Northeast region into a
node of connection with Southeast Asia, as originally envisioned in the
LEP. Ninety-eight percent of the region of India’s Northeast shares its
borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, and Tibet, while its only land
link with the rest of India is through a very narrow corridor of territory that
runs through Bangladesh.83 Yet, despite consistently emphasizing that the
government was eager to develop better connectivity with the Southeast
Asian countries, particularly through the Northeast region and Myanmar
(which connects India with the Southeast Asian nations), India took very
few initiatives to do so. In 2014, over two decades after the initiation of
LEP, Skand Tayal, former Indian ambassador to South Korea, was left
lamenting that the LEP was “incomplete without [the] physical
connectivity” that would develop the Indian Northeast through Myanmar
even though it was a “win-win” proposition for all parties.”84
India’s LEP certainly suffered from some factors that were geopolitical—
ASEAN condemned (although weakly) India’s nuclear tests, for example,
while, more significantly, the Asian financial crisis also took a big toll on
trade in the region. 85 But at the same time, there was a sense both among
Southeast Asian nations and in India that the onus for deepening the
relationship really rested on ASEAN—that ASEAN viewed the relationship
as more important than India did. In a tacit acknowledgment of this,
Ambassador Sanjay Singh, another former secretary (east), in a discussion
on India-ASEAN relations, interestingly referred only to ASEAN, not
India, as “the glue” that brings together countries to build a common
understanding.86
Observers also argued that while ASEAN members, particularly
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Singapore, consistently expected India to take
a leadership role in the region,87 India lacked big power diplomacy,
leadership vision, and a strong reciprocal presence with its neighbors.88
Instead, India continued to push a bilateral-centric strategic partnership with
ASEAN, preferring to engage one-on-one with individual ASEAN
countries—by conducting dialogues, high-level visits of defense personnel,
training, and education, joint military exercises, and coordinated patrols—
rather than with ASEAN as a whole. Its defense engagement in the region
“lacked comprehensiveness,”89 due to its “cautious posture” on maritime
disputes, its limited outreach in Northeast Asia, and its lack of depth in
strategic partnerships with East Asian countries.90 Its “inert” LEP left these
countries with the perception that India was far less proactive than China in
wanting to engage with the region.91 Even though India was invited to
become a member of the East Asia Summit on an equal footing with China,
Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, Southeast Asian nations
ended up deeply “unhappy” with India—India agreed to many pacts,
agreements, and free trade agreements, but failed to implement them. They
were also disappointed by India’s “slow pace of integration” with the
region.92
For all these reasons, the LEP, with its goal of positioning India as
centrally important to Southeast Asia in terms of trade, security, and
diplomatic regimes, was stymied even though India made progress on some
bilateral relationships. And this was the case even though the region’s
countries were actively rooting for India’s success, eager for it to assume a
leadership role and act as a balance to China. “Look East,” in short, turned
out to be reactive rather than active. India remained more comfortable with
bilateral relationships than with crafting and taking the lead on multilateral
initiatives. And it eschewed the idea of great power responsibility and
leadership in existing or new settings.

A Continuity of Ideas
While some of the obstacles that impeded these relationships were a matter
of opportunity, there were also key instances where India’s perception of its
interests was very much impacted by institutionalized foreign policy ideas it
had held since 1947, rather than by ideas of great power. Thus India
remained reluctant in the post–Cold War era to embrace multilateral norms
and respond fully to opportunities for leadership. In short, its behavior was
reticent in the 1990s, particularly as compared to China, which shifted
much more rapidly.
The elite narratives that accompanied India’s economic and military rise
in the 1990s and early 2000s showed certain patterns. The ideas in these
narratives were not about how to reconcile India’s newly acquired
capabilities and achieve its goals within the constraints of the international
order, nor were they about the current norms of great power, nor did they
pertain to explaining increasing international involvement for a domestic
and international audience. Rather, Indian foreign policy ideas in the 1990s
demonstrated strong continuity from the Cold War era. Like China, India
had always thought of itself as a major power and great civilization. But
unlike China, these ideas were not reframed in the context of current norms
of great power. Instead, the ideas continued to hold India up as an
exemplary country in global politics. In addition, newer ideas that were
introduced with the changed geopolitics and increasing capabilities were
inward-facing, focusing very emphatically on domestic constraints and
goals. Consequently, Indian ideas on foreign policy were reactive, and
subsequent behavior often reticent.
For many decades, non-alignment had been the driver of Indian foreign
policy. India’s historical legacy of colonialism, and the fact that its post-
independence leaders were vehemently anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist,
resulted in India’s adamant opposition, after independence, to any kind of
intervention by the two superpowers. India prized its autonomy in
international society. In general, Indian foreign policy theorists agree on the
broad Nehruvian ideas that permeated Cold War–era foreign policy
decision-making, and impacted its decision to remain non-aligned in
international politics: liberal internationalism, eliminating colonialism and
racism from international relations, a dedication to supporting developing
countries, and a suspicion of great power intervention.93
In the 1990s, however, with the end of the Cold War, and India’s newly
emerging capabilities, many scholars argued that India had moved away
from such old ideas and had realized that Nehruvian idealism had been an
abject failure. Such scholars argued that “pragmatism,” rather than idealism,
had become India’s “new” approach to the world.94 These scholars defined
pragmatism not in terms unique to India, but rather in terms of power
politics. According to this line of argument, which has been dubbed
“substantial pragmatism,” India had suddenly woken up in the post–Cold
War era and had begun to emphasize its own national interests, the utility of
alliances, and the futility of ideology—in other words, it had jettisoned all
previous ideas, and was now attuned to the realities of power politics.95
This argument was implausible for many reasons, including the implicit
assumption that India had been oblivious for decades to its own security
interests.96 In fact, as many have argued, established ideas are “sticky” and
difficult to oust, so new ideas were introduced only incrementally into
Indian foreign policy.97 Consequently, if we examine Indian foreign policy
ideas in the 1990s, drawing on known experts, senior officials, and Indian
party manifestos, we find both a lingering of the old ideas of non-
alignment, anti-imperialism, and suspicion of great power intervention
alongside a new grappling with the changed geopolitical situation and
India’s domestic capacity to face it. The push and pull of these ideas
advocated reaction rather than action, and a focus on nation-building rather
than great-power-building. Moreover, this combination, along with India’s
traditional emphasis on the value of its moral leadership, promoted the
conviction that India would continue to be an exemplary force in world
politics, as it always had been.
We can observe the entrenchment of old foreign policy ideas through, for
example, manifestos of major parties in India released prior to general
elections. Unsurprisingly, the Indian National Congress, the party of Nehru
and Indira Gandhi, continued to emphasize non-alignment and its
accompanying mores. The Congress’s election manifesto from 1991 stated:
“This is a critical juncture in world history and for the nonaligned
movement. The dramatic transformation taking place in relations between
the superpowers is not merely a major opportunity but also [a] major
challenge. It is for us to ensure that the ending of the Cold War does not
mean domination by any one power center. It is for us to ensure that the
emergence of new economic powers . . . works for the betterment of the
poor and not only for the enrichment of the rich.”98 The manifesto from
1998 included the line: “It is a great tribute to the foresight and wisdom of
Jawaharlal Nehru that the foreign policy framework crafted by him remains
intact in its basics and fundamentals.”99 But even in the manifestos of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) between 1991 and 2004—a party vastly
dissimilar from the Congress and said to be pragmatic—we find a
consistent emphasis on India as “an autonomous power center in the
world,”100 a declaration of the need for “sovereign equality among nations
and a rejection of political hegemonism,”101 and a commitment to “making
India the voice of the developing world.”102 Curiously, the BJP manifestos
claimed these old ideas even while declaring non-alignment to have “lost
relevance.”103
India had always seen itself as a great civilization that could lead by
cultural example. During the Cold War period, India also prided itself on its
moral leadership, and considered itself to be setting a moral example to the
world.104 Morality in international relations was intertwined with Indian
conceptions of liberal internationalism. India stood for the developing
countries and the weak countries against the machinations of superpower
politics. India stood against injustices like racism, imperialism, and
colonialism. It opposed any great power interference in the sovereignty of
countries. Its insistence on autonomy and non-alignment was a belief in a
moral right to “freedom in decision making.”105 Thus, India’s opposition to
the nuclear weapons states was not simply about power; it was also about
protesting the injustice of a world where only a very few “haves” were
allowed to possess nuclear weapons while the “have-nots” were not just
excluded, but dictated to by norms imposed by those few. In a famous
article for Foreign Affairs, published in 1998, Minister of Defense Jaswant
Singh wrote that in testing the nuclear bomb that year, India had stood up
“against nuclear apartheid.”106
The idea of India as exemplary continued in the post–Cold War era. As
former ambassador and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran pointed out in a
conversation with this author, “We have a sense of ourselves as a
civilizational entity. We want to play the role of an independent actor in a
complex environment. Present ourselves as a bridge. Neither East nor
West.”107 Party manifestos, across party lines, often held up this idea of
India as exemplar. An example is the BJP Manifesto in 1998: “The idea of
vasudhaiva kutumbakam—world as family—is integral to the concept of
sanatana dharma [eternal path/duty] . . . [and is] synonymous with Indian
nationalism. . . . This gigantic idea is an exclusively Indian contribution to
world peace . . . thousands of years before any League of Nations or United
Nations was thought of to avoid global strife.”108 Moreover, India was
acutely conscious that it was not China: that is, it had a robust democracy
and the rest of the world held a perception of India that was mostly
benign.109 Thus, as Saran noted, “We don’t have [the China] problem. What
you want to ensure is that as your footprint increases, you don’t tarnish that
[existing] image.”110
At the same time, along with India’s changing capabilities, there was a
recognition that India needed to focus on economic nation-building. While
the necessity of nation-building might seem paradoxical for a country so
many decades after independence, India’s diversity meant that this
continued to be a crucial civic concept for India.111 For India, nation-
building meant not only the ongoing project of political unification across
the country’s complex diversity of religious, linguistic, ethnic, and caste
groups; it also meant that alongside the economic reforms implemented by
the government in the 1990s, there was a crucial and newly urgent sense of
the need for unification through economic development. Economic
development was seen as necessary for political nation-building and for
India’s national security. In 2012, I conducted interviews across the
Ministry of External Affairs with very senior Indian Foreign Service
officials, both serving and retired. It was striking how almost every single
officer, when talking about India’s foreign policy, national security, and
national interests, consistently emphasized the connection with economics.
At the same time, they were remarkably candid about their discomfort with
new ideas about India’s role in the world, particularly about India attaining
great power. In other words, considerations of economic development had
primacy over considerations of great power. One very influential former
ambassador to a major Western country remarked,
When [we] talk about our breakthroughs abroad, [we] think of how much difference [we]
can make to an average Indian. . . . [We think] one cow is sick, and the person has two
cows, well, that’s half her livelihood. . . . [We] think how do you make a difference so
economic diplomacy is at the center. . . . We can’t operate like China or the United States.
We should have a national security policy. We don’t have one because the economy is
critical. . . . [We cannot] delink from domestic economic issues. [The] imperative for
growth is [for us] not just in terms of projection of power but to maintain social
cohesion.112

Similarly, another very senior official in the Ministry of External Affairs

stated,
[Our] primary focus is national development. This has many implications—economic
content, access to resources, trade, a peaceful periphery. From the late 1990s, there was a
hysterical sense encouraged by the West of [India’s] rise. Every time a foreign leader came
to India and wanted to get banner headlines, [he] would talk of India as the next
superpower. [The] obsession with great power status was among the upper classes.
Seductive labels [of rising or great power] can lead to foolish choices. In external affairs,
Indians tend to be very restrained. In the Ministry of External Affairs I don’t think anybody
has ever acted on the premise that we are a big power.113

A third senior official said, “[The] Indian way of thinking [is that we are]
not an aggressive power. [We have] no territorial ambitions. Most of our
priorities are driven by domestic goals because we are a poor country.”114
Another pointed out, “National interest means India needs peace and
security [internally through economic development].”115 The focus on
economic development can be seen in party manifestos, too, which often
tied together foreign policy interests with economic development. For
example, the Congress Party manifesto of 1999 created a detailed work plan
of development while also explicitly vowing to pursue membership in the
Asia-Pacific Economic Forum (APEC).116 Similarly, BJP manifestos
delivered detailed domestic economic plans. For instance, the manifesto
from 1998 promised to make India a “software superpower” and a “global
economic power.” At the same time, it promised to reject abroad “all forms
of economic hegemonism . . . and actively [resist] such efforts.”117
The combination of strongly entrenched older ideas and inward-focused
ideas of nation-building resulted in notions that were reactive rather than
creative. That is, India often responded to situations, rather than building
upon or creating opportunities for active leadership. This thread can be seen
in the transcripts from a national security seminar organized in 2000 by the
United Services Institution, a Delhi-based security and defense think tank
(first set up in 1870 to support the British Indian military and intelligence
through analyses and reports). The seminar was a series of discussions and
individual sessions by leading officers in the military and foreign service,
both retired and active. They underlined, on the one hand, the need for
economic development, and on the other, the absence both of a national
security structure and of strategic thinking about international order, and
great power. For example, Lt. General Chandra Shekhar emphasized that
the most important factor for developing India’s power was economic
power and that India needed to consolidate its economy—that was the step
that was crucial to achieving comprehensive national strength and growth
as a global power. But, he also asserted that India had not demonstrated
capability to think through long-term issues and had been mostly reactive,
managing short-term national security interests.118 This point was further
taken up by Commander C. Uday Bhaskar, who reiterated that India had
consistently been “reticent” and “reactive” and had not adequately
comprehended the “relevance of macro-military power in the realization of
larger national objectives.”119 Ambassador Arundhati Ghosh argued that
India needed to be clear on its national objectives;120 she pointed out that
the focus on economic prosperity was important, but that there was no
country in the world that had been able to build economic prosperity
without developing its thinking on security.121 Ambassador J. N. Dixit
reiterated that India had an “insular acquisitiveness about power and
status.”122 In short, India had little to say about the norms of great power or
the path it might take to attain such power.

Conclusion: A Reticent Rise

The seesawing Indo-US relationship and the halting progression of India’s
LEP during this period can be understood in the context of these narratives
—the pull of the old foreign policy ideas and the push of the need for
domestic economic development, combined with the absence of narratives
about great power norms. Thus, despite India’s clearly increasing military
strength and astonishing economic growth—between 1980 and 2018 India’s
growth averaged 4.6%, with no decadal average falling below 3%, a feat
only nine countries in the world have achieved123—its behavior stayed
reticent.
In early 1998, C. V. Gopalakrishnan, the then deputy editor of The Hindu,
pointed out in a book commissioned by the Foreign Service Institute in
New Delhi that “one has to be incredibly optimistic to refuse to accept that
the US and India have been drifting apart, and there is no likelihood of the
global perceptions becoming closer.”124 To understand this strong
conviction, held even before the blow of the US sanctions on India after its
nuclear tests, one must understand the continuity of old ideas combined
with the focus on domestic development.
Traditionally, India, despite the perception that the United States often
pushed its own interests at the expense of India’s, never attributed
“malevolence” to US intentions.125 But while the United States was never
India’s enemy, neither had it ever been perceived as an empathetic friend
who would understand India’s security imperatives. Despite non-alignment,
one of the reasons India had eventually leaned toward the Soviet Union was
because the Russians, unlike the Americans, grasped the crucial importance
that India assigned to its independence, and to equality in bilateral foreign
relations. As a result of this more perceptive treatment of Indian ideas, the
Soviets were held by India to be the lesser of the two evils of a bipolar
world. Indian officials were convinced that equality in bilateral dealings and
complete autonomy of action were conditions that America would never
provide.126 India’s threat perceptions also remained consistent into the
post–Cold War era. Pakistan had always been the enemy, and China the
adversary.127
American overtures toward India beginning in the late 1980s, and India’s
economic reforms, made the United States hopeful of a reframed Indo-US
relationship. But India’s suspicions of the United States and its overreach,
its mistrust of the US-Pakistani relationship, and its continued desire for
autonomy meant that it did not embrace America’s vision—that India
would provide a counterbalance to China. Forging a partnership with the
United States in the 1990s was seen as a dichotomous choice between Pax
Americana or an independent (Nehruvian) foreign policy.128 This choice
played out, for example, during the 1991 Gulf War. While some pointed
that there were “now unprecedented opportunities” for India to effect
strategic change in Asia by offering support to the United States and
moving it away from Pakistan as its primary South Asian partner, many
remained strongly doubtful of American intentions. When India allowed an
American war plane to refuel on Indian soil, critics condemned the alleged
“tilt” toward the United States as an encroachment on India’s autonomy.129
India continued to believe through the 1990s that “an uncritical alliance
with the United States could significantly affect [its] credibility as an
independent power.”130 Thus, even with improved Indo-US defense
cooperation in the early 2000s, with the Indo-US nuclear deal and
continued US overtures to India (President Bush’s National Security
Strategy explicitly named India as a potential great power alongside China),
India remained “cautious and tempered by past legacies.”131
The push and pull of old ideas, combined with India’s inward focus
rather than on current great power norms, also affected its “Look East”
policy. During the early years after independence, India had often claimed
solidarity with other Asian countries, citing their common values and
opposition to Western imperialism. For a long time, these ideas took a
backseat to non-alignment, but they emerged again with the LEP, as Indian
politicians recalled India’s “cultural affinity” with Asia, implicitly claimed
anti-West solidarity, and extolled the value of the Asian path to
modernization.132,133 As political scientist Christopher Jaffrelot has shown,
the conception of Asia propagated by Indians, and most especially by the
Hindu nationalist movement that was the backbone of the BJP, was strongly
tied to India’s civilizational greatness as exemplar. That is, India didn’t
believed it needed to create a new path or forge new links in Asia. Rather,
India would Asianize itself by regenerating its own culture and
“reestablishing links with its own timeless traditions.”134 Thus, in 1996 the
electoral manifesto of the BJP announced the “promotion of Asian
solidarity” even while declaring it would not accept “any outside
interference in this region” or “any interference in our country’s internal
affairs, and would “reject the very thought of patronage by anybody.”135
And the Hindu nationalist weekly, the Organiser, while touting the
importance of the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia, explained that “on
account of the large number of temples in the country, Malaysia looks like
another Hindustan.”136 Again, despite India sharing ASEAN’s concerns
about China, Indian ideas of autonomy meant that it continued to be
reluctant to play the role of the balancer. The persistence of old ideas, the
strongly Indo-centric framing of Asia, and reluctance to commit to any path
that could infringe upon its independence precluded a path for India to
strongly develop relations with Southeast Asian nations. India was simply
not an active rising power; instead, it continued to be more comfortable in
its old pattern of emphasizing bilateral relationships. The absence of
narratives of great power and continuity of entrenched foreign policy ideas
meant that it was unable to position itself as centrally important to
Southeast Asia.

