Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts

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As a rising great power flexes its muscles on the political-military scene it must examine how to manage its relationships with states suffering from decline; and it has to do so in a careful and strategic manner. InRising Titans, Falling GiantsJoshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson focuses on the policies that rising states adopt toward their declining competitors in response to declining states' policies, and what that means for the relationship between the two. Rising Titans, Falling Giantsintegrates disparate approaches to realism into a single theoretical framework, provides new insight into the sources of cooperation and competition in international relations, and offers a new empirical treatment of great power politics at the start and end of the Cold War. Shifrinson challenges the existing historical interpretations of diplomatic history, particularly in terms of the United States-China relationship. Whereas many analysts argue that these two nations are on a collision course, Shifrinson declares instead that rising states often avoid antagonizing those in decline, and highlights episodes that suggest the US-China relationship may prove to be far less conflict-prone than we might expect. Rising Titans, Falling Giants......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Introduction: Rising States and the Fate of Declining Great Powers......Page 14 1. Predation Theory......Page 26 2. A Formerly Great Britain: Predicting U.S. and Soviet Strategy......Page 55 3. The U.S. and Soviet Response to Britain’s Decline......Page 76 4. Watching the Soviet Union Decline: Assessing Change and Predicting U.S. Strategy......Page 112 5. U.S. Strategy and the Decline of the Soviet Union......Page 132 Conclusion: Rising Powers, the Fate of Declining States, and the Future of Great Power Politics......Page 173 Appendix 1. Declining Great Powers, 1860–1913......Page 200 Appendix 2. Interviews Conducted with Former U.S. Government Officials......Page 204 Notes......Page 208 B......Page 268 E......Page 269 G......Page 270 H......Page 271 M......Page 272 P......Page 273 S......Page 274 Z......Page 276