Compound Containment: A Reigning Power's Military-Economic Countermeasures against a Challenging Power

Description

When does a reigning great power of the international system supplement military containment of a challenging power by restricting its economic exchanges with that state? Scholars of great power politics have traditionally focused on examining a reigning power’s military containment of a challenging power. In direct contrast, Compound Containment demonstrates that these conventional studies are flawed without a sound understanding of the multilayered aspects of containment strategy in great power politics. Since economic capacity and military power are intimately linked to one another, countering a challenging power requires addressing both economic and military dimensions. Nonetheless, this nexus of security and economy in a reigning power’s response to a challenging power cannot be explained by traditional theories that dominate research in international security. Author Dong Jung Kim fills a gap in the scholarship on great power competition by investigating when a reigning power will make its military containment of a challenging power “compound” by simultaneously employing restrictive economic measures. Its main theoretical claims are corroborated by an analysis of key historical cases of reigning power-challenging power competition. This book also offers policy prescriptions for the United States by examining whether the United States is in a position to complement military containment of China with restrictive economic measures. Contents List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. A Theory of Compound Containment 3. The Absence of Britain’s Compound Containment against Germany, 1898–1914 4. US Compound Containment of Japan, 1939–1941 5. US Compound Containment of the Soviet Union, 1947–1950 6. Fluctuations in US Response to the Soviet Union, 1979–1985 7. The Absence of US Compound Containment against China, 2009–2016 8. Conclusion Notes Index