EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Preventive or Revisionist Challenge During Power Transition? The Case of China–USA Strategic Competition

Ciwan M. Can and Anson Chan

Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 2022, vol. 9, issue 1, 7-25

Abstract: Some scholars argue that established great powers tend to launch preventive wars to halt and reverse power transition processes, while others argue that it is the rising great powers that initiate revisionist challenges. Through the application of the preventive war model and the theory of strategic competition, this article argues that we should identify the initiation of a hegemonic war in the agency of established great powers during power transition processes and that hegemonic confrontations, in the age of nuclear weapons, are limited to the diplomatic domain where great powers will compete for relative strategic influence in the world. The argument is then applied for a re-examination of China–USA relations as this provides a novel ground for testing its explanatory power. Based on our findings, the article further argues that the USA has been the instigator of a preventive strategic competition against China aimed to halt and reverse the ongoing power transition process.

Keywords: Great powers; power transition; preventive war; strategic competition; China; USA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23477970221076646 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:asseca:v:9:y:2022:i:1:p:7-25

DOI: 10.1177/23477970221076646

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:sae:asseca:v:9:y:2022:i:1:p:7-25