[Link]
7
Thoughts on Power Transitions, Past and Future

The world has always worried about the rise of new powers. Society sees
rising powers as challengers to the international system. They are
considered countries that will upend the status quo, remake the international
order, and cause war and chaos in the process. As a result, countries are
constantly looking over their shoulders to see which other countries are
emerging as challengers and whom, consequently, they should fear. But, as
it turns out, we are not very good at identifying which countries are rising,
whether they truly are challengers, and whether conflict is inevitable.
Beyond that, we have a hard time gauging why we should or should not fear
them.
When I set out to research this project I wanted primarily to understand
which countries can be considered rising powers and whether both China
and India fit the definition. In many ways, China seemed to be embracing
its rise while India did not. I also wanted to understand what we should
expect, if anything at all, of rising powers in general, and of China and
India in particular. After finding that there was little consensus on rising
powers, I decided to look to the past. I thought (as it turned out, with some
naïveté) that I could do this by identifying one other country that had once
been a rising power and comparing China and India to that country. I began,
thus, with simply one case—the United States in the late 19th century, when
it was acknowledged by many historians to be a rising power.
It was my first time exploring and researching American history from
that time period. I found myself fascinated by the narratives and raucous
deliberations that existed during that period. I found historian Robert
Beisner’s Twelve against Empire, an old classic about the elite intellectual
revolt after the Spanish-American War of 1898, a particularly gripping read.
Through the exploration of the beliefs of twelve influential American men,
Beisner recounted how the antipathy to America becoming a colonizing
great power united individuals with many different, even opposing, stances,
and from many walks of life. Yet, in the end, despite spirited debates, they
failed to keep the United States from acquiring a colony. Reading the many
rich accounts of this period, I began to realize that although the United
States would eventually remake the international system, as a rising power
it was often startlingly accommodational in its behavior. And as Beisner’s
work, among many others, detailed, the narratives that accompanied this
accommodational behavior were not only about becoming a great power but
about recognizing what great power was: great power was acquiring
colonies. The question was whether America should follow that path, and
for a while, it did. The United States was an active rising power. The
accompanying narratives tried to reconcile becoming a colonial great power
with previous and continuing ideas of exceptionalism and liberty—in
essence, promoting accommodation of late 19th-century norms of great
power. It was only after this period of active and accommodational behavior
that the United States would become activist, remake the international
order, and reject colonialism as an essential part of great power.
I questioned, however, whether the existence of such narratives was
perhaps a late 19th-century Western and democratic phenomenon.
American elites had these narratives about great power because they had the
luxury to do so in a vibrant democracy, one that was founded on Western
liberal ideas. Perhaps it was only Western countries that even considered
colonialism and colonies a symbol of great power, and perhaps it was only
democracies that had such a marketplace of narratives. I turned, therefore,
to an Asian monarchy, Meiji Japan. All I really knew of Meiji Japan was
from my school days in Asia and Africa—that Japan’s victory over Russia
in 1905 was considered a triumph for non-Western nations. I had always
been taught to think of Japan as revisionist, its victory heralding as it did the
arrival of an Asian, not a Western, country as a great power-to-be. But as I
researched Meiji Japan, I was astonished to find that Japan too was not only
active in its behavior as a rising power but accommodational of the great
power norms of the time. Meiji elites were acutely aware of what great
power was and what it was not, and they were very clear that Japan should
be a colonizing great power like those of the West. And unlike the United
States, Japan was not conflicted about becoming a colonizer—rather, its
narratives debated how to colonize most effectively.
Now I wondered whether there was any country at that time in the late
19th century that did not engage in active behavior despite having material
wealth. A chance conversation with a friend who had just read an article on
gidsland, or the Dutch idea of being a good country, a moral country,
pointed me toward the Netherlands, a small and extremely rich country that
did not capitalize on opportunities and remained reticent even when
compared to countries of its size. Finding very few sources in English on
this period, I visited the country to talk to historians, hired a Dutch-
speaking research assistant, and began my research. To my surprise and
some amusement, I was often met with puzzlement that I was interested in a
period when the Netherlands gave up colonies, rather than the period of the
Golden Age when it was at the height of its power. One academic even
claimed with a laugh that many of the research grants currently provided by
the Dutch government were for further research to add to the already
copious amount on the Golden Age rather than on the late 19th century—
even though that era has been called a second Golden Age. The Netherlands
was a fascinating case—here was a rich country with colonies,
acknowledged to be the second greatest colonial power after Great Britain,
and yet it remained highly reticent. This reticence was accompanied not by
narratives of becoming a great power or even by acknowledgment of the
Netherlands’ wealth and existing colonies, but narratives of it being a small
ethical non-imperial state, very different from the colonial powers of the
time. And this case made me think again of Japan but at a different time—
the Cold War era. Cold War–era Japan was heralded in its rise by countless
international books and newspapers. It had massive economic wealth but
engaged in highly reticent behavior, with its narratives strikingly different
from those of the elites of Meiji Japan.
The cases I selected for the book to understand China and India varied
across culture, time, and regime type. They had one element in common—
they each had some increasing amount of material capability, as well as the
opportunity to be considered a country whose power was increasing relative
to the status quo. In some cases, this was internationally recognized—late
19th-century America, and post–Cold War Japan were both considered
rising powers. Meiji Japan took a while for recognition—it cemented its
role as a rising power after its victory over Russia. And the Netherlands in
the late 19th century was somewhat overlooked, despite its increasing
material power and acknowledged mastery of colonies. Before turning to
China and India, I studied these earlier cases to lay out the patterns I found
—I examined the United States and the Netherlands in detail, and Meiji and
post–Cold War Japan as mini-cases. In cases where these countries engaged
in active behavior (the United States, Meiji Japan), they were also
accommodational. Their accommodational behavior was accompanied by
narratives that recognized the prevalent norms of great power and debated
how to become a great power in accordance with those norms. In cases
where these countries engaged in reticent behavior (the Netherlands, Cold
War Japan), their behavior was indifferent to or even rejecting of typical
great power behavior. Their narratives did not advocate becoming a great
power, even though they recognized what the current norms of great power
were.
I realized that we treat rising powers as countries that will become great
powers and fear them accordingly, but this is because we primarily use
material power to categorize them, and their quest for material power to
mark their behavior. This tautological truism does not allow us to
understand that all rising powers are not the same, and that when they are
different it is not necessarily attributable to a divergence in capabilities.
Active rising powers recognize the prevalent norms of great power and are
accommodational of them. Reticent rising powers are either indifferent to
them or reject them. The difference between them can be captured not just
through their dissimilarities in behavior, but also through the narratives that
accompany that behavior. Now turning to examine the early post–Cold War
period—a period in which China and India were increasingly referred to as
rising powers and when their capabilities were comparable (something that
would change by the middle of the first decade of the 2000s)—I found that
the ways these two countries were rising were indeed different from each
other. China and India were different in their behavior, and also in their
narratives about great power. China became an active rising power in the
1990s, and its behavior was accommodational of the great power norms of
the day; and this behavior was accompanied by narratives about becoming a
great power in the style of prevalent great power norms. India was a reticent
power, indifferent and sometimes even hostile to the great power norms of
the day, and its narratives continued to primarily draw on older
institutionalized ideas. Thus, this book has four important conclusions.
The first conclusion is that countries that are active rising powers are on
the path to great power because they have three elements: economic power,
military power, and narratives about becoming a great power, which I also
call idea advocacy. Those that simply have increasing economic power
and/or military power but no idea advocacy are reticent powers, and are not
on the path to great power. The United States and Meiji Japan had all three
elements and behaved like active rising powers—in addition to increasing
their military and economic might, they globalized their interests and took
on authority and responsibility in the international system; they displayed
internal recognition of their changing status and explained their policies for
a domestic and international audience. The Netherlands and Cold War
Japan behaved in some of the ways we typically expect of rising powers—
the Dutch substantially increased their economic clout, and attempted to
shore up their defensive military clout; Japan attempted to become a trading
state. But they lacked idea advocacy and remained reticent powers. China
and India, despite being labeled rising powers and having comparable
capabilities, behaved very differently: China had all three elements and
behaved as other active rising powers have done in the past. India had
increasing military and economic power but failed to develop narratives of
becoming a great power, and stayed reticent.
The second conclusion of this book is that active rising powers recognize
and play by the prevalent norms and institutions that mark great power
behavior, and rise to become great powers by accommodating, not revising,
those norms. In other words, rising powers do not rise by challenging the
current international order but rather by accepting it. Some international
relations experts who have examined other historical cases of rising powers
acknowledge this—Stacie Goddard shows, for example, how Prussia used
established norms and rhetoric to justify its expansion, and as a result it rose
virtually unopposed,1 while Iver Neumann shows how Russia constantly
attempted to adopt European behaviors in order to be recognized as a great
power.2 This book expands on this foundational work to show that rising
powers globalize because they recognize what the great power norms are in
the current international order, and that what we think of as the symbol of
great power is dependent on the era in which we live. It would be
unacceptable today, for example, for China to attempt to be a great power
by acquiring or acting as if it owns colonial territories—China is, in fact,
incredibly sensitive to the fact that its push into Africa has sometimes been
dubbed imperialistic. The flip side of this is that reticent powers sometimes
do not accept important elements of the international order. The
Netherlands in the 19th century rejected the idea of itself as an imperialist
country, even though it held colonies and was considered a model of
colonialism by other countries of the time; rather, it thought of itself as non-
imperialist and morally above the other colonizing countries. Cold War
Japan thought that by focusing on being a trading state, and eschewing
military might, great power would eventually follow at some point. India in
the 1990s, and even today in many aspects, rejects the idea of great power
responsibility through institutional leadership, seeing it as a thinly veiled
intrusion on its sovereignty.
The third conclusion is that idea advocacy—or the lack of it—is not a
constant; just as there are many factors that spur countries to begin
increasing their economic and military power, narratives about becoming a
great power arise for many reasons too. And countries that do not have idea
advocacy can, in the future, develop these narratives. It has been argued by
many that new ideas about identity, culture, or policy—or the replacement
of older ideas—can occur when there is some sort of an exogenous shock to
the system.3 Particularly, this has been shown to be the case with economic
ideas which, spurred by a shock, can provide a map for new institutions to
be created, and reduce societal and political uncertainty by offering
solutions to a “moment of crisis.”4 These shocks therefore result in ideas
that can be transformative for the country as a whole.5
Others have argued that the emergence of new ideas can be related to the
type of government that is in place; that is, in some countries the structure
of the government is such that ideas do not “diffuse” or “transfer” very
easily. If elites have very strong control over policies, then the speed with
which ideas diffuse can be affected—the stronger the control, the slower the
pace of diffusion.6 New or recombined ideas can also arise due to
embedded cultural, religious, and historical institutions in the country.7 In
each case in this book we find these and other reasons for why idea
advocacy occurred. In the United States, the Spanish-American War was
indeed an exogenous shock, but ideas about expansion and American
greatness were not completely new, and were also rooted in identity and
ideas of the past. America had always talked about national greatness, but
now it also talked about international greatness. Japan, too, one could argue,
suffered a shock to its system because of the forcible opening up of the
country in the mid-19th century. But it would be a mistake to attribute its
idea advocacy entirely to this one major event. The Meiji Restoration that
followed was also a formative experience, as were the deliberate policy
steps Japanese elites took, such as sending many of its finest abroad to learn
from Western countries. And while many of the ideas about regaining great
power were indeed new, in that Japan, a hitherto isolated nation, now
embraced Western laws and notions of colonial great power, there were also
links to uniquely Japanese codes of honor and self-esteem that merged with
its rising nationalism.8 The case of Cold War Japan is interesting to think of
in this context because there were some signs that idea advocacy could have
re-emerged. Not only was there resistance among some Japanese elites to
their country’s reticent foreign policy—in 1970, the novelist Mishima
Yukio committed suicide at Self-Defense Forces headquarters to protest
Japan’s loss of its samurai spirit; a decade later, Matsuoka Hideo, a
prominent foreign affairs commentator, declared Japan’s reticence to be the
“diplomacy of cowardice”9—but when Prime Minister Nakasone came to
power, he appointed a private brain trust, the Maekawa Commission, to
discuss the topic of internationalization and to propagate a new, more active
vision for Japan. Ultimately, as we saw in Chapter 4, Nakasone’s agenda
remained unrealized, and by the 1990s, the economic crisis had overtaken
the country.
In some ways, one could argue post–Cold War China made a deliberate
institutionalized effort to generate narratives about how to become a great
power. A Chinese academic with whom I was once chatting in Beijing put
forward a related, interesting, if slightly implausible, argument; when we
were discussing my project he mused out loud that perhaps China had such
narratives and India did not because there was a long Confucian tradition in
China of intellectuals aspiring to offer their thoughts about strategy and the
country’s place in the world to the government. This is because, he said,
Confucius himself had once been a mandarin (guan) or bureaucrat-scholar
(although one who had failed at the job). While this academic’s take was
striking to contemplate, it did not explain for me the difference between
modern China and India, particularly because the latter also has a tradition
of scholar-bureaucrats (Kautilya, the author of the Arthashastra, a 2nd-
century bc treatise on how to rule an empire, comes to mind).
But it was clear that the Chinese government in many respects was trying
to replicate the American model of vibrant foreign policy discussions
between the government and an elite brain trust in the form of think tanks,
but with a twist—acknowledgment of the authoritarian state, which meant
that, publicly at least, ideas could not deviate from the official party line.
Yet while early post–Cold War China was not a democracy, neither was it a
country with a monolithic narrative. In addition to supporting the Chinese
government’s top-down ideas—“peaceful rise” (heping jueqi) and “peaceful
development” (heping fazhan)—experts at think tanks were often
deliberately drafted into the process of producing ideas. Think tanks in
China are not independent in the Western sense—they cannot determine the
mission and timing of research to be undertaken. However, they are “stable
and autonomous” and conduct research and provide advice on policy
issues.10 Some of the most influential think tanks in China today on foreign
security policy include the Chinese Institutes of Contemporary International
Relations, or CICIR (Zhongguo xiandai guoji guanxi yanjiuyuan), China
Institute of International Studies (Zhongguo guoji wenti yanjiuyuan),
Shanghai Institute of International Studies (Shanghai guoji wenti
yanjiuyuan), Centre for International and Strategic Studies, Peking
University (Beijing daxue guoji zhanlue yanjiusuo), and the Institute of
International Studies, Tsinghua University (Qinghua daxue guoji guanxi
yanjiuyuan). These bodies regularly provide reports and research, and they
convene meetings on specific issues, many times at the request of the
Chinese government, that are attended by government personnel. Key
academics and analysts from these think tanks are often also invited to
high-level meetings in government.
The nexus between these think tanks and the Chinese government was
not limited to the discussion of specific policy issues. In addition,
government officials regularly asked them to brainstorm and interpret ideas.
For example, before one of Xi Jinping’s early visits to the United States as
Chairman, officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (waijiao bu) asked
a major think tank to convene a conference on one of the concepts Xi had
begun espousing—xinxing daguo guanxi, or “new type of great power
relations.” Multiple interviewees in Beijing and Shanghai told me that
waijiao bu officials attended the conference, took copious notes that would
be sent up through the appropriate channels, but did not say a word during
the proceedings. Other interviewees claimed that the concept itself had first
been espoused by an expert at CICIR in an internal seminar, and then had
eventually wended its way up to Xi, who endorsed it by publicly including
it in a speech.11
While Indian think tanks still do not have the reach and influence of
Chinese think tanks, and the Indian government does not utilize them in a
similar fashion, there are some indications of efforts to move in this
direction. The Observer Research Foundation (ORF), for example, is
making a conscious effort to produce a body of work on Indian foreign
policy and power. The organization is stymied somewhat, however, in that
its reputation is still more as an organizer of networking
conferences(particularly the Raisina Dialogue, which it organizes annually
in partnership with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs) rather than as a
trust of substantive consultative expertise.
As a corollary, let me say that I’m not making a value judgment about
countries that do or don’t develop idea advocacy. Whether a country is an
active rising power and rises to become a great power or stays a reticent
power is not a matter of superiority versus inferiority, either of culture or of
government. In some ways, one could argue that reticence can sometimes
serve a country well. India’s reticence has indeed earned it frustration on the
part of its partners but, on the other hand, despite this and despite its
increasing capabilities, its reputation is one that China has reason to envy.
Even when India does not play by the norms of the international order—
witness its bid to enter the Nuclear Security Group (NSG) despite its
continuing refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), a
prerequisite for NSG members—it is not seen or feared as a revisionist
power.12
The final, and perhaps most important, conclusion is that when trying to
understand China and India today, we need to understand that idea
advocacy or the lack of it can explain much of why they behave differently
—understanding and even mapping these domestic narratives early on are
crucial to understanding their behavior as well as the content of their
nationalism. And such an understanding is crucial in terms of managing our
relationships with these countries.
Active rising powers that are initially accommodational may in fact
eventually become activist; that is, they will attempt to revise the
international order. Convinced of the need to act like a great power, China
has slowly, since the 1990s, been transitioning its reputation from an
opposer of norms to a shaper of norms.13 China is also today searching for a
Chinese as opposed to a Western path to great power. A multilateral
initiative like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a centerpiece of Chinese
foreign policy which promises to connect China to nearly seventy countries
through infrastructure development and investments—is an expression of
the search for a Chinese path to great power, even as China uses the norms
of the liberal international order to anchor the initiative. In 2020, Fareed
Zakaria pronounced that “the new consensus on China’s economic behavior
holds that China forced multinational companies to transfer their
technology, has subsidized its ‘national champions,’ and has placed formal
and informal barriers in the path of foreign firms seeking to enter its
market. Beijing has, in short, used the open international economy to
bolster its own statist and mercantilist system.”14 While the thrust of
Zakaria’s piece was that one should not exaggerate the threat from China,
he pointed to the BRI as exemplifying the fact that China’s foreign policy
has under Xi become much more “ambitious and assertive.” But what
Zakaria and others need to understand is that BRI is not a sudden new
outcome—it is the result of a longer process of China’s rise that first
encompassed active behavior before Beijing attempted any activism. In
other words, China today displaying intentions to create new rules in
international politics and undertake reform to prominent international
institutions so that they would better serve Chinese interests15 is part of a
process that began in the 1990s. Thus, any management of a rising power
needs to be strategized when it displays active behavior not simply as a
belated reaction to activist behavior.
It is also important to remember that activism, even China’s activism, is
not a given. BRI is very subnational at its core—that is, local Chinese
governments play a large role in BRI,16 leading to fragmented rather than
consolidated implementation.17 This means that BRI is not driven by a
single monolithic idea, but rather that narratives will continue to play a role
in shaping BRI as it evolves. Its very “hazy[ness]”18 means that there may
be room to impact the narratives, and the fact that BRI is primarily about
China’s desire to articulate an alternate “Chinese” path and reshape global
governance19 (the official government language about the policy suggests
that BRI is supposed to “understand the world, change the world, and
profoundly shape the destiny of humanity”20) means that attempting to
shape the narratives is important. Moreover, since idea advocacy is a
marketplace of narratives, by definition there are narratives that do not win
out. It may be significant for the United States and others to look at these
losing narratives, and the elites who espouse them, and understand why
they lost out.
In India’s case, the United States needs to tamp down its expectations.
American frustration with India continued in the twenty-first century as
India pursued interests that seemed inimical to cooperation. For example,
India enacted the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act in 2010, casting a
“pall” over any optimism on America’s part; India bought the French Rafale
fighter jet over an American jet; and, outraged by the arrest of an Indian
diplomat in the United States by US Attorney for the Southern District of
New York, Preet Bharara, the Indian government ordered that the security
barriers around the American Embassy in New Delhi be pulled away,
leaving the embassy vulnerable to attack, particularly by vehicles
approaching at high speeds.21 Even as recently as 2018, a former US
ambassador to India, Richard Verma, acknowledged at a conference in New
Delhi that the Indo-US relationship never seemed to “quite get there.”22
This could explain, in turn, India’s lack of deep engagement in
constructing a multilateral initiative like the Indo Pacific Quad.23 Even
though India is deeply worried about the Indo-Pacific region and,
particularly, about China’s BRI activities in the region (and even though its
ruling party, the BJP, has advocated that India give up its “strategic
reticence”24), it continues to frustrate its partners with its unwillingness to
commit to or build any new initiative to counterbalance China or even draw
in Southeast Asian countries.25 The Look East policy, first begun in 1991,
was tacitly acknowledged to have failed when Prime Minister Modi decided
to reboot the policy shortly after coming to power in 2014 and to rebrand it
as “Act East.” But as one expert acknowledged in 2016, India still remained
“peripheral” to Southeast Asia as a “minor player” with “limited
influence.”26 Another stated that while it was clearly in India’s interests to
support ASEAN vis-à-vis China, and there was “little doubt about New
Delhi’s desires,” ASEAN valued “actual deliveries rather than promises.”27
Today India’s GDP is the third largest in the world after China and the
United States in purchasing power parity terms,28 and India is the world’s
third largest military spender.29 But many of the narratives of its elites
continue to be inward rather than outward looking—in international and
domestic speeches, Prime Minister Modi (unlike Xi, for example) rarely, if
ever, actively talks of Indian leadership in the world, and he espouses no
Indian way to emulate.30 Rather, he makes clear that his goals are to
develop the Indian economy and attract investment. This was recently
confirmed to me by a very high-ranking Indian official who said s/he
believed that Modi’s goal was to make India a rich country, not a powerful
one, which explained why Indian diplomats in major partner countries, like
the United Sates for example, were consistently instructed to meet with
businessmen, and virtually ignore their counterparts in the US State
Department.
Why Nations Rise also raises a number of questions that provide fertile
ground for further research. Can we find patterns for why some countries
develop narratives about becoming a great power, and others do not? In the
cases that I chose, I found a number of different reasons for each country’s
narratives. But in no case did I find that the presence or absence of these
narratives was predetermined. The case of Japan in two time periods
demonstrates that very clearly. If we could pinpoint critical junctures at
which some countries become more likely than others to propagate these
narratives, we could begin to understand even more about the causes and
consequences of a country’s rise.
We saw in this book that material capabilities which we consistently rely
on to identify rising powers are certainly necessary but not sufficient for a
country to behave as a rising power. But what if there were a country that
had narratives about becoming a great power but not the capability to do
so? What could be the outcome of such narratives? A potential, and
somewhat chilling, case that came to my mind after discussions with
historian colleagues is that of Weimar Germany between the two World
Wars.31
The Enabling Act of March 1933 that brought Hitler unrestricted power
to rule Germany was a seminal event that resulted in the military resurgence
of Germany. When interwar Germany is discussed as a rising power by
international relations experts, the period under scrutiny is invariably post-
1933 when Hitler ascended to power and set in motion Germany’s overt
rearmament. Between 1933 and 1939, the rise of Germany, the failure to
contain it, and the outbreak of World War II led to much hand-wringing
about the policy of appeasement, where it came from, who propagated it,
and who was to blame. Weimar Germany, by contrast, had emerged from
national defeat, and was militarily and economically weak. However,
interestingly, while Weimar Germany indeed had neither the military nor
the economic power that would lead us to consider it to be a rising power, it
had narratives about regaining great power: German elites strongly believed
that Germany was destined to again become a great power, even if that led
to another war.32
Historians accept that Nazi ideology had historical roots. Many elements
such as “territorial unity and independence of all racial Germans,” the need
for “living space” (Lebensraum) to match the territory with the economic
needs of a people, and the idea of an enlarged state engaging in worldwide
imperial politics derived from pre-1914 German beliefs about the nation’s
role in the world.33 There was no significant break between the ideas of pre-
1914 and subsequent Nazi ideology, and a consistent emphasis on the need
for Germany to reassert itself as a great power. These beliefs were enhanced
by various factors, such as the humiliating “war guilt” clause in the Treaty
of Versailles, the psychological burden of reparations, the unfair imposition
of the borders in the eastern frontiers, counter-revolutionary strands that
drew on Pan-German ideas, and imperialist dreams of world power and
colonial grandeur. And even though Germany at this time did not have the
capabilities, elite ideas about regaining great power strongly promoted
rearmament. The “stab in the back” legend (when Germany’s defeat became
clear, its military leaders quickly installed a civil government that would be
held responsible by the German public for their nation’s loss) helped sustain
the idea that the German empire had been defeated because the army had
been “betrayed.”34 Army manuals made it clear that Germany was “a major
military power” with a modern army, helping the officers avoid the bleak
reality of the present and think instead of a bright military future.35
Moreover, the German military (Reichswehr) and the German Foreign
Office began demanding that Germany’s armed forces be allowed to gain
parity with other countries.36 The Reichswehr under General Schleicher
also began to move away from reorganizing existing units to long-term
plans for rearmament and “became more active politically” as it sought to
align these plans “with the revisionist foreign policy of the government.”37
“The persistence of the mystique of nationalist integration and the desire to
reassert Germany’s position as a great power also helped inspire the
revanchist shift in foreign policy that began in 1929–1930.”38 In short,
Weimar Germany could represent a somewhat worrying case of a country
with narratives of (re)gaining great power; these narratives played no small
role in its rearmament, that is, in Germany’s regaining both economic and
military might.
Charting the emergence and decline of narratives is also interesting to
consider. Some narratives win out. Others do not. Why? Does it have to do
with the fortunes of the elites who hold them, or is there some other reason?
Are there certain kinds of elites who are more likely to hold some narratives
over others? Can a status quo power be successful in promoting some
narratives over others within a rising power in order to better manage the
relationship?
As I finish this book in the middle of a global pandemic, I wonder how
an unprecedented geopolitical crisis can affect narratives. Will India feel
compelled to develop narratives of great power in self-preservation if the
United States and the international liberal order decline? India currently has
a Hindu nationalist government in power under Prime Minister Modi which
has been even more aggressively vocal about the rising threat of China than
previous Indian governments—will Hindu nationalist narratives eventually
turn to India’s changing status in the world and advocate active behavior?
Will China tamp down narratives of becoming a great power if it sees itself
either as compelled to cooperate with the United States to tackle the crisis39
(in effect taking on collective responsibility on a larger scale and faster than
it has done thus far) or if a second wave of the pandemic hits? There are
divisions among Chinese elites today about tackling the global health crisis,
from those who believe that China should focus on de-escalating the rivalry
with the United States, to those who advocate for China to take on the
responsibility of helping countries to recover, to those who think China
should seize the moment and take on leadership in public health
institutions.
Finally, this book is not intended to be a crystal ball and definitively
predict that if countries do not develop narratives about becoming a great
power they will certainly not become great powers, and that if they do, they
will. Rather, what it does is show that, all else being equal, we can look to
history to learn fascinating patterns of behavior in countries that have
increased their economic and military power, and/or had opportunities to
rise, and use these patterns to understand China and India today. Why
Nations Rise is intended to give us a different way to think about China,
India, and other rising powers, and open the path for future scholars to ask
more questions about power transitions in the world.
[Link]
NOTES

