The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 2
1. A. F. K. Organski, World Politics. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1969, 2nd Ed. References to Organski in this monograph
are all from this work.
2. There are different definitions of great power and great
power war. This analysis takes its definitions from Jack S. Levy’s
classic work, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495-1975,
Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1983. Specifically,
a “great power” is “a state that plays a major role in international
politics with respect to security-related issues. The great
power states can be differentiated from other states by their military
power, their interests, their behavior in general and interactions
with other powers, and other powers’ perceptions of them,
and some formal criteria.” See Levy’s book for the details.
3. See also Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression,
1929-1939, Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1973; and
World Economic Primacy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996;
Robert Keohane, “Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in
International Regimes, 1967-1977,” Ole Holsti, eds., Changes in the
International System, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980.
4. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, London,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
5. A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger, Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1980, pp. 4, 8. References
to Organski and Kugler are all from this book.
6. There is a classic debate in the field of international relations
studies about this situation. The “Balance of Power School” holds
that relative parity of power among a group of great powers, say,
five or seven (the odd one is usually a balancer or tie breaker), is
conducive to peace in the system (the peace may not be just; it
only refers to the absence of great-power war). The reason is that
since no one power has an assured capability to win a fight and
dominate the system; there is no incentive for the great powers to
fight. The “Preponderance of Power School,” whose thoughts are
the underpinning of the power transition theory, argues that the
opposite is true—in the parity-of-power system, there is greater
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