Stabilizing Great-Power Rivalries

The consensus of official U.S. government policy and most analysis outside government is that the international system is headed for a renewed era of intense and sometimes bitter competition among leading states, particularly between the United States and both Russia and China. In this report, we identify the factors that keep such rivalries stable and the contrary factors that lead to unstable and conflictual outcomes. We also specify the general criteria for stability and offer a road map toward moderated and less-volatile rivalries between the United States and its two emerging competitors. To achieve these ends, we pursued five lines of research. First, we reviewed the theoretical literature for models that characterize the nature of rivalries. Second, we developed a list of real-world rivalries over the past two centuries and conducted a statistical analysis to determine whether any variables were strongly associated with stability or instability. Third, we examined theoretical traditions and national security literatures in search of factors that could help stabilize a strategic rivalry. On the basis of that analysis, we assembled a framework of variables that are associated with the stability of strategic rivalries. This framework was designed to offer variables that, in varying combinations and varying degrees, are associated with the stability of rivalries. The framework provides a menu of factors that together provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors that affect stability and a menu to work from when assessing a dyadic rivalry. Although the research does point (as we will argue later) to two consistent features of stable rivalries, the framework does not - neither could any such framework or concept of stability - provide simple causal relationships between specific variables and specific outcomes that will be true in all rivalries at all times.