Chapter 1
1. Private conversation with author, July 2018.
2. Max Fisher, “India Says It Wants to Be a Great Power. It Didn’t Act like One This Week,”
Washington Post, December 18, 2013.
[Link]
a-great-power-it-didnt-act-like-one-this-week/.
3. Stephen P. Cohen and Sumit Ganguly, “The Case Studies: India,” in The Pivotal States: A New
Framework for US Policy in the Developing World, eds. Robert Chase, Emily Hill, and Paul
Kennedy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 41.
4. Alyssa Ayres, “Will India Start Acting like a Global Power?,” Foreign Affairs 96 no. 6
(November–December 2017).
5. As part of the acronym BRICS.
6. Tarik Oguzlu, “Making Sense of Turkey’s Rising Power Status: What Does Turkey’s
Approach within NATO Tell Us?,” Turkish Studies 14, no. 4 (2013), 774–796.
7. “Brazil’s Unrest: A Rising Power Is Wracked by Social Turmoil,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
June 22, 2013. [Link]
rising-power-is-wracked-by-social-turmoil/stories/201306220144
8. “The Rise and Rise of Iran: How Tehran has Become Pivotal to the Future of the Middle
East,” The Conversation, September 1, 2017. [Link]
iran-how-tehran-has-become-pivotal-to-the-future-of-the-middle-east-83160.
9. Jonathan Adelman, “The Surprising Resurgence of Russia as a Great Power,” Huffington Post,
September 8, 2015. [Link]
guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=
AQAAAFxJzlX4FQyl-
IUb0yIYyXvcT1eIL8sJP8ixeZLQ3eodzI1WcQp_vqbe04gdx8ozU1V3uze_6Q2dXfWQBwH
TICex0ftE90GUqy6W5gelJi-VdcQu3yrRf5-ZiFezkgOaflQKAbVds8s-maYjsIA7-
9W7kyM1oDmlVb3mTgEzmxMQ
10. Douglas Lemke and Ronald Tammen, “Power Transition Theory and the Rise of China,”
International Interactions 29, no. 4 (2003): 269.
11. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), 13.
12. A. F. K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), 361.
13. Organski, World Politics; A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1980); Jacek Kugler and Douglas Lemke, eds., Parity and War:
Evaluations and Extensions of the War Ledger (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1996); Raimo Vayrynen, “Economic Cycles, Power Transitions, Political Management and
Wars between Major Powers,” International Studies Quarterly 27, no. 4 (December 1983):
389–418; David Sobek and Jeremy Wells, “Dangerous Liaisons: Dyadic Power Transitions
and the Risk of Militarized Disputes,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 46, no. 1 (June
2013): 69–92; Brian Efird, Jacek Kugler, and Gaspare Genna, “From War to Integration:
Generalizing Power Transition Theory,” International Interactions 29, no. 4 (October 2003):
293–313.
14. Some examples of power transition theorists applying their findings to specific cases like
China are Jacek Kugler and Ronald Tammen, “Regional Challenge: China’s Rise to Power,” in
The Asia-Pacific: A Region in Transition, ed. Jim Rolfe (Honolulu: Asia-Pacific Center for
Security Studies, 2004), 33–53; David Rapkin and William Thompson, “Power Transition,
Challenge and the (Re-) Emergence of China,” International Interactions 29, no. 4 (2003):
315–342.
15. See, for example, Jack S. Levy, “Misperception and the Causes of War: Theoretical Linkages
and Analytical Problems,” World Politics 36, no. 1 (October 1983): 76–99; Christopher Layne,
“The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security 17, no. 4
(Spring 1993): 5–51; Stacie Goddard, When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World
Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018); David. M. Edelstein, Over the Horizon:
Time, Uncertainty and the Rise of Great Powers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017).
16. There is a large body of excellent work by country experts on China and India that provides
insight into their domestic politics and foreign policy and how they affect their rise. A
variation on this also focuses on the implications of each one’s rise for the United States and
the international system. Examples of the latter are Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China a Status
Quo Power,” International Security 27, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 5–56; John Mearsheimer,
“China’s Un-peaceful Rise,” Current History 105, no. 690 (April 2006): 160–162; G. John
Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive?,”
Foreign Affairs 87, no. 1 (January–February 2008): 23–37; Barry Buzan, “China in
International Society: Is ‘Peaceful Rise’ Possible?” Chinese Journal of International Politics
3, no. 1 (2010): 5–36; Andrew F. Hart and Bruce D. Jones, “How Do Rising Powers Rise?”
Survival 52, no. 6 (2010): 63–88; Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China
Escape Thucydides’ Trap? (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).
17. This is the smallest body of work. Examples include Robyn Meredith, The Elephant and the
Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us (New York: W.W.
Norton, 2008); Pranab Bardhan, Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic
Rise of India and China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); George Gilboy and
Eric Heginbotham, Chinese and Indian Strategic Behavior: Growing Power and Alarm (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); T. V. Paul, ed., The China-India Rivalry in the
Globalization Era (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018).
18. More specifically, “capabilities are an aggregation of world population, urban population,
military expenditures, military personnel, iron and steel production, and coal and oil
consumption” (Kugler and Tammen, “Regional Challenge,” 38). At its broadest, it implies a
combination of hard and soft power.
19. Joseph S. Nye, “Soft Power and American Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 119,
no. 2 (Summer 2004): 256.
20. Hart and Jones, “How Do Rising Powers Rise?,” 65.
21. Sheena Chestnut and Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China Rising?,” in Global Giant: Is China
Changing the Rules of the Game, eds. Eva Paus et al. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009),
239–240.
22. Jehangir Pocha and Ha Jin, “The Rising ‘Soft Power’ of India and China,” New Perspectives
Quarterly 20, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 6–13; Yanzhong Huang and Sheng Ding, “Dragon’s
Underbelly: An Analysis of China’s Soft Power,” East Asia 23, no. 4 (December 2006): 22–
44; Li Mingjiang, “China Debates Soft Power,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics
2, no. 2 (October 2008): 287–308; Jacques Hymans, “India’s Soft Power and Vulnerability,”
India Review 8, no. 3 (2009): 234–265.
23. Organski, World Politics, 366–367; Jacek Kugler and A. F. K. Organski, “The Power
Transition: A Retrospective and Prospective Evaluation,” Handbook of War Studies 1 (1989):
173.
24. Cornel Ban and Mark Blyth, “The BRICs and the Washington Consensus: An introduction,”
Review of International Political Economy 20, no. 2 (2013): 242; Marion Fourcade, “The
Material and Symbolic Construction of the BRICs: Reflections Inspired by the RIPE Special
Issue,” Review of International Political Economy 20, no. 2 (2013): 262.
25. Fourcade, “The Material and Symbolic Construction,” 261.
26. Chelsea Geach, “Four Reasons for SA’s Low Life Expectancy,” Western Cape, December 22,
2014. [Link]
expectancy-1798106
27. Chestnut and Johnston, “Is China Rising?,” 244.
28. Eric Heginbotham et al., The US-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the
Evolving Balance of Power, 1996–2017 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2015).
29. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001)
30. Defined as “an activist foreign policy that ranges from attention to international events to
increases in diplomatic legations to participation in great-power diplomacy.” Fareed Zakaria,
From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1998), 4–5
31. That is, when rising powers engage in expansionist behavior, we should apparently expect
them to do so because either they can (they have the relative material power to do so) or they
must (they have the material power to do so and they perceive a threat). See Sean Lynn Jones,
“Realism and America’s Rise: A Review Essay,” International Security 23, no. 2 (Fall 1998):
170.
32. Michael Mazarr, Timothy Heath, and Astrid Cevallos, “China and the International Order,”
RAND Report (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2018); Alastair Iain Johnston, “China and
International Order: Which Order?” (working paper, Gov. James Albert Noe and Linda Noe
Laine Professor of China in World Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2018).
33. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “India’s Authoritarian Streak: What Modi Risks with His Divisive
Populism,” Foreign Affairs (May 2018). [Link]
05-30/indias-authoritarian-streak
34. Josh Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 17–20.
35. Property is given meaning only because actors share belief it has meaning [Marina Duque,
“Recognizing International Status: A Relational Approach” (unpublished paper, 2016)].
36. “Yearbook: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security,” Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2018,
[Link]
37. “2020 Military Strength Ranking,” Global Firepower List,
[Link]
38. Miles Kahler, “Rising Powers and Global Governance: Negotiating Change in a Resilient
Status Quo,” International Affairs 89, no. 3 (May 2013): 721.
39. Mingjiang Li, ed., Soft Power: China’s Emerging Strategy in International Politics (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2009).
40. Hart and Jones, “How Do Rising Powers Rise?,” 65; Chestnut and Johnston, “Is China
Rising?,” 237.
41. Levy, War and the Modern Great Power System, 8.
42. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “The Role of Beliefs in Identifying Rising Powers,” The Chinese
Journal of International Politics 9, no. 2 (April 2016): 221.
43. George Modelski, World Power Concentrations: Typology, Data, Explanatory Framework
(Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press, 1974).
44. Daniel S. Geller and J. David Singer, Nations at War: A Scientific Study of International
Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 58.
45. Melvin Small and Joel David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816–
1980 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1982).
46. An example of this is Turkey and the United States in 1845, both of which ranked higher than
Prussia using the COW scale, but only the latter is identified as a great power (Levy, War and
the Modern Great Power System, 16).
47. Levy, War and the Modern Great Power System, 16; R. Corbetta et al., “Major Powers, Major
Power Status and Status Inconsistency in International Politics” (unpublished paper, 2008), 3;
Joel David Singer, “Reconstructing the Correlates of War Data Set on Material Capabilities of
States, 1816–1985,” International Interactions 14, no. 2 (1988): 119.
48. Singer, “Reconstructing the Correlates of War Data Set,” 119–120; Levy, War and the Modern
Great Power System, 17–18.
49. Oystein Tunsjo, The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics: China, the United States and
Geostructural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 7–16.
50. Tunsjo, The Return of Bipolarity, 90.
51. Iver B. Neumann, “Russia as a Great Power: 1815–2007,” Journal of International Relations
and Development 11, no. 2 (June 2008): 144.
52. Neumann, “Russia As a Great Power,” 145.
53. This sometimes has been the case even when great powers have expanded. Stacie Goddard
shows how Prussia used established norms and rhetoric to justify expansion, and essentially
rose unopposed. Stacie Goddard, “When Right Makes Might: How Prussia Overturned the
European Balance of Power,” International Security 33, no. 3 (Winter 2009): 110–142.
54. We already know that countries in general attach importance to social reputation as an end in
itself. The purpose is to achieve and manage “social standing, legitimacy and influence in
international and national politics.” Jennifer Erickson, Dangerous Trade: Arms Exports,
Human Rights and International Reputation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015),
32. We also know that rising powers need to be recognized by established great powers in
order to feel that their quest for great power is legitimate. Michelle Murray, The Struggle for
Recognition in International Relations: Status, Revisionism and Rising Powers (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2018).
55. Quoted in Neumann, “Russia as a Great Power,” 130.
56. Louise Emmerji, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss, “Economic and Social Thinking in the
UN in Historical Perspective,” Development and Change 36, no. 2 (2005): 211–235.
57. Also called norms. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics
and Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 891.
58. Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions
and Political Change (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1993); Kathleen
Knight, “Transformations of the Concept of Ideology in the Twentieth Century,” American
Political Science Review 100, no. 4 (2006): 619–626.
59. Goldstein and Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy; Jeffrey Checkel, Ideas and International
Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1997); Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational
Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1999);
Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox, eds., Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
60. Vivien Schmidt, “Reconciling Ideas and Interests Through Discursive Institutionalism,” in
Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, eds. Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 58.
61. Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox, “Introduction,” in Ideas and Politics in Social Science
Research, eds. Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (New York: Oxford University Press,
2010), 5.
62. Schmidt, “Reconciling Ideas and Interests,” 54.
63. William B. Gartner, “What Are We Talking about When We Talk about Entrepreneurship?,”
Journal of Business Venturing 5, no. 1 (1990): 15–28.
64. There are some exceptions. See, for example, Stacie Goddard, “Brokering Change: Networks
and Entrepreneurs in International Politics,” International Theory 1, no. 2 (2009): 249–281.
65. Peter Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic
Policymaking in Britain,” Comparative Politics (1993): 275–296; Martin B. Carstensen,
“Ideas Are Not as Stable as Political Scientists Want Them to Be: A Theory of Incremental
Ideational Change,” Political Studies 59, no. 3 (2011): 596–615.
66. Adam D. Sheingate, “Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Change, and American Political
Development,” Studies in American Political Development 17, no. 2 (2003): 188.
67. Sheingate, “Political Entrepreneurship,” 188. Note that idea entrepreneurship may also include
elite norm entrepreneurs who pressure the state to enact policy as part of a transnational
advocacy network because it is appropriate great power behavior. See, for example, R. Charli
Carpenter, “Setting the Advocacy Agenda: Theorizing Issue Emergence and Nonemergence in
Transnational Advocacy Networks,” International Studies Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2007): 99–120;
Thorsten Benner, “Brazil as a Norm Entrepreneur: The ‘Responsibility while Protecting’
Initiative” (working paper, Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin, March 2013).
68. Peter Haas, “Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International
Organization 46, no. 1 (1992): 1–35; John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pederson, “Knowledge
Regimes and Comparative Political Economy,” in Ideas and Politics in Social Science
Research, eds. Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (New York: Oxford University Press,
2010): 172–190; Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men:
Bringing the Statesman Back In,” International Security 25, no. 4 (Spring 2001): 107–146.
69. Schmidt, “Reconciling Ideas and Interests,” 57.
70. Campbell and Pederson, “Knowledge Regimes,” 174.
71. Schmidt, “Reconciling Ideas and Interests,” 47, 56.
72. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1976); Sheri Berman, The Social Democratic Moment: Ideas and
Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998);
Craig Parsons, A Certain Idea of Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).
73. Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy?: Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from
Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 24.
74. Stacie Goddard, When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2018), 12.
75. David. M. Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty and the Rise of Great Powers
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 77.
76. Any state that is actively increasing its material capabilities also usually has a grand strategy.
Grand strategy is a difficult concept to define, encapsulating as it does “grand plans”
(deliberate planning by elites), “grand principles” (principles held by elites to guide their
behavior), and “grand behavior” (repeating patterns of behavior); Nina Silove, “Beyond the
Buzzword: The Three Meanings of ‘Grand Strategy,’” Security Studies 27, no. 1 (2017): 3.
However, its essence is the ability of political leaders, using all resources at the disposal of a
country, to integrate both military and non-military policies in order to preserve and advance
the country’s long-term interests during war and peace; Paul M. Kennedy, ed., Grand
Strategies in War and Peace (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 4–5. Silove
points out that the commonalities between the differing conceptions of grand strategy are the
focus on ends and means, its holistic nature and the advancing of the most important interests;
“Beyond the Buzzword,” 19–20.
77. Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Silove, “Beyond the Buzzword,” 25.
78. Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs (March–April 2011): 68–
79.
79. This has been claimed explicitly with respect to rising powers by both classical power
transition theorists like Robert Gilpin and more recent scholars: T. V. Paul, Deborah Welch
Larson, and William Wohlforth, Status in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014); Steven Ward, Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017); Xiaoyu Pu, Rebranding China: Contested Status
Signaling in the Changing Global Order (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019); as
well as by scholars who argue that all seek status within their own status community, see
Jonathan Renshon, Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World Politics (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
80. Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1954); John M. Collins, Grand Strategy:
Principles and Practices (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1973); Hal Brands, What
Good Is Grand Strategy?
81. Kennedy, Grand Strategies in War and Peace; Richard Rosecrance and Arthur Stein, eds., The
Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
82. John Mueller, “The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy,” in The Domestic Bases of Grand
Strategy, eds. Richard Rosecrance and Arthur Stein, The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993): 48–62.
83. Paul M. Kennedy, ed., Grand Strategies in War and Peace, 4–5. Silove points out that the
commonalities between the differing conceptions of grand strategy are the focus on ends and
means, its holistic nature, and the advancing of the most important interests (“Beyond the
Buzzword,” 19–20).
84. Goldstein and Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy; Checkel, Ideas and International Political
Change; Evangelista, Unarmed Forces; Béland and Cox, Ideas and Politics.
85. Elites in great powers have been shown to engage in narratives that lead to overexpansion
(Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire).
86. Gilpin encouraged scholars to “think of any international system as temporary . . . to look for
underlying causes of change which accumulate slowly but are realized in rare, concentrated
bursts . . . to be on the lookout for gaps between the capabilities of states and the demands
placed upon them by their international roles.” William Wohlforth, “Gilpinian Realism and
International Relations,” International Relations 25, no. 4 (2011): 504.
87. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500–2000 (New York: Penguin Random House, 1987), 143.
88. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 150.
89. Frank Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 10.
90. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 151.
91. Adam Taylor, “Map: The Rise and Fall of the British Empire,” Washington Post, September 8,
2015. [Link]
fall-of-the-british-empire/
92. Ninkovich, United States and Imperialism.
93. Quoted in Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 195.
94. There were undoubtedly some differences in the “real strength” of these countries when they
became great powers, consequently varying their “great power effectiveness” (Kennedy, Rise
and Fall, 202).
95. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 203.
96. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 4–5
97. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 4–5
98. Sean Lynn-Jones, “Realism and America’s Rise,” 170.
99. Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1997), 19.
100. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, 18.
101. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, 30, 32, 37.
102. Jeffrey W. Meiser, Power and Restraint: The Rise of the United States, 1898–1941
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), xvii.
103. Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York:
PublicAffairs, 2007), 98.
104. Pyle, Japan Rising, 98.
105. Pyle, Japan Rising, 99.
106. W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987),
27.
107. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 30.
108. Pyle, Japan Rising, 110.
109. Pyle, Japan Rising, 32.
110. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism; Pyle, Japan Rising.
111. Fabian Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of
the Spanish-American War (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012).
112. Paulo E. Coletta, “McKinley, the Peace Negotiations,” The Pacific Historical Review 30, no. 4
(1961): 341–350.
113. Robert Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
114. Paul K. MacDonald, “Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Republish It: Empire,
Imperialism and Contemporary Debates about American Power,” Review of International
Studies 35, no. 1 (2009): 49–50. See also Ian Tyrrell and Jay Sexton, eds., Empire’s Twin: US
Anti-Imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2015), which argues that the United States has always had imperialist
traditions and ends; others say the idea of the United States as an empire is “false”; see, for
example, Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, American Umpire (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 5.
115. Robert Keohane, “Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research,” International Journal 45, no. 4
(1990): 731.
116. Jonathan R. Macey and Jeffrey P. Miller, “The End of History and the New World Order: The
Triumph of Capitalism and the Competition between Liberalism and Democracy,” Cornell
International Law Journal 25, no. 2 (1992): 283.
117. Anne-Marie Slaughter, “America’s Edge: Power in the Networked Century,” Foreign Affairs
88 (January–February 2009): 95.
118. A more controversial term.
119. Charles Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2006), 32.
120. Pyle, Japan Rising, 4.
121. Pyle, Japan Rising, 2.
122. Cited in Pyle, Japan Rising, 4.
123. Charles P. Kindleberger, “Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy:
Exploitation, Public Goods, and Free Rides,” International Studies Quarterly 25, no. 2 (June
1981): 242–254.
124. Andrew Nathan, “Domestic Factors in the Making of Chinese Foreign Policy,” China Report
52, no. 3 (June 2016): 185.
125. See, for example, Ward’s work on the struggles between hardline and moderate elites in rising
powers, which can push these countries to radical revisionism (Ward, Status and the
Challenge).

Chapter 2
1. Niall Ferguson, “America: An Empire in Denial,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 28,
March 2003, 317.
2. Eric Heginbotham et al., The US-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography and the
Evolving Balance of Power 1996–2017 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2015).
3. Ernest May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 5.
4. May, Imperial Democracy, 3, 7.
5. Quoted in Robert W. Johannsen, “The Meaning of Manifest Destiny,” in Manifest Destiny and
Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism, eds. Sam W. Haynes and Christopher Morris
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 15.
6. Dexter Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1955),
58.
7. Paul Kennedy, “The Rise of the United States to Great Power Status,” in Imperial Surge: The
United States Abroad, the 1890s–early 1900s, eds. Thomas G. Paterson and Stephen G. Rabe
(Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1992), 5.
8. Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860–1898
(Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), 9.
9. John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 259.
10. Gordon, An Empire of Wealth, 259.
11. Gordon, An Empire of Wealth, 254.
12. Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living since
the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 27.
13. Value added is the difference between the value of a good and the cost of materials used in
producing that good.
14. LaFeber, New Empire, 67.
15. LaFeber, New Empire, 18.
16. Figures and statistics quoted in Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict and
Change in American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 32–33.
17. Gordon, An Empire of Wealth, 260.
18. Frank Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2001), 17–18.
19. Gordon, An Empire of Wealth, 277.
20. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Penguin Random House, 1987), 154, 179.
21. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil Military
Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press, 1957), 228.
22. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 122.
23. Quoted in Donald Chisholm, Waiting for Dead Men’s Shoes: Origins and Development of the
US Navy’s Office Personnel System 1793–1941 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2001), 167.
24. Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America’s Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the
Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 341, 342.
25. Kagan, Dangerous Nation, 342.
26. “Personnel of the Navy: Nearly Half of the Enlisted Men Are Foreigners,” New York Times,
December 28, 1891.
27. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 123–124.
28. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 125.
29. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 125.
30. Secretary of War, Annual Report, A. 72597, pt. 1 (1874), 10,
[Link]
31. Secretary of War, Annual Report, A. 46298, pt. 1 (1891), 13–14,
[Link]
32. Secretary of the Navy, Annual Report, vol. 1 (1889), 4,
[Link]
33. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 130.
34. Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest, 38.
35. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 48.
36. Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth Century America (New
York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011), 163.
37. David M. Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 78.
38. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 168.
39. Bailey, “America’s Emergence,” 1.
40. He argued that in fact the United States was a world power the day it was born, July 2, 1776
(Bailey, “America’s Emergence”).
41. Ephraim K. Smith, “William McKinley’s Enduring Legacy: The Historiographical Debate on
the Taking of the Philippine Islands,” in Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War and
Its Aftermath, ed. James C. Bradford (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993), 210.
42. Robert Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists 1898–1900 (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1968), xv.
43. There were certainly other earlier periods of time when the United States sought recognition
from the great powers; see Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American
Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2012). But now the United States displayed behavior that was in accordance with
accepted and recognized great power norms.
44. Selected articles on the Monroe Doctrine (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1915), 48,
[Link]
45. Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism, 14.
46. Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine, 185.
47. Edelstein, Over the Horizon, 78.
48. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 209.
49. Quoted in Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 208.
50. Historians such as William Appleman Williams and Walter LaFeber argued in the 1950s and
1960s that business interests played a role in America’s expansion. But other than
overemphasizing the hold that American business exerted on foreign policy, they concentrated
their explanations on the late 1890s, and did not explain non-expansion. See Zakaria, From
Wealth to Power, 51; Ninkovich, United States and Imperialism.
51. Ninkovich, United States and Imperialism, 15.
52. Ninkovich, United States, 16.
53. Ninkovich, United States, 16.
54. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power.
55. H. W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 21.
56. Paulo E. Coletta, “McKinley, the Peace Negotiations, and the Acquisition of the Philippines,”
Pacific Historical Review 30, no. 4 (November 1961): 341–350.
57. Quoted in Edward P. Crapol, “Coming to Terms with Empire: The Historiography of Late 19th
Century American Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 16, no. 4 (October 1992): 578.
58. Luis A. Perez Jr., The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and
Historiography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Philip S. Foner, The
Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895 to 1902 (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).
59. See Crapol, “Coming to Terms,” 573–598, for an overview of the historical debate. For a more
contemporary take, see Ian Tyrrell and Jay Sexton, eds., Empire’s Twin: US Anti-imperialism
from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015),
172–174.
60. Thomas A. Bailey, “America’s Emergence as a World Power: The Myth and the Verity,”
Pacific Historical Review 30, no. 1 (February 1961): 1–16.
61. Quoted in Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American
Foreign Policy (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1949), 180.
62. Rohan Mukherjee, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Institutional Politics of Status
(book manuscript).
63. Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1987), 41.
64. Sean Lynn-Jones, “Realism and America’s Rise,” International Security 23, no. 2 (Fall 1998):
168.
65. James C. Bradford, ed., “Introduction,” in Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War
and Its Aftermath (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), xiv.
66. Beisner, Twelve against Empire, xiv.
67. James Monroe, “Monroe Doctrine” (speech, Washington, DC, December 2, 1823),
[Link], [Link]
68. 1853 is one of the earliest instances of any mention of a doctrine (Perkins, A History of the
Monroe Doctrine, 99).
69. Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine, 31, 57.
70. Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine, 30.
71. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 60.
72. John Louis O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” Democratic Review 17 (1845): 5.
73. Robert W. Johannsen, “The Meaning of Manifest Destiny,” in Manifest Destiny and Empire:
American Antebellum Expansionism, eds. Sam W Haynes and Christopher Morris (Arlington:
University of Texas at Arlington, 1997), 9.
74. Thomas R. Hietala, “‘This Splendid Juggernaut’: Westward a Nation and Its People,” in
Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism, eds. Sam W. Haynes and
Christopher Morris (Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington, 1997), 51.
75. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 160.
76. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 162.
77. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 163.
78. Quoted in Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 181.
79. Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, 206, 210.
80. Ninkovich, United States and Imperialism, 12.
81. Ninkovich, United States and Imperialism, 29.
82. Fabian Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of
the Spanish-American War (New York: Springer, 2012).
83. Ninkovich, United States and Imperialism, 19–21.
84. Coletta, “McKinley, the Peace Negotiations,” 342.
85. Ninkovich, United States, 21.
86. Kagan, Dangerous, 409–410.
87. Crapol, “Coming to Terms,” 573–598.
88. Michael Patrick Cullinane, Liberty and American Anti-Imperialism 1898–1909 (New York:
Springer, 2012), 17.
89. Beisner, Twelve against Empire, xii.
90. Frank Friedel, “Dissent in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 81 (1969): 175.
91. Cullinane, Liberty and American Anti-Imperialism, 31.
92. Letter from the Hon. George F. Hoar, March 29, 1899, Library of Congress,
[Link]
93. Fred H. Harrington, “The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States 1898–1900,” The
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 22, no. 2 (September 1935): 214.
94. Paolo E. Coletta, “Bryan, McKinley and the Treaty of Paris,” Pacific Historical Review 26,
no. 2 (May 1957): 132, 134.
95. David Mayers, Dissenting Voices in America’s Rise to Power (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), 199.
96. Harrington, “Anti-Imperialist Movement,” 218.
97. Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism, 42.
98. Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines
1899–1903 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 26.
99. Mayers, Dissenting Voices, 199.
100. Mayers, Dissenting Voices, 199, 200.
101. James A. Field Jr., “American Imperialism: The Worst Chapter in Almost Any Book,” The
American Historical Review 83, no. 3 (June 1978): 651.
102. Beisner, Twelve against Empire, 174, 178.
103. Beisner, Twelve against Empire, 61.
104. Michael H. Hunt, “American Ideology: Visions of National Greatness and Racism,” in
Imperial Surge: The United States Abroad, the 1890s–early 1900s, eds. Thomas G. Paterson
and Stephen G. Rabe (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1992), 16.
105. Walter LaFeber, “The Business Community’s Push for War,” in Imperial Surge: The United
States Abroad, the 1890s–early 1900s, eds. Thomas G. Paterson and Stephen G. Rabe
(Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1992); LaFeber, New Empire.
106. Hunt, “American Ideology,” 17.
107. Henry Cabot Lodge, “The Retention of the Philippine Islands” (speech, Washington, DC,
March 7, 1900), Harvard College Library, 15,
[Link]
[Link].
108. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, 43.
109. Theodore Roosevelt, “Expansion and Peace,” Independent 51, December 21, 1899.
110. David H. Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt: Confident Imperialist,” The Review of Politics 23, no.
3 (July 1961): 358.
111. Jeffrey A. Engel, “The Democratic Language of American Imperialism: Race, Order and
Theodore Roosevelt’s Personifications of Foreign Policy Evil,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 19
(December 2008): 679, 680.
112. Quoted in Engel, “The Democratic Language of American Imperialism,” 679.
113. Quoted in Engel, “The Democratic Language of American Imperialism,” 680.
114. Albert J. Beveridge, “The Development of a Colonial Policy for the United States,” The
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 30 (July 1907): 3–4.
115. LaFeber, New Empire, 91.
116. Smith, “McKinley’s Enduring Legacy.”
117. Louis J. Gould, “President McKinley’s Strong Leadership and the Road to War,” in Imperial
Surge: The United States Abroad, the 1890s–early 1900s, eds. Thomas G. Paterson and
Stephen G. Rabe (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1992), 41; Smith, “McKinley’s Enduring Legacy,”
207.
118. Gould, “McKinley’s Strong Leadership,” 41.
119. LaFeber, New Empire, 95–98.
120. Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt,” 358.
121. Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt.”
122. For a summary of some ongoing debates, see Charles S. Maier, “Review: Empire without End:
Imperial Achievements and Ideologies,” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 4 (2010): 153–159.
123. Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States
(New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2019); Tyrrell and Sexton, eds., Empire’s Twin; Adam
Burns, American Imperialism: The Territorial Expansion of the United States 1783–2013
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
124. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, American Umpire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2013), 13.
125. Hoffman, American Umpire, 12–13.
126. The work of historians such as Paul Kramer details US imperialism in the Philippines and how
it played out; see Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, the United States and the
Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
127. Some date the United States’ giving up of colonialism to post–World War II; see Immerwahr,
How to Hide an Empire.
128. Hoffman, American Umpire, 13.

Chapter 3
1. The Dutch Golden Age lasted from approximately 1568 to 1648. Until the Twelve Years’
Truce in 1609, the height of the Golden Age, the Netherlands’ physical territory was
approximate to the post-1840 (when the partition from Belgium occurred) territory. See maps
comparison: The Dutch Revolt, 1566–1609, The Map Archive,
[Link] Alvin Jewett Johnson,
cartographer, Map of Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, 1867, 15.5 x 22.5 in., Geographicus
Rare Antique Maps, [Link]
johnson–1870.
2. I am indebted to Corné Smit, Leiden University, for his research assistance and translation of
Dutch articles, books, and primary texts.
3. Quoted in Bernard Hubertus and Maria Vlekke, Evolution of the Dutch Nation (New York:
Roy, 1945), 326–327.
4. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), 100.
5. Wim Klinkert, Het vaderland verdedigd. Plannen en opvattingen over de verdediging van
Nederland 1874–1914 [The Fatherland defended: plans and views on the defense of the
Netherlands 1874–1914] (’s-Gravenhage: Sectie Militaire Geschiedenis, 1992), 4.
6. Maarten Kuitenbrouwer, “Review of The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism:
Colonies and Foreign Policy, 1870–1902, by D. K. Fieldhouse,” The International History
Review 15, no. 3 (August 1993): 584.
7. In Japan, the Dutch controlled the port of Deshima (known today as Dejima). Dutch India
consisted of Dutch Ceylon, Dutch Coromandel, Dutch Bengal, and Dutch Surat. The portion
of the East Coast controlled by the Dutch consisted of parts of New York, New Jersey,
Delaware, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island and was known as the New
Netherlands. The area of Dutch Brazil was called New Holland.
8. Henk L. Wesseling, “The Giant That Was a Dwarf, or the Strange Case of Dutch
Imperialism,” in Imperialism and Colonialism: Essays on the History of European Expansion,
ed. Henk L. Wesseling (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 78.
9. Henk L. Wesseling, “The Netherlands as a Colonial Model,” in Imperialism and Colonialism:
Essays on the History of European Expansion, ed. Henk L. Wesseling (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1997), 49.
10. Wesseling, “The Netherlands as a Colonial Model,” 44.
11. Wesseling, “The Netherlands as a Colonial Model,” 42.
12. Frances Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–
1942 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 41, 42.
13. Maarten Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism: Colonies and
Foreign Policy, 1817–1902, trans. Hugh Beyer (Oxford: Berg, 1992), 33.
14. Although the Netherlands industrialized later than some of the European great powers, it has
been argued that this did not mean it was “a backward country.” Rather, the process of
economic growth had, first, not been driven by the expansion of industry, and second, had
been gradual rather than “spectacular.” See Richard T. Griffiths, “Backward, Late or
Different? Aspects of the Economic Development of the Netherlands in the 19th Century,” in
The Economic Development of the Netherlands since 1870, ed. Jan Luiten van Zanden
(Cheltenham, UK: Elgar, 1996), 2, 5, 6.
15. Jan Luiten van Zanden and Arthur van Riel, Nederland 1780–1914: Staat, instituties en
economische ontwikkeling (Amsterdam: Balans, 2000), 344.
16. Friso Wielenga, A History of the Netherlands: From the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day,
trans. Lynne Richards (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 181.
17. Luiten van Zanden and van Riel, Nederland 1780–1914, 285.
18. Paul F. State, A Brief History of the Netherlands (New York: Facts on File, 2008), 146–147.
19. Luiten van Zanden and van Riel, Nederland 1780–1914, 377.
20. Luiten van Zanden and van Riel, Nederland 1780–1914, 289.
21. Joost Jonker, “The Alternative Road to Modernity: Banking and Currency, 1814–1914,” in A
Financial History of the Netherlands, eds. Marjolein ‘t Hart, Joost Jonker, and Jan Luiten van
Zanden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 114.
22. Wielenga, A History of the Netherlands, 182.
23. Jacco Pekelder, “Nederland en de Duitse kwestie [The Netherlands and the German
question],” in De wereld volgens Nederland: Nederlandse buitenlandse politiek in historisch
perspectief, eds. J. Pekelder, Remco Raben, and Mathieu Segers, De wereld volgens
Nederland: Nederlandse buitenlandse politiek in historisch perspectief [The world according
to the Netherlands: Dutch foreign policy in historical perspective] (Amsterdam: Boom, 2015),
68.
24. Thomas Lindblad, “De handel tussen Nederland en Nederlands–Indië, 1874–1939 [The trade
between the Netherlands and the Dutch Indies, 1874–1939],” Economisch: en sociaal-
historisch jaarboek 51 (1988), 246.
25. Marjolein ‘t Hart, Joost Jonker, and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Introduction,” in A Financial
History of the Netherlands, eds. Marjolein ‘t Hart, Joost Jonker, and Jan Luiten van Zanden
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 8.
26. Calculated in 1990 dollars. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 234.
27. Luiten van Zanden and van Riel, Nederland 1780–1914, 359.
28. Willem Bevaart, De Nederlandse defensie (1839–1874) [The Dutch defense] (’s–Gravenhage:
Sectie Militaire Geschiedenis, 1993), 278.
29. Bevaart, De Nederlandse defensie, 125.
30. Bevaart, De Nederlandse defensie, 279.
31. Bevaart, De Nederlandse defensie, 466.
32. The complex Dutch plan was to make invasion so costly for an attacking power that others
would feel safe enough not to attack the Dutch first. That is, they assumed that none of the
great powers would allow another power to capture the Netherlands, and that since all of them
had an interest in keeping the Dutch neutral, they would only attack them if another power
threatened to do so.
33. Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd, 6.
34. Bevaart, De Nederlandse defensie, 561.
35. Ben Schoenmaker and Floribert Baudet, Officieren aan het woord: De geschiedenis van de
Militaire Spectator 1832–2007 [Officers speaking: The history of the Military Spectator
1832–2007] (Amsterdam: Boom, 2007), 58, 68.
36. Wim Klinkert, “The Salutary Yoke of Discipline: Military Opinion on the Social Benefit of
Conscription,” in Images of the Nation: Different Meanings of Dutchness 1870–1940, eds.
Annemieke Galema, Barbara Henkes, and Henk te Velde (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 22.
37. Klinkert, “The Salutary Yoke,” 24.
38. In the civil militia it was once a month or so, depending on the size of the village or
municipality.
39. E.W.R. Van Roon, “De dienstplicht op de markt gebracht: Het fenomeen dienstvervanging in
de negentiende eeuw [Conscription brought to the market place: The phenomenon of service
replacement in the nineteenth century],” BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review 109, no. 4
(1994): 613.
40. Klinkert, “The Salutary Yoke,” 24.
41. Klinkert, “The Salutary Yoke,” 20.
42. Schoenmaker and Baudet, Officieren aan het woord, 68.
43. Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd, 391–392.
44. Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd, 335.
45. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 203.
46. Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd, 37.
47. Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd, 50, 55, 294–295.
48. In European armies, typically, it was only after a declaration of war that a commander of a
field army was appointed. Only after that appointment would the staff be formed and given the
task of drawing up and executing plans. The Dutch modernized and improved their military
readiness by appointing a field army commander in peace time who could prepare for war in
advance and quickly. That the Dutch took this unique step demonstrates the importance of the
field army in Dutch defense plans after 1907. See Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd, 315.
49. Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd, 479–481.
50. C. Antunes and J. Gommans, Exploring the Dutch Empire: Agents, Networks and Institutions,
1600–2000 (London: Bloomsbury), 49.
51. Friso Wielenga, Geschiedenis van Nederland: Van de Opstand tot heden (Amsterdam: Boom
2012), 259.
52. State, A Brief History, 168.
53. Henk L. Wesseling, Indië verloren, rampspoed geboren en andere opstellen over de
geschiedenis van de Europese expansie [Indies lost means adversity born and other essays
concerning the history of European expansion] (Amsterdam: B. Bakker, 1988), 193.
54. Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, “Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago around 1900 and
Imperialism Debate,” Journal of South East Asian Studies 25, no. 1 (March 1994): 95.
55. Henk L. Wesseling, “The Netherlands and the Partition of Africa,” in Imperialism and
Colonialism: Essays on the History of European Expansion, ed. Henk L. Wesseling (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 105.
56. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 61.
57. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 64–65.
58. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 143.
59. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 125.
60. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 138, 140, 142.
61. Organized by Otto van Bismarck to discuss regulating European trade in Africa, which
eventually led to a massive increase in colonial activity in the continent.
62. Immanuel Wallerstein, “Implicit Ideology in Africa: A Review of Books by Kwame
Nkrumah,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 11, no. 4 (December 1967): 521.
63. Wesseling, “The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885,” in Imperialism and Colonialism: Essays
on the History of European Expansion, ed. Henk L. Wesseling (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1997), 89, 91.
64. Wesseling, “The Netherlands and the Partition of Africa,” 111.
65. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 25–26.
66. Wesseling, “The Giant That Was a Dwarf,” 75.
67. Term used by Cees Fasseur to denote the initiative for colonialism coming from the peripheral
territories rather than the center. Quoted in J. Thomas Lindblad, “Economic Aspects of the
Dutch Expansion in Indonesia, 1870–1914,” Modern Asian Studies 23, no. 1 (1989): 3.
68. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism.
69. Gerlof D. Homan, “Review of The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism: Colonies
and Foreign Policy, 1870–1902, by Maarten Kuitenbrouwer,” The American Historical
Review 98, no. 1 (February 1993): 190.
70. Lindblad, “Economic Aspects of the Dutch Expansion,” 4–5, 6.
71. Locher-Scholten, “Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago,” 93, 96.
72. Locher-Scholten, “Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago,” 93.
73. Lindblad, “Economic Aspects of the Dutch Expansion,” 14.
74. Lindblad, “Economic Aspects of the Dutch Expansion,” 2.
75. Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas, 47.
76. Hubertus and Vlekke, Evolution of the Dutch Nation, 318.
77. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 245.
78. Wesseling, “The Netherlands and the Partition of Africa,” 111.
79. J. Ellis Barker, The Rise and Decline of the Netherlands: A Political and Economic History
and a Study in Practical Statesmanship (London: Smith, Elder, 1906), 441.
80. Wesseling, “The Giant That Was a Dwarf,” 60.
81. Mentioned by a Dutch historian, conversation with the author, October 9, 2017.
82. Prof. James Kennedy, conversation with the author, February 9, 2017.
83. For comparison, that is less than twice the size of New Jersey. See “Europe: Netherlands,” The
World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, last modified February 7, 2020,
[Link]
84. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 2.
85. P. D. M. Blaas, “The Touchiness of a Small Nation with a Great Past: The Approach of Fruin
and Blok to the Writing of the History of the Netherlands,” in Clio’s Mirror: Historiography in
Britain and the Netherlands, eds. A. C. Duke and C. A. Tamse (Zatphen: Walburg, 1985),
133–161.
86. Abraham Kuyper, Ons Program, 1879 (Amsterdam: J. H. Kruyt, 1879), 330. The document
which formed the basis of Kuyper’s Anti-Revolutionary party founded the same year contains
some ideas on colonial politics.
87. Nicholas C. F. van Sas, “Varieties of Dutchness,” in Images of the Nation: Different Meanings
of Dutchness 1870–1940, eds. Annemieke Galema, Barbara Henkes, and Henk te Velde
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 11–12.
88. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 61–62.
89. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 61–62.
90. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 62.
91. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 64.
92. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism,133–134.
93. Quoted in Wesseling, “The Netherlands and the Partition of Africa,” 110.
94. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism,137.
95. Quoted in Thomas R. Rochon, The Netherlands: Negotiating Sovereignty in an Interdependent
World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 232.
96. Quoted in Thomas R. Rochon, The Netherlands, 232.
97. Henk te Velde, “How High Did the Dutch Fly? Remarks on Stereotypes of Burger Mentality,”
in Images of the Nation: Different Meanings of Dutchness 1870–1940, eds. Annemieke
Galema, Barbara Henkes, and Henk te Velde (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 61.
98. Cited in te Velde, “How High Did the Dutch Fly?,” 63–64.
99. te Velde, “How High Did the Dutch Fly?,” 61.
100. Thanks to Prof. Maartje Janse for bringing this to my attention.
101. The highest-ranking Dutch official in a colonial district.
102. Cees Fasseur, “Purse or Principle: Dutch Colonial Policy in the 1860s and the Decline of the
Cultivation System,” Modern Asian Studies 25, no. 1 (February 1991): 44.
103. Quoted in Wesseling, “The Giant That Was a Dwarf,”60.
104. Maartje Janse, “Representing Distant Victims: The Emergence of an Ethical Movement in
Dutch Colonial Politics,” BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review 128, no. 1 (2013): 60–61.
105. C. Th. van Deventer, “Een Eereschuld [A debt of honor],” De Gids (1899), 210, 217, 228.
106. P. Brooshooft, De ethische koers in de koloniale politiek [The ethical direction in colonial
policy] (Amsterdam: J. H. De Bussy, 1901), 14.
107. Brooshooft, De ethische koers, 30–31.
108. Brooshooft, De ethische koers, 77.
109. Kuyper, Ons Program, 332, 337.
110. Queen Wilhelmina, “Troonrede,” 1901. [Link]
september-1901/
111. Fasseur, “Purse or Principle,” 34.
112. Janse, “Representing Distant Victims,” 74–75.
113. The word “empire” lacks a direct translation in the Dutch language. Prof. Vincent
Kuitenbrouwer, conversation with author.
114. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism, 18.
115. René Koekkoek, Anne–Isabelle Richard, and Arthur Weststeijn, “Visions of Dutch Empire:
Towards a Long-Term Global Perspective,” BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review 132,
no. 2 (2017): 93.
116. Peter Lawler, “The Good State: in Praise of Classical Internationalism,” Review of
International Studies 31 (July 2005): 443.
117. B. W. Schaper, “Nieuwe opvattingen over het nieuwe imperialisme [New views on new
imperialism],” BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review 1 (1971): 8.
118. Quoted in Hubertus and Vlekke, Evolution of the Dutch Nation, 326–327.
119. Wesseling, “The Netherlands and the Partition of Africa,” 110.
120. Lindblad, “Economic Aspects of the Dutch Expansion,” 13.
121. Lindblad, “Economic Aspects of the Dutch Expansion,” 18.
122. Lindblad, “Economic Aspects of the Dutch Expansion,” 7.
123. Locher-Scholten, “Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago,” 93.
124. Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas.
125. “The Asian Century Is Set to Begin,” Financial Times, March 25, 2019.
[Link]

Chapter 4
1. The United States Immigration Act of 1924 banned Japanese immigrants to the country, in
effect putting Japan in its place as an Asian country on par with China rather than the West
(Rohan Mukherjee, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Institutional Politics of Status,
book manuscript).
2. Peter Duus, Modern Japan, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 39.
3. Duus, Modern Japan, 75.
4. Duus, Modern Japan, 80–81.
5. Duus, Modern Japan, 85.
6. Tokugawa society had four classes: the samurai, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. The
samurai as a social class had been declining since the 1840s but the Meiji Restoration and its
reforms struck it a death blow (Hidehiro Sonoda, “The Decline of the Japanese Warrior Class
1840–1880,” Japan Review no. 1 (1990): 73–111.
7. Marius B. Jansen, “The Meiji Restoration,” in The Emergence of Meiji Japan, ed. Marius B.
Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 144.
8. Duus, Modern Japan, 85–87.
9. Akira Iriye, “Japan’s Drive to Great Power Status,” in The Emergence of Meiji Japan, ed.
Marius B. Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 278.
10. Quoted in Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose
(New York: Public Affairs, 2007), 9.
11. William Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change 1868–
1938 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954).
12. Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 12.
13. Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 14.
14. Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 12.
15. Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 16.
16. Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 20.
17. Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 14.
18. Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 22.
19. Emily Goldman, “Cultural Foundations of Military Diffusion,” Review of International
Studies 32, no. 1 (January 2006): 83.
20. Jansen, “The Meiji Restoration,” 185.
21. Hyman Kublin, “The ‘Modern’ Army of Early Meiji Japan,” The Far Eastern Quarterly 9, no.
1 (November 1949): 31.
22. Goldman, “Cultural Foundations,” 84.
23. Goldman, “Cultural Foundations,” 84.
24. Kublin, “The ‘Modern’ Army,” 23.
25. Richard Samuels, “Reinventing Security: Japan since Meiji,” Daedalus 120, no. 4 (Fall 1991):
49.
26. Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 19.
27. Even during periods when these countries did not pay tribute to the Chinese emperor, they did
not fall outside of the system—they stayed within the system even when they perceived their
interests to lie outside of it. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “China, India and Their Differing
Conceptions of International Order,” in The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era, ed.
T. V. Paul (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), 79.
28. Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, 31.
29. Marlene J. Mayo, “The Korean Crisis of 1873 and Early Meiji Foreign Policy,” The Journal of
Asian Studies 31, no. 4 (August 1972), 798.
30. Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, 48.
31. Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, 48.
32. James L. Huffman, Japan and Imperialism, 1853–1945 (Ann Arbor, MI: Association for
Asian Studies, 2010), 19–20.
33. Huffman, Japan and Imperialism, 19–20.
34. Huffman, Japan and Imperialism, 21.
35. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, “Introduction,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire,
1895–1945, eds. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1984), 16.
36. Alexis Dudden, Jaishree Odin, and Peter T. Manicas, Japan’s Colonization of Korea:
Discourse and Power (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 63.
37. Duus, Modern Japan, 87–89.
38. Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 282–283.
39. Rotem Kowner, “Becoming an Honorary Civilized Nation: Remaking Japan’s Military Image
during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905,” The Historian 64, no. 1 (2001): 27–28.
40. Kowner, “Becoming an Honorary Civilized Nation,” 27.
41. Duus, The Abacus, 48.
42. Mark Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism, 1895–1945,” in The Japanese
Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, eds. Raymond H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984), 84.
43. Peter Duus, “Economic Dimensions of Meiji Imperialism: The Case of Korea, 1895–1910,” in
The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, eds. Raymond H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 137–138.
44. Dudden et al., Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 110–112.
45. Dudden et al., Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 113, 115.
46. Dudden et al., Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 116; Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Power
in the Making of Modern Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 12.
47. T. V. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 42.
48. Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, 24.
49. Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 323–324.
50. Barton Hacker, “The Weapons of the West: Military Technology and Modernization in 19th-
century China and Japan,” Technology and Culture 18, no. 1 (January 1977): 55.
51. Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 294.
52. Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 323–324.
53. Akira Iriye, Across the Pacific: An Inner History of American-East Asian Relations (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), 65.
54. Hacker, “The Weapons of the West,” 52.
55. Hacker, “The Weapons of the West,” 53.
56. Goldman, “Cultural Foundations,” 88.
57. Goldman, “Cultural Foundations,” 88.
58. Kublin, “The ‘Modern’ Army,” 28–29.
59. Quoted in Samuels, “Reinventing Security,” 47.
60. Michio Kitahara, “The Rise of Four Mottos in Japan: Before and after the Meiji Restoration,”
Journal of Asian History 20, no.1 (1986): 55.
61. Kitahara, “The Rise of Four Mottos in Japan,” 60–61.
62. Kitahara, “The Rise of Four Mottos in Japan,” 61–62.
63. Quoted in John H. Miller, “The Reluctant Asianist: Japan and Asia,” Asian Affairs: An
American Review 31, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 75.
64. Quoted in Urs Mathias Zachman, China and Japan in the late Meiji Period: China Policy and
the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1852–1904 (Abingdon and New York:
Routledge, 2009), 19.
65. Quoted in Sandra Wilson, “The Discourse of National Greatness in Japan 1890–1919,”
Japanese Studies 25, no. 1 (2005): 46.
66. Kitahara, “The Rise of Four Mottos,” 62.
67. Miller, “The Reluctant Asianist,” 76.
68. Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, 2nd ed.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 110.
69. Kitahara, “The Rise of Four Mottos,” 57.
70. Dudden et al., Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 43.
71. Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 282.
72. Dudden et al., Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 28.
73. Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 294, 297.
74. Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, 115.
75. Wilson, “The Discourse of National Greatness,” 37.
76. Quoted in Mark R. Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism, 1895–1945,” in The
Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, eds. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 83.
77. Quoted in Huffman, “Japan and Imperialism,” 20.
78. Cited in Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism,” 73.
79. Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 309.
80. Quoted in Iriye, “Japan’s Drive,” 309.
81. Dudden et al., Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 47.
82. Quoted in Dudden et al., Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 48.
83. Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism,” 84.
84. Cited in Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism,” 95.
85. Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, 15.
86. Quoted in Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism,” 95.
87. Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism,” 92–93.
88. Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism,” 86–87.
89. Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, 51–52.
90. Quoted in Pyle, Japan Rising, 2.
91. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500–2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
92. Quoted in Pyle, Japan Rising, 4.
93. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (London: W. W.
Norton, 2000), 73.
94. Pyle, Japan Rising, 219–220.
95. While earlier work on the American occupation of Japan portrayed it as beneficial, later
scholars derided it as “barely legitimate.” However, many Japanese experts, even recently,
have talked of the positive effects of the democratic institutions imposed on Japan by the
occupation (Laura Hein, “Revisiting America’s Occupation of Japan,” Cold War History 11,
no. 4 (November 2011): 581.
96. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 75.
97. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 75.
98. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–
1975 (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982), 20.
99. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, 23–24.
100. Richard Samuels, Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 191.
101. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, 25–26.
102. Pyle, Japan Rising, 246.
103. Aaron Forsberg, America and the Japanese Miracle: The Cold War Context of Japan’s
Postwar Economic Revival, 1950–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2000), 69.
104. Michael Beckley, Yusaku Horiuchi, and Jennifer M. Miller, “America’s Role in the Making of
Japan’s Economic Miracle,” Journal of East Asian Studies 18, no. 1 (March 2018): 5.
105. Forsberg, America and the Japanese Miracle, 46.
106. Beckley et al., “America’s Role,” 1.
107. Yukio Noguchi, “The ‘Bubble’ and Economic Policies in the 1980s,” The Journal of Japanese
Studies 20, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 292.
108. Quoted in Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, 244.
109. Beckley et al., “America’s Role,” 1.
110. Edward J. Lincoln, “Japanese Trade and Investment Issues,” in Japan’s Emerging Global
Role, eds. Danny Unger and Paul Blackburn (Boulder, CO: Lynn Reiner, 1993), 135.
111. Dennis Yasutomo, “Why Aid? Japan as an ‘Aid Great Power,’” Pacific Affairs 62, no. 4
(Winter 1989–1990): 490–491.
112. Yasutomo, “Why Aid?,” 492–493.
113. Theodore H. White, “The Danger from Japan,” New York Times, July 28, 1985.
[Link]
114. Robert B. Reich, “Is Japan Out to Get Us?,” New York Times, February 9, 1992.
[Link]
115. Pyle, Japan Rising, 4.
116. Forsberg, America and the Japanese Miracle, 69.
117. Pyle, Japan Rising, 220.
118. Thomas R. Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan 1965–1975 (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 8.
119. Jennifer Lind, “Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy,”
International Security 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 95.
120. Akitoshi Miyashita, “Where Do Norms Come From? Foundations of Japan’s Postwar
Pacifism,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7 (2007): 100.
121. Paul Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance and Japan’s Grand Strategy,” Security Studies 11,
no. 3 (Spring 2002): 10.
122. Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance,” 11.
123. Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance,” 11.
124. Miyashita, “Where Do Norms Come From?,” 104.
125. Pyle, Japan Rising, 229.
126. Pyle, Japan Rising, 228.
127. Pyle, Japan Rising, 229.
128. Havens, Fire across the Sea, 22.
129. Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 186.
130. Schaller, Altered States, 190.
131. Schaller, Altered States, 188.
132. Quoted in Schaller, Altered States, 202.
133. Amy Catalinac, “Identity Theory and Foreign Policy: Explaining Japan’s Responses to the
1991 Gulf War and the 2003 US War in Iraq,” Politics and Policy 35, no. 1 (February 2007):
61.
134. Yoichi Funabashi, “Japan and the New World Order,” Foreign Affairs 70 (Winter 1991/1992):
58.
135. Catalinac, “Identity Theory and Foreign Policy,” 62.
136. Catalinac, “Identity Theory and Foreign Policy,” 62.
137. Funabashi, “Japan and the New World Order,” 58.
138. Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict: 1990–1991: Diplomacy and War in
the New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 121.
139. Catalinac, “Identity Theory and Foreign Policy,” 63.
140. Akio Watanabe, “Foreign Policymaking, Japanese-Style,” International Affairs 54, no. 1
(January 1978): 87.
141. Alan Rix, “Japan’s Foreign Aid Policy: A Capacity for Leadership?,” Pacific Affairs 62, no. 4
(Winter 1989/1990): 3.
142. Kent Calder, “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy: Explaining the Reactive State,” World
Politics 40, no. 4 (July 1988): 520, 523.
143. Calder, “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy,” 524.
144. W. W. Rostow, “Is There a Need for Economic Leadership?: Japanese or US?” American
Economic Review 75, no. 2 (May 1985): 285–291.
145. Charles P. Kindleberger, “Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy,”
International Studies Quarterly 25 no. 2 (June 1981): 242–254.
146. Calder, “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy,” 527.
147. Yoshihide Soeya, “Japan: Normative Constraints versus Structural Imperatives,” in Asian
Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Redwood City,
CA: Stanford University Press 1998), 226.
148. Peter Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar
Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1996), 194–195.
149. Lind, “Pacifism or Passing the Buck.”
150. Eric Heginbotham and Richard Samuels, “Mercantile Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy,”
International Security 22, no. 4 (Spring 1998): 171–203.
151. Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance,” 16.
152. Heginbotham and Samuels, “Mercantile Realism,” 178.
153. Heginbotham and Samuels, “Mercantile Realism,” 176.
154. Pyle, Japan Rising, 225–226.
155. Thomas Berger, “From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan’s Culture of Anti-Militarism,”
International Security 17, no. 4 (Spring 1993): 133.
156. Pyle, Japan Rising, 227.
157. Pyle, Japan Rising, 227–228.
158. Pyle, Japan Rising, 229.
159. Pyle, Japan Rising, 230.
160. Pyle, Japan Rising, 229.
161. Berger, “From Sword to Chrysanthemum,” 137–138.
162. Pyle, Japan Rising, 231–232.
163. Quoted in Pyle, Japan Rising, 232–233.
164. Quoted in Pyle, Japan Rising, 236.
165. Havens, Fire across the Sea, 19.
166. Havens, Fire across the Sea, 25.
167. Schaller, Altered States, 187.
168. Schaller, Altered States, 192.
169. Quoted in Pyle, Japan Rising, 265.
170. Quoted in Pyle, Japan Rising, 267.
171. Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 36.
172. Berger, “From Sword to Chrysanthemum,” 143.
173. Pyle, Japan Rising, 272–276.
174. Berger, “From Sword to Chrysanthemum,” 145.
175. Funabashi, “Japan and the New World Order,” 60.
176. Yoshihide Soeya, “A ‘Normal’ Middle Power: Interpreting Changes in Japanese Security
Policy in the 1990s and After,” in Japan as a “Normal” Country?: A Nation in Search of Its
Place in the World, eds. Yoshihide Soeya, Mayasuki Tadokoro, and David A. Welch (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2011), 91.
177. Michael J Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era of
Uncertain Power (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2001), 17.
178. Quoted in Samuels, Securing Japan, 36.
179. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism, 17.

Chapter 5
1. Barber B. Conable, Jr., and David M. Lampton, “China: The Coming Power,” Foreign Affairs
71, no. 5 (Winter 1992): 133–149.
2. Nicholas Kristof, “The Rise of China,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 5 (November–December
1993): 59.
3. Gungwu Wang, “The Fourth Rise of China: Cultural Implications,” China: An International
Journal 2, no. 2 (September 2004): 318.
4. Jim Impoco, “Life after the Bubble: How Japan Lost a Decade,” New York Times, October 18,
2008. [Link]
5. Samuel Kim, “China’s Pacific Policy: Reconciling the Irreconcilable,” International Journal
50, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 462.
6. William Callahan, “Forum: The Rise of China, ‘How to Understand China: The Dangers and
Opportunities of Being a Rising Power,’” Review of International Studies 31 (October 2005):
702.
7. Charles Krauthammer, “Why We Must Contain China,” Time, July 31, 1995.
[Link]
8. Robert Ross, “China II: Beijing as a Conservative Power,” Foreign Affairs 76 (March–April
1997): 33–44.
9. Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America (Washington, DC:
Regnery, 2000).
10. David M. Lampton, Following the Leader: Ruling China from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping
(Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 14.
11. Daniel Griswold, “Trade and the Transformation of China,” (speech, Latrobe, November 6,
2002), Cato Institute, [Link]
12. Eswar Prasad, ed., “China’s Growth and Integration into the World Economy: Prospects and
Challenges,” Occasional Paper 232, International Monetary Fund (2004): 1.
13. Prasad, ed., “China’s Growth and Integration,” 1.
14. Griswold, “Trade and the Transformation of China,” n.p.
15. William C. Triplett II, “Inside China’s Scary New Military-Industrial Complex,” Washington
Post, May 8, 1994. [Link]
new-military-industrial-complex/24d132d0-a7aa-453f-bd11-cd87c938ced3/
16. Triplett II, “Inside China’s Scary New Military-Industrial Complex.”
[Link]
industrial-complex/24d132d0-a7aa-453f-bd11-cd87c938ced3/
17. Denny Roy, “The ‘China Threat’ Issue: Major Arguments,” Asian Survey 36, no. 8 (1996):
759.
18. David Shambaugh, “China’s Military: Real or Paper Tiger?,” The Washington Quarterly 19,
no. 2 (Spring 1996): 23.
19. Roy, “The ‘China Threat’ Issue,” 759.
20. Shambaugh, “China’s Military,” 28.
21. “Military Expenditure by Country as Percentage of Gross Domestic Product, 1988–2002,”
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database,
[Link]
%E2%80%932017%20as%20a%20share%20of%[Link].
22. Ross, “China II,” 2.
23. Shambaugh, “China’s Military,” 23.
24. David Shambaugh, “Growing Strong: China’s Challenge to Asian Security,” Survival 36, no. 2
(1994): 44.
25. Triplett II, “Inside China’s Scary New Military-Industrial Complex.”
26. Triplett II, “Inside China’s Scary New Military-Industrial Complex.”
[Link]
industrial-complex/24d132d0-a7aa-453f-bd11-cd87c938ced3/
27. Allen S. Whiting, “ASEAN Eyes China: The Security Dimension,” Asian Survey 37, no. 4
(April 1997): 311.
28. Quoted in Roy, “The ‘China Threat’ Issue,” 760.
29. Evan S. Medeiros and M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 6
(November–December 2003): 24.
30. David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
31. Medeiros and Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy,” 22.
32. Medeiros and Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy,” 24.
33. Medeiros and Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy.”
34. Yong Deng, China’s Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 131.
35. Deng, China’s Struggle for Status, 134.
36. Deng, China’s Struggle for Status, 137.
37. Deng, China’s Struggle for Status, 137.
38. Lowell Dittmer, “China’s New Internationalism,” in China Turns to Multilateralism: Foreign
Policy and Regional Security, eds. Guoguang Wu and Helen Lansdowne (London and New
York: Routledge, 2008), 21.
39. Dittmer, “China’s New Internationalism,” 28.
40. Dittmer, “China’s New Internationalism,” 28.
41. Bates Gill and Yangzhong Huang, “Sources and Limits of Chinese ‘Soft Power,’” Survival 48,
no. 2 (May 2006): 22.
42. Jean A. Garrison, “China’s Prudent Cultivation of ‘Soft’ Power and Implications for U.S.
Policy in East Asia,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 32, no. 1 (2005): 26.
43. Garrison, “China’s Prudent Cultivation of Soft Power,” 27.
44. Dittmer, “China’s New Internationalism,” 31.
45. Jing-dong Yuan, “The New Player in the Game: China, Arms Control and Multilateralism,” in
China Turns to Multilateralism: Foreign Policy and Regional Security, eds. Guoguang Wu
and Helen Lansdowne (London and New York: Routledge 2008), 58–59.
46. Yuan, “The New Player in the Game,” 58.
47. Yuan, “The New Player in the Game,” 62.
48. Wenran Jiang, “China Makes ‘Great Leaps Outward’ in Regional Diplomacy,” International
Journal 61, no. 2 (June 2006): 331.
49. Kuniko Ashizawa, “Tokyo’s Quandary, Beijing’s Moment in the Six-Party Talks: A Regional
Multilateral Approach to Resolve the DPRK’s Nuclear Problem,” Pacific Affairs 79, no. 3
(September 2006): 424.
50. Ashizawa, “Tokyo’s Quandary,” 425.
51. Courtney Fung, “What Explains China’s Deployment to UN Peacekeeping Operations?,”
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 16, no. 3 (September 2016): 6.
52. Courtney Fung, “What Explains China’s Deployment,” 7.
53. Andrew Nathan, “China’s Rise and International Regimes: Does China Seek to Overthrow
Global Norms?,” in China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges,
eds. Robert S. Ross and Jo Inge Bekkevold (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
2016), 171.
54. Nathan, “China’s Rise and International Regimes,” 173.
55. Nathan, “China’s Rise and International Regimes,” 176.
56. Nathan, “China’s Rise and International Regimes,” 173.
57. M. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s
Territorial Disputes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), xv.
58. Medeiros and Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy.”
59. Nathan, “China’s Rise and International Regimes,” 172.
60. Medeiros and Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy.”
61. Medeiros and Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy,” 27.
62. Nicola Leveringhaus and Kate Sullivan de Estrada, “Between Conformity and Innovation:
China’s and India’s Quest for Status and Responsible Nuclear Powers,” Review of
International Studies 44, no. 3 (March 2018): 489.
63. Leveringhaus and Sullivan de Estrada, “Between Conformity and Innovation,” 490.
64. Alistair Iain Johnston, “International Structures and Chinese Foreign Policy,” in China and the
World: Chinese Foreign Policy Faces the New Millennium, ed. Samuel Kim (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1998), 75.
65. Julie Klinger, “China, India and Outer Space: Cooperation and Competition in the Global
Commons, in Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations, eds. Kanti Bajpai, Selina Ho,
and Manjari Chatterjee Miller (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 526.
66. Ashizawa, “Tokyo’s Quandary,” 417.
67. David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International
Security 29, no. 3 (Winter 2004–2005): 68.
68. Ashizawa, “Tokyo’s Quandary,” 423–424.
69. Liu Jinghua, “Ershi yi shiji 20–30 niandai zhongguo jueqi ji waijiao zhanlue xuanze [China’s
rise and foreign policy strategic options in the 21st century],” Zhanlue yu guanli [Strategy and
Management] 3 (1994): 119–120.
70. Ye Zicheng, “ ‘Daguo fei daguo’ yu zhongguo de guoji diwei [A Great Power that is not really
a great power and China’s international status],” Guoji zhengzhi yanjiu [International Politics
Research] 4 (1994): 1–5.
71. Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy Since the Cold War, 2nd ed.
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 10.
72. Thomas W. Robinson, “Interdependence in China’s Foreign Relations,” in China and the
World: Chinese Foreign Relations in the Post-Cold War Era, 3rd ed., ed. Samuel Kim
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994): 193.
73. Michael Oksenberg, “The China Problem,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 11.
74. Mianlinzhe xuduo gongtong de wenti he tiaozhan. Ren Xiao, “Dangdai shijie yu zhengzhi xue:
ji guoji zhengzhi xuehui di 15 jie shijie dahui [Contemporary world and politics meeting:
remembering the 15th session of the international political conference],” Fudan xuebao
[Fudan Journal] (January 31, 1992): 11.
75. Yao biyao yong mingtian de yanguang lai kandai xin de quanquiuxing xianghu yicun; Shijie
zhong de yige zhenzheng de huoban. Han Suyin and Wu Ming, “Xin de quanqiuxing huxiang
yicun [The new global interdependence],” Liaowang zhoukan [Weekly Outlook] (March 2,
1991): 17.
76. Wang Yizhou, Dangdai guoji zhengzhi xilun [Analysis of contemporary international politics]
(Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1995), 43.
77. Zhonguo de fazhan libukai shijie. Liu Jingbo, “Lun xianghu yicun tiaojian xia de guoji guanxi
xin tedian [Theorizing the new characteristics of international relations under the conditions of
interdependence],” Shijie jingji yu zhengzhi [World Economics and Politics] (April 14, 1995):
51.
78. Jisi Wang, “Pragmatic Nationalism: China Seeks a New Role in World Affairs,” Oxford
International Review 6, no. 1 (1994): 30, 51.
79. “The Sino-Russian Partnership Agreement,” quoted in Michael Yahuda, “China’s Search for a
Global Role,” Current History 98 (1999): 269.
80. Huang Renguo, “Xin shiji zhongguo de mulin waijiao zhengce shuping [Commentary on
China’s good neighbor and foreign relations policy at the beginning of the new century],”
Chenzhou shifan gaodeng zhuanke xuexiao [Journal of Chenzhou Teacher’s College] 6 (2002):
1.
81. “Full text of Jiang Zemin’s Report at the 14th Party Congress,” Government Documents,
Bejing [Link], last modified March 29, 1991,
[Link]
82. Shambaugh, “China Goes Global,” 21–22.
83. Wang, “Pragmatic Nationalism,” 30.
84. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in
India and China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).
85. He Hongze, “Zai meiguo waijiao zhengce xiehui shang Qian Qichen waizhang tan zhongmei
guanxi zhichu: shuangfang yingben zhe huxiang zunzhong, pingdeng xiangdai, xinshou
nuoyan, zunshou xieyi de jingshen chuli liangguo guanxi [“Foreign minister Qian Qichen
discusses Sino-American relations at the US foreign policy association meeting: Both sides
should adopt the spirit of mutual respect, mutual equality, keeping promises, and respecting
agreements to handle bilateral relations],” Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], September 24,
1992.
86. A crisis that is traced to 1992 when the US government, in violation of the 1982 US-China
arms communiqué, sold Taiwan 150 F-16 warplanes; the crisis erupted in 1995 when the
United States, in a first for any Taiwanese president, granted President Lee Teng-hui a visa to
enter the country. In retaliation, China conducted military exercises and missile tests near
Taiwan, shocking US officials with the confrontation.
87. Suisheng Zhao, “China’s Periphery Policy and Its Asian Neighbors,” Security Dialogue 30,
no. 3 (1999): 336.
88. Zhu Tinghchang, “Lun zhongguo mulin zhengce de lilun yu shijian [The theory and practice
of the good neighbor policy],” Guoji guancha: Guoji zhengzhi yanjiu [International Survey:
Research on International Politics] 2 (2001): 3.
89. Huang Renguo, “Xin shiji zhongguo de mulin waijiao zhengce shuping [Commentary on
China’s good neighbor and foreign relations policy at the beginning of the new century],”
Chenzhou shifan gaodeng zhuanke xuexiao [Journal of Chenzhou Teacher’s College] 6 (2002).
90. Zhang Yiping, “Lengzhanhou shijie de xin anquan guan [The new security relations of the
post-Cold War world],” Xiandai guoji guanxi [Contemporary International Relations],
February 20, 1997.
91. When, in fact, such threats were the result of whether or not a country sought hegemony
(chengba), attempted to expand (kuozhang), invaded (qinlue) or intervened in the affairs of
other countries (ganshe taguoshi). See Yan Xuetong, “Zhongguo de xin anquan guan yu
anquan hezuo gouxiang [China’s new security relations and the concept of security
cooperation],” Xiandai guoji guanxi [Contemporary International Relations], November 20,
1997, 28.
92. Yan, “Zhongguo de xin anquan guan [China’s new security relations],” 32.
93. Wang Yong, “Lun zhongguo de xin anquan guan [On China’s new security relations],” Shijie
jingji yu zhengzhi [World Economics and Politics], (January 14, 1999), 43.
94. Richard Baum, “The Fifteenth National Party Congress: Jiang Takes Command?,” The China
Quarterly 153 (March 1998): 148.
95. Rosemary Foot, “Chinese Strategies in a US-Led Hegemonic Global Order: Accommodating
and Hedging,” International Affairs 82, no. 1 (January 2006), 79.
96. Kaishi fazhan duobian junshi lianxi jiaqiang quyuxing anquan hezuo. Zhang Wu, “Dongmeng
guojia quyuxing anquan hezuo de quxiang [The trend of regional security cooperation in
ASEAN countries],” Guoji zhanwang [Global Survey], April 13, 1991, 1.
97. Susan Shirk, “Chinese Views on Asia-Pacific Regional Security Cooperation,” National
Bureau of Asian Research 5, no. 5 (1994): 8.
98. Quoted in Banning Garrett and Bonnie Glaser, “Multilateral Security in the Asia-Pacific
Region and Its Impact on Chinese Interests: Views from Beijing,” Contemporary Southeast
Asia 16, no. 1 (June 1994): 15.
99. Garrett and Glaser, “Multilateral Security in the Asia-Pacific Region,” 19–21.
100. Even as recently as 2018, the author was present at a conference where a former extremely
high-level US government official credited Zoellick with calling on and thereby inspiring the
Chinese to think of themselves in those terms.
101. He, “Zai meiguo waijiao zhengce xiehui shang.”
102. Hoo Tiang Boon, China’s Global Identity: Considering the Responsibilities of Great Power
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), 40.
103. Xiao Huanrong, “Zhongguo de daguo zeren yu diquzhuyi zhanlue [China’s responsibility as a
great power and its regionalism strategy],” Shijie jingji yu zhengzhi [World Economics and
Politics] (January 2003), 49.
104. Ta yaoqiu daguo renting duoyuan gongchu he xianghu yicun wei dangjin guojia shehui de
jiben tezheng. Qu Congwen, “Fuzenren de daguo guan [The concept of a responsible great
power],” Shijie jingji yu zhengzhi [World Economics and Politics] (October 2002), 77.
105. Canjia duobian hezuo. Zhu Kaibing, “Guoji shehui duili chongtu de daguo zeren [The great
power responsibility of opposing conflict in international society],” Nanjing zhengzhi xueyuan
xuebao [Journal of Nanjing Institute of Politics] (January 2002), 44.
106. We can particularly see these narratives percolate in various think tanks around China which
play host to a marketplace of ideas through meetings, conferences, and publications. Think
tanks in China are not independent in the Western sense—they cannot determine the mission
and timing of research to be undertaken. However, they are “stable and autonomous” and
conduct research and provide advice on policy issues. See Xufeng Zhu and Lan Xue, “Think
Tanks in Transitional China,” Public Administration and Development 27, no. 5 (2007), 453.
Some of the most influential think tanks in China today on foreign security policy include the
Chinese Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, or CICIR [Zhongguo xiandai
guoji guanxi yanjiuyuan], China Institute of International Studies [Zhongguo guoji wenti
yanjiuyuan], Shanghai Institute of International Studies [Shanghai guoji wenti yanjiuyuan],
Centre for International and Strategic Studies, Peking University [Beijing daxue guoji zhanlue
yanjiusuo], and the Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University [Qinghua daxue
guoji guanxi yanjiuyuan]. They regularly provide reports and research that may even be
actively solicited by the government; they convene meetings, again often on request from the
government, on specific issues that are attended by government personnel; and key academics
and analysts from these think tanks are often invited to high-level meetings.
107. Contemporary International Relations [xiandai guoji guanxi].
108. See Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “The Role of Beliefs in Identifying Rising Powers,” The
Chinese Journal of International Politics 9, no. 2 (April 2016): 211–238 for a more detailed
discussion.
109. Bonnie S. Glaser and Evan S. Medeiros, “The Changing Ecology of Foreign Policy-Making in
China: The Ascension and Demise of the Theory of ‘Peaceful Rise,’” China Quarterly 190
(2007): 300.
110. Miller, “The Role of Beliefs in Identifying Rising Powers.”
111. Chen Longshan, “Dongbeiya duobian anquan hezuo jizhi jianyi [A discussion on multilateral
security cooperation mechanisms in Northeast Asia],” Dongdai yatai [Journal of
Contemporary Asia Pacific] (April 25, 1997); Zhu Feng and Zhu Zaiyou, “Duobian jizhi yu
dongya anquan [Multilateral mechanisms and East Asian security],” Dongdai yatai [Journal
of Contemporary Asia Pacific] (October 25, 1997).
112. Ningken yunyong duobian jizhi erbushi caiqu danbian xingdong. Wang Yizhou, “Sikao
‘duojihua’ [Thinking about multipolarity],” Guoji jingji pinglun [International Economic
Review] (October 15, 1998), 26.
113. Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia,” 68.
114. Wang Fei-ling quoted in Sutter, “Chinese Foreign Relations,” 12.
115. Jisi Wang, “The Role of the United States as a Global and Pacific Power: A View from
China,” The Pacific Review 10, no. 1 (1997): 13.
116. Jianwei Wang and Zhimin Li, “Chinese Perceptions in the Post–Cold War Era: Three Images
of the United States,” Asian Survey 32, no. 10 (October 1992): 906.
117. Wang and Li, “Chinese Perceptions in the Post–Cold War Era,” 908.
118. Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, “How China Sees America: The Sum of Beijing’s
Fears,” Foreign Affairs (September–October 2012), 33.
119. Xiao, “Zhongguo de daguo zeren,” 49.

Chapter 6
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119. Commander C. Uday Bhaskar, “Observations by Discussants,” 2nd session, in United Services
Institution of India, USI National Security Series 2000 (New Delhi, India, 2001), 141.
120. Ambassador Arundhati Ghosh, “Open Discussion,” 1st session, in United Services Institution
of India, USI National Security Series 2000 (New Delhi, India, 2001), 75.
121. Ghosh, “Open Discussion,” 1st session, 145.
122. J. N. Dixit, “Evolution of the Existing National Security Apparatus,” 1st session, in United
Services Institution of India, USI National Security Series 2000 (New Delhi, India, 2001), 51.
123. Rohit Lamba and Arvind Subramanian, “Dynamism with Incommensurate Development: The
Distinctive Indian Model,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 34, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 6.
124. C. V. Gopalakrishnan, “India and the US: The Widening Rift,” in Indian Foreign Policy:
Agenda for the 21st Century, vol. 2, eds. Lalit Mansingh et al. (New Delhi: Foreign Service
Institute, 1997), 299.
125. Ayoob, “Nuclear India and Indian-American Relations,” 63.
126. Author interview, March 2017.
127. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “Foreign Policy à la Modi: India’s Next Worldview,” Foreign
Affairs (April 2014).
128. Muni, “India and the Post-Cold War World,” 865.
129. Malik, “India’s Response to the Gulf Crisis,” 854–855.
130. S. D. Muni and C. Raja Mohan, “Emerging Asia: India’s Options,” International Studies 41,
no. 3 (August 2004): 318.
131. Chiriyankandath, “Realigning India,” 208, 209.
132. Jaffrelot, “India’s Look East Policy,” 36, 46.
133. Jaffrelot, India’s Look East Policy,” 36.
134. Jaffrelot, India’s Look East Policy,” 56.
135. 1996 Bharatiya Janata Party Manifesto, 271.
136. Quoted in Jaffrelot, “India’s Look East Policy,” 61.

Chapter 7
1. Stacie Goddard, “When Right Makes Might: How Prussia Overturned the European Balance
of Power,” International Security 33, no. 3 (Winter 2009): 110–142.
2. Iver B. Neumann, “Russia as a Great Power: 1815–2007,” Journal of International Relations
and Development 11, no. 2 (2008): 128–151.
3. Peter Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic
Policymaking in Britain,” Comparative Politics 25, no. 3 (1993): 275–296; Martin B.
Carstensen, “Ideas Are Not as Stable as Political Scientists Want Them to Be: A Theory of
Incremental Ideational Change,” Political Studies 59, no. 3 (2011): 596–615.
4. Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the
Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 11, 35.
5. Blyth, Great Transformations.
6. Jeffrey Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the
End of the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 4; “Norms, Institutions
and National Identity in Contemporary Europe,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1
(1999): 85.
7. Yinan He, The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and Polish-German Relations since
World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Samuel Huntington, The Clash
of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 2011); Charles A.
Kupchan, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2010).
8. Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York:
Public Affairs, 2007), 132.
9. Pyle, Japan Rising, 266–268.
10. Xufeng Zhu and Lan Xue, “Think Tanks in Transitional China,” Public Administration and
Development 27, no. 5 (2007): 453.
11. Interviews in Beijing and Shanghai, June 2013.
12. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “India’s Authoritarian Streak,” Foreign Affairs (May 2018).
[Link]
13. Courtney Fung, “Rhetorical Adaptation, Normative Resistance, and International Order-
Making: China’s Advancement of the Responsibility to Protect,” Cooperation and Conflict
(2019), 3.
14. Fareed Zakaria, “The New China Scare: Why America Shouldn’t Panic about Its Latest
Challenger,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 1 (January–February 2020): 57.
15. Angela Poh and Mingjiang Li, “A China in Transition: The Rhetoric and Substance of Chinese
Foreign Policy under Xi Jinping,” Asian Security 13, no. 2 (2017): 84.
16. Li, “China’s Economic Power in Asia,” 278.
17. Min Ye, The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China: 1998–2018
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
18. Yuen Yuen Ang, “Demystifying Belt and Road: The Struggle to Define ‘China’s Project of the
Century,’” Foreign Affairs (May 2019). [Link]
05-22/demystifying-belt-and-road
19. Weifeng Zhou and Mario Esteban, “Beyond Balancing: China’s Approach Towards the Belt
and Road Initiative,” Journal of Contemporary China 27, no. 112 (2018): 487–501.
20. Quoted in Ang, “Demystifying Belt and Road.”
[Link]
21. Ashley Tellis, “Narendra Modi and US-India Relations,” Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (November 2018).
22. Richard Verma, Discussion on “The United States and India: Forging an Indispensable
Democratic Partnership,” Centre for Policy Research, January 16, 2018.
23. Rahul Roy-Chaudhury and Kate Sullivan de Estrada, “India, the Indo-Pacific and the Quad,”
Survival 60, no. 3 (May 2018): 181–194.
24. Ram Madhav, BJP National General Secretary, Raisina Dialogue, New Delhi, India 2018.
25. Conversations with experts, National Institute for Defense Studies, Ministry of Defense,
Japan, March 2019.
26. Akhilesh Pillalamarri, “Why India Should ‘Look West’ Instead,” The Diplomat, March 7,
2016, [Link]
27. Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, “Minding the Gaps in India’s Act East Policy,” The Diplomat,
September 17, 2018. [Link]
policy/
28. Swaminathan S. A. Aiyar, “Twenty-five Years of Indian Economic Reform,” Policy Analysis
no. 803, Cato Institute (October 26, 2016).
29. Elizabeth Roche, “India Is the World’s Third-Largest Military Spender,” Live Mint, April 28,
2020. [Link]
[Link].
30. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “China, India and Their Differing Conceptions of International
Order,” in The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era, ed. T. V. Paul (Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2018), 87.
31. A version of this case was published in Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “The Role of Beliefs in
Identifying Rising Powers,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 9, no. 2 (2016):
211–238.
32. Jurgen Forster, “Germany’s Twisted Road to War, 1919–1939,” in The Origins of the Second
World War: An International Perspective, ed. Frank McDonough (London: Continuum
International, 2011), 114.
33. Richard Overy, “Mis-judging Hitler: A.J.P. Taylor and the Third Reich,” in The Origins of the
Second World War Reconsidered: A.J.P. Taylor and the Historians, ed. George Martel
(London: Routledge, 1999), 94.
34. Paul von Hindenburg’s Testimony before the Parliamentary Investigatory Committee [“The
Stab in the Back”], November 18, 1919, [Link]
[Link]/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3829.
35. Jurgen Forster, “Germany’s Twisted Road to War, 1919–1939,” in The Origins of the Second
World War: An International Perspective, ed. Frank McDonough (London: Continuum
International, 2011), 112.
36. Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Moderntity (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1992), 205.
37. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, 227.
38. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, 278.
39. Thomas Christensen, “A Modern Tragedy? COVID-19 and US-China Relations,” The
Brookings Institution, May 2020.

[Link]
INDEX

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion,
appear on only one of those pages.

Aceh, 56–57, 58–59, 62–63

Adams, John Quincy, 37–38, 39
Afghanistan, 130
Aldrich, Nelson W., 41–42
Amayo Naohiro, 95–96
American Civil War, 18–19, 29, 30, 31–32, 33–34
Anglo-Dutch treaties, 51, 56–57, 58–59
anquan weixie, 112–13
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 106
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), 104–5, 113–14, 132–33
Ashida Hitoshi, 94–95
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), 104, 138
Asser, Tobias Michael, 63–64
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 104–5, 106, 108, 109, 113–14, 125, 127, 131–34,
140–41, 150–51
Astor, John Jacob, 30–31
Atkinson, Edward, 43
Australia Group, 105–6

Bacon, Augustus, 43
Bailey, Thomas, 34–35
bakufu, 19
Bangladesh, 121, 132, 133
baquan zhuyi, 110
Barker, J. Ellis, 61
batig slot, 51–52
Beisner, Robert, 142–43
Belgium, 20, 29–30, 49–50, 52–53, 57–58, 62–63, 165n.1
Belknap, William, 32
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 149–51
Berlin Conference of 1884, 57–58, 60–61, 63, 67
Beveridge, Albert J., 45–46
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 136, 137, 138, 140–41, 150–51
Bhaskar, C. Uday, 138–39
BIMSTEC, 132–33
Blackwill, Robert, 130–31
Blaine, James G., 41
Bombing of Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, 1999, 109, 112
Boxer Rebellion, 58, 75
Brazil, 4, 5–6, 7–8, 51
Bretton Woods Conference, 21–22
BRICs, 5–6
BRICS, 5–6
British Guiana, 34
Brooshooft, P., 65
Brussels Declaration of 1874, 77
Bryan, William Jennings, 43–44
burgerlijke, 64
Burns, Nicholas, 130–31
Bush, George H. W., 91, 128
Bush, George W., 130–31, 140

Caffery, Donelson, 43, 44

Carmack, Edward, 43
Carnegie, Andrew, 30–31, 43, 44–45
Centre for International and Strategic Studies, Peking University (Beijing daxue guoji zhanlue
yanjiusuo), 147–48
challenger, 4, 5, 23, 87–88, 93, 98–99, 100, 101, 111, 119, 142
Chemical Weapons Convention (1993, 1997), 105–6, 108–9
China, 1–4, 5–8, 23–25, 26–27, 28–29, 33, 58, 67, 68, 69–70, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78–79, 81–83, 89, 97,
98, 119–20, 121, 122, 123–24, 125, 126, 127–28, 131, 132–33, 134–35, 137, 138, 140–41, 142,
144–46, 147–48, 149–51, 153
China Institute of International Studies (Zhongguo guoji wenti yanjiuyuan), 147–48
“China threat” theory, 100, 111–12, 115
Chinese Communist Party, 100, 113, 114–15
Chinese Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) (Zhongguo xiandai guoji guanxi
yanjiuyuan), 115–16, 147–48, 177–78n.106
Choate, Pat, 87–88
Churchill, Winston, 21–22
Clark, Champ, 44
Cleveland, Grover, 18–19, 34, 41, 43
Clinton, Bill, 100, 128–29, 130
Cold War, 20–24, 26–27, 28–29, 69–70, 84–88, 89–90, 93, 94–95, 96–97, 99–100, 101–2, 109, 110,
117–18, 119–20, 123–24, 125–26, 127–28, 131–32, 134–37, 140, 143–48
Colombia, 33–34
colonialism, 1–2, 20–21, 38, 39–40, 41, 42–43, 45–46, 66–67, 79–80, 84, 135, 136–37, 142–43, 145–
46
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), 99–100, 105–6, 108–9
Comptabiliteitswet, 65
Conference on Disarmament, 105–6
Congo, 56, 57–58, 60–61, 63, 67, 121
Congress Party, 136, 138
Conscriptie-achtige dienstplicht, 54–55
Crichton, Michael, 23, 87–88
Cuba, 35, 37, 41–42, 46
cultivation system, 51–52, 60, 64–65, 67–68
cultuurstelsel, 51–52

daguo, 117
daguo yishi, 109–10
Day, William R., 35
de Lôme, Enrique Dupuy, 35, 42
Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, 109
Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), 122
Dekker, E. Douwes (Multatuli), 64–65
Deng Xiaoping, 99, 100–1, 102–3, 106, 117–18
Denmark, 53
Dixit, J. N., 138–39
Dominican Republic, 33–34
Dulles, John Foster, 94
duobian anquan hezuo jizhi, 117
duobian zhuyi, 113
duojihua, 112
Dutch East India Company (VOC), 50, 51
Dutch West India Company (WIC), 50, 51

East Asia Summit (EAS), 132, 134

Enabling Act of March 1933, 151–52
ethical policy, 59–60, 64–66, 67–68
European Union, 99–100, 104, 106
expansionism, 5, 6, 17, 19–20, 36–37, 38, 56, 59–60
extraterritoriality, 74, 77

fanba, 110, 112

Fasseur, Cees, 66, 167n.67
Feith, Douglas, 130
Fish, Hamilton, 34
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, 102–3, 111–14
Four Party Talks, 107, 109
France, 15–16, 17–18, 30–31, 50, 52–53, 57–58, 59–60, 75, 108–9
Frelinghuysen, Frederick, 41
Frelinghuysen-Zavala treaty, 33–34
Fruin, Robert, 64
fukoku kyohei, 81
Fukuda Tokuyasu, 95
Fukuzawa Yukichi, 81–82
fuzeren de daguo, 114
fuzeren de diqu daguo, 118

gaige kaifang, 99
Gandhi, Indira, 121–22, 123, 136
Geneva Convention of 1864, 77
Germany, 7, 16, 30–31, 50, 52–53, 54, 57–58, 69–70, 75, 151–52. See also Prussia
Ghosh, Arundhati, 138–39
gidsland, 66–67, 143–44
Godai Saisuke, 81
Goh Tok Chong, 102
Gold Coast, 51, 56–57, 63
Gompers, Samuel, 43
gongtong de anquan liyi, 112–13
Gopalakrishnan, C. V., 139–40
Gordon, John Steele, 30–31
Goto Shimpei, 84
Graham, William Sumner, 44
Grant, Ulysses S., 32–34
Great Britain, 17–18, 34, 36–37, 47, 49–50, 143–44. See also United Kingdom
great power behavior, 14, 17, 118, 119–20, 144, 145–46, 158–59n.67
great power norms, 9, 10, 14–15, 16–17, 22, 24, 36, 40, 47, 76–79, 99, 107–9, 117, 118, 139, 140–41,
143, 144–46, 162n.43
Gujral, I.K., 128
Gulf War of 1990-91, 90, 91, 92, 96–97, 128, 140
guoji anquan de jichu, 112–13

Hague Convention of 1899, 77

Hanna, Mark, 41–42
Harris, Benjamin, 32
Hawaii, 33–34, 36, 38, 40
heping fazhan, 115, 116, 147–48
heping jueqi, 115, 147–48
Hinohara Shozo, 81
Hitler, Adolf, 151–52
Hoar, George, 43–44
Hu Jintao, 106, 115, 116
Huizinga, Johan, 64
Hussein, Saddam, 128

idea advocacy, 11–14, 19–20, 24–27, 38, 61, 77–78, 79–84, 93, 96–97, 114–15, 145, 146–47, 149,
150
idea entrepreneurship, 11, 158–59n.67
Ikeda Hayato, 95
imperialism, 20–21, 37, 40, 43, 44–45, 47, 57, 59, 60, 66, 78, 83, 110, 112, 135–36
India, 1–4, 5–8, 23–25, 26–27, 51–52, 68, 97, 118, 119, 142, 144–46, 147, 148–49, 150–51, 153
Indonesia, 17–18, 51–52, 56–57, 58–60, 63, 64–65, 66, 106, 132
Industrial Revolution, 15–16, 30–31, 71–72
Inoue Kaoru, 79–80
Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University (Qinghua daxue guoji guanxi yanjiuyuan),
147–48
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 105–6
Iran, 4, 108–9
Iraq, 91, 128, 130–31
Ito Hirobumi, 81, 83

James, William, 43, 44

Japan, 1, 17–18, 19–20, 23–24, 26–27, 48, 51, 68, 69, 98–100, 102, 104–5, 106, 107, 124, 125, 131–
32, 134, 143–44, 145–47, 151
Japan, constitution, 85, 88, 89–90, 94, 95
Japan, Meiji, 19–20, 26–27, 68, 69–84, 97, 125–26, 143–44, 145
Japan, Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), 86–87, 93, 95–96
Japan, modernization, 19, 71–73, 76, 80, 81
Japan, post-war occupation of, 85, 86, 90, 93–94, 171n.95
Japan Development Bank, 86–87
Java, 51–52, 60, 64–65
Jayewardene, J. R., 124
Jiang Zemin, 103–4, 106, 111–12, 113, 117–18
jingji fazhan, 112–13
Johnson, U. Alexis, 90–91
jueqi, 109–10, 116
junshili de chaju, 112–13

Kashmir, 126, 129

Kato Hiroyuki, 81
Kato Tomosaburo, 97
Kazakhstan, 103, 105
Keegan, John, 71–72
Kindleberger, Charles, 92–93
Kodama Gentaro, 84
Komei (Emperor), 70–71
Korea, 74–76, 77–79, 81–83, 84
Korea, North, 107, 108–9, 117, 132–33
Korea, South, 92–93, 104–5, 106, 107, 131–32, 133, 134
Korean War, 89–90, 94–95
Krauthammer, Charles, 100
Kristof, Nicholas, 98
Kuitenbrouwer, Maarten, 57, 59
Kuwait, 91–92, 128
Kux, Dennis, 127
Kuyper, Abraham, 62–63, 64–66
Kyrgyzstan, 103, 105

Landweer, 54–55
Landwehr, 54–55
Laos, 103, 105
League of Nations, 69–70, 137
Lebensraum, 152
Leopold I, 50, 63
Li Peng, 106, 113–14
Liaodong Peninsula, 75–76, 81–82, 83, 84
Liliuokalani, 34
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 42, 45, 46
Look East Policy (LEP), 131–34, 139, 140–41
Luce, Stephen B., 33

MacArthur, Douglas, 85
Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 33, 40, 45, 46
Malacca, 51, 132–33
Manchuria, 75–76, 78–79, 81–82
manifest destiny, 19–20, 38, 39–40
Mason, Walter, 43
Matsuoka Hideo, 146–47
Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, 64–65, 66
May, Ernest, 29–30
McKinley, William, 18–20, 35, 37, 41–42, 46
McNamara, Robert S., 95
Meiji (Emperor), 70–71, 74, 76
Meiji Restoration, 19, 70–73, 74, 76, 79–80, 146–47, 169n.6
Mishima Yukio, 146–47
Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), 105–6
Miyazawa Kiichi, 95–96
Modi, Narendra, 150–51, 153
Monroe Doctrine of 1823, 38–39, 40, 41
Monroe, James, 38, 39
mulin zhengce, 112–13
Multatuli (E. Douwes Dekker), 64–65
multilateralism, 21, 22, 96–97, 99, 107–8, 113–14, 118, 119–20, 125–26, 128

Nakasone Yasuhiro, 96, 146–47

Narasimha Rao, P.V., 120, 131–32
NATO, 22, 104, 109
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 102–3, 120, 123–24, 126, 136
Netherlands, 17–18, 20, 26–27, 29–30, 48, 49, 143–44, 145–46, 165n.1
Netherlands, modernization, 26–27, 60
neutrality, 50, 67
Nicaragua, 33–34
ninda, 130
Ninkovich, Frank, 41
Nitobe Inazo, 84
Nixon, Richard, 89–90
Nkrumah, Kwame, 57–58
Non-aligned Movement (NAM), 123–24, 126. See also non-alignment
non-alignment, 24, 105–6, 119–20, 123–24, 135, 136
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 99–100, 105–6, 107, 108–9, 130–31, 149
Nuclear Suppliers Group (2004), 105–6
nuclear tests of 1998, 119, 123, 124, 129, 133–34, 139–40

O’Sullivan, John Louis, 39–40

Observer Research Foundation (ORF), 148–49
Ohira Masayoshi, 96
Oksenberg, Michael, 110–11
Olney, Richard, 34, 36–37, 41, 43
Operation Shakti, 119, 123
Ozaki Hiromichi, 81

pacifism, 53, 88, 93–97

Pakistan, 121, 126, 129, 130, 140
Paris Agreement, 6–7
Pax Americana, 28–29, 140
“peaceful rise” theory, 115–16, 118, 147–48
People’s Liberation Army, 101, 103–4, 122
Perry, Matthew, 19, 70, 77, 84
Philippines, 33, 34–35, 36, 42–45, 46, 47–48, 49, 91, 128, 132, 134
Platt, Orville H., 41–42
Portugal, 57–58, 63
Potter, Henry Codman, 43
Power transition, 4, 5, 13, 98, 115–16, 124
Proctor, Redfield, 32
Prussia, 16, 17–18, 49–50, 53, 54, 60–61, 62–63, 72–73, 80, 145–46. See also Germany
Putin, Vladimir, 103–4

Qian Qichen, 107, 112, 113–14, 128, 176n.85

Ralston, Joseph, 128–29

Reed, Thomas, 43
Reichswehr, 152
Rice, Condoleezza, 130–31
Rockefeller, John D., 30–31
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 21–22
Roosevelt, Theodore, 16–17, 35, 41–42, 45–46, 47
Rumsfeld, Donald, 130
Rusk, Dean, 90–91
Russia, 4, 5–6, 7–8, 9, 15–16, 17, 31, 38, 69–70, 74, 75–76, 77, 78, 79, 83, 103–4, 105, 107, 112,
143, 144, 145–46
Russo-Japanese War of 1904, 74, 75–76, 77, 78–79, 143, 144

s’Jacob, Eduard Herman, 63

Saigo Tsugumichi, 80
Sakuma Shozan, 80
Salisbury (Lord), 17, 34
Sampson, Admiral William, 35
samurai, 19, 70–71, 72–73, 146–47, 169n.6
Saran, Shyam, 137
Sato Eisaku, 95
Schaffer, Teresita, 124
Schleicher, General, 152
Schurz, Carl, 41–42, 43, 44
Seward, William H., 33–34
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 105, 108, 125
Shanghai Institute of International Studies (Shanghai guoji wenti yanjiuyuan), 147–48
Shekhar, Chandra (Lt. General), 138–39
Shekhar, Chandra (Prime Minister), 128
Shiga Shigetaka, 83
shogun, 70–71, 72–73
shogunate, 19, 70, 74
Siak, 56–57
Singapore, 102, 131, 132, 134
Singh, Jaswant, 129–31, 136–37
Singh, Manmohan, 120, 131–32
Singh, Sanjay, 133–34
Sino-Japanese War, 75, 81–82, 83
“small state mentality,” 2, 62–63
Social Darwinism, 83, 84
soft power, 5, 7–8, 118, 156n.18
South Africa, 4, 5–6, 51
Soviet Union, 20–21, 22–23, 98, 99–100, 103–4, 106, 111–12, 117–18, 123–24, 127–28, 140
Spain, 15–16, 17, 19–20, 29–30, 34–35, 36–37, 42, 45–46, 49, 63
Spanish-American War of 1898, 28–29, 33, 34–35, 36, 38, 40, 41
Sri Lanka, 51, 124, 132
“stab in the back” legend, 152
Suez Canal, 41, 57–58
Sumatra, 51, 56–57, 58–59

Taiwan, 51, 75–76, 77–78, 81–83, 84, 112, 176–77n.86

Tajikistan, 103, 105
Takekoshi Yosaburo, 83, 84
Talbott, Strobe, 129–30
taoguang yanghui, 117–18
Tellis, Ashley, 129, 130–31
Thakur, Ramesh, 120
Third World, 87–88, 124
Thorbecke, Johan Rudolf, 64
Tiananmen Square, 1989, 98, 100, 102, 104, 112
Tillman, Benjamin Ryan, 44–45
Tokugawa, 19, 70, 71–72, 169n.6
Tokutomi Soho, 83
Tracy, Benjamin, 33
Treaty of Kanghwa, 74, 77
Treaty of Paris, 1899, 35, 42–44, 46–47
Treaty of Shimonoseki, 75
Treaty of Versailles, 152
Triple Intervention, 75
Trump administration, 98
Tsuda Masamichi, 81
Turkey, 4, 157n.46
Twain, Mark, 43

U.N. Security Council, 126, 128, 130–31

U.S.S. Maine, 35, 42
Ukita Kazutami, 83
United Kingdom, 15–16, 21–22, 34, 53, 54–55, 94, 108–9, 130–31. See also Great Britain
United Nations, 91, 99–100, 102–3, 106, 107, 111–12, 121, 125, 126, 128, 130, 137
United States, 1–2, 5–6, 7–8, 16, 17–24, 25, 26–27, 28, 49, 54–55, 58–59, 66–67, 68, 69–70, 77, 79,
83, 85, 86, 87–88, 89–91, 92–93, 94–95, 96–97, 98, 99–100, 101–2, 103–4, 107, 109, 110, 111–12,
114–16, 117–18, 123–24, 125–26, 127–31, 138, 140, 142–43, 144, 145, 146–47, 148, 150, 151,
153, 156n.16
Uzbekistan, 105

vaderland gevoel, 62–63

Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 120–21, 123, 130–31
van Buren, Martin, 31–32
van Deventer, Conrad Theodor, 65
Vanderbilt, Commodore, 30–31
Venezuela, 34, 36–37, 38, 40, 41
Verma, Richard, 150
Vietnam, 95, 103, 132, 134
Vietnam War, 90, 95

wakon yosai, 82
Warsaw Pact, 22
Wassenaar Arrangement, 105–6
Wen Jiabao, 106
Wesseling, Henk, 59, 60–61, 67
Westernization, 19, 72–73, 78–80, 82–83, 110–11
“white man’s burden,” 76
Wilhelmina (Queen), 65–66
Williams, Williams Appleman, 47–48
Wilson, Woodrow, 18–19
Wolferen, Karel van, 87–88
Wolfowitz, Paul, 130–31
World War I, 49, 60, 69–70, 73
World War II, 20–21, 23, 50, 68, 69–70, 84–85, 87–88, 89–90, 96, 151–52

xianghu xinren, 112–13

xianghu yicun, 110–11, 176n.75, 176n.77
xin anquan guan, 112–13
xinxing daguo guanxi, 148

Yamagata Aritomo, 75, 80

Yoichi Funabashi, 91
Yoshida Doctrine, 94, 95, 96
Yoshida Shigeru, 94–95, 96
Yoshida Shoin, 80

zaibatsu, 85, 86
Zakaria, Fareed, 149–50
Zelikow, Philip, 130–31
Zheng Bijian, 115, 116
zhongguo heping jueqi fazhan de daolu, 115
zhongguo weixielun, 111–12, see also “China threat” theory
Zhou Enlai, 102–3
Zhu Rongji, 106
Zoellick, Robert, 114, 177n.100
zonghe guoli, 117–18

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