External Threats, Internal Challenges, and State Building in East Asia

Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs

2021

Much has been said about how China’s rapidly growing economy has led to increasing power disparity between India and China over the last two decades. China’s economic growth in this period has been spectacular, but it is not clear whether that gives a good sense of how effective its military capabilities are against India. In the context of the escalating Sino-Indian rivalry, this article asks the question: what is the nature of India’s power disparity vis-à-vis China? And does the existing power disparity between India and China give China a clear and uncontestable advantage? We argue that while there is significant asymmetry between India and China, the asymmetry is not as overwhelming when we consider certain facets of war-making capacity such as capital intensiveness of the military, military mobilisation, extractive capacity of the state and the institutional capacities to mobilise forces on a large scale, should the occasion demand. Moreover, India, with a more defensive posture against China, is in a better position to counter it because it mitigates the effects of power disparity. Therefore, we seek to understand the variation in asymmetries across different parameters of war-making capacity and force structure to better assess where the two countries may have advantages and disadvantages in the months and years to come. This article’s main contribution is to demonstrate through publicly available data the various levels of asymmetry between India and China. It also contributes to the security studies, rising powers and conflict literature.

Section: The Scope Of Power Disparitymentioning

confidence: 99%

India–China and Their War-making Capacities

Colley¹,

Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs

2021

“…Scholars have analyzed the effects of rivalry on democracy and democratization (Rasler and Thompson 2000;Hensel et al 2000), leadership turnover and regime changes within states (Colaresi 2004;Cox 2010), territorial settlements (Gibler 2012;Rider and Owsiak 2015), and state building (Thies 2004(Thies , 2005(Thies , 2007Lu and Thies 2013;Hans and Thies 2019). Many more studies explore the effects of rivalry on conflict and crises behavior (Sakuwa and Thompson 2019;Colaresi and Thompson 2002;Rasler and Thompson 2006;Goertz et al 2005;Orme 2004;Rasler and Thompson 2014;Prins 2005).…”

Section: Rivalry and Foreign Policy Alignment: The Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rivalry Attributes and Foreign Policy Alignment Explaining Rivalry De-Escalation via UNGA Voting Patterns

Thompson

Sakuwa

Analyzing Strategic Rivalries in World Politics

2021

Rivalries are characterized by variable levels of hostility over time but also intermittent bouts of cooperation. Why might that be the case and can we predict which types of rivalry are likely to be more cooperative? Two types of rivalrypositional and principal-are less likely to exhibit cooperation than other types of rivalry. Positional issues are broader than spatial grievances and therefore less likely to permit cooperation. Principal rivalries tend to be more intense and focused than rivals who have to contend with multiple rivals. Principal rivalries, therefore, should also demonstrate less cooperation than non-principal rivalries. Some support for these expectations are found in an examination of UN General Assembly voting alignment patterns. Voting by positional rivals is less likely to align than voting by spatial rivals (although the relationship is not statistically significant). Principal rivals are also less likely to align in their demonstration of preferences in General Assembly voting. In this respect, different types of rivalry appear to evince different types of behavior based on the kinds of rivalries in which the actors are embedded.

“…One branch of the bellicist approach to state building gives primacy to the effect of internal rivals on state capacity. In their study of rivalry and state building in East Asia, Han and Thies (2019: 341) argue that different categories of rivals (internal vs. external) and different types of internal rivals (communist vs. ethnonationalist) have different effects on state capacity across the region. Han and Thies (2019: 351) find that rivalries produce a significant, positive effect on the state's extractive capacity, echoing findings similar to those in Latin America (Thies, 2005); Central America (Thies, 2006); Sub-Saharan Africa (Thies, 2007); and the Middle East (Lu and Thies, 2013).…”

Section: Bellicist Theories Of State Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In their study of rivalry and state building in East Asia, Han and Thies (2019: 341) argue that different categories of rivals (internal vs. external) and different types of internal rivals (communist vs. ethnonationalist) have different effects on state capacity across the region. Han and Thies (2019: 351) find that rivalries produce a significant, positive effect on the state's extractive capacity, echoing findings similar to those in Latin America (Thies, 2005); Central America (Thies, 2006); Sub-Saharan Africa (Thies, 2007); and the Middle East (Lu and Thies, 2013). Additionally, they find that five years later, strategic rivalry still exerts a positive effect on state capacity and both communist and ethnonationalist insurgencies exert positive effects on state capacity, although the effect for communist insurgencies is larger (Han and Thies, 2019: 353).…”

Section: Bellicist Theories Of State Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Decades of research testing Tilly's (1975, 1992) bellicist theories in early modern Europe (Cohen, Brown, and Organski, 1981; Glete, 2002; Rasler and Thompson, 1985a, 1985b, 1989) and in the contemporary developing world (Han and Thies, 2019; Lu and Thies, 2013; Thies, 2004) have confirmed that both interstate conflict and interstate rivalry increase state capacity (usually defined as a state's resources/tax extraction capacity). Other scholars have moved beyond the simple interstate conflict-state capacity paradigm and explored the effect of international normative changes concerning territorial conquest on state capacity (Fazal, 2011); and the effect of transnational rebels on state building (Kisangani and Pickering, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Interstate Rivalries and Expansions in Military Capacity

International Area Studies Review

Israelsen

2021

This article addresses the scholarly debate on the relationship between interstate rivalry and military capacity. We draw on Tilly's bellicist theory of state formation in early modern Europe and Thies’ modifications to predatory theory, which prioritizes the role of interstate rivalry on state building, to explain variation in military capacity. We unpack the rivalry mechanism into spatial and positional rivalries and test how these two types of rivalry affect military capacity, and how positional rivalries affect military capacity in the long-term. Using time-series cross-sectional data analysis, we find that positional rivalries increase military capacity in the long term. Also, we find that spatial rivalry influences military capacity in the long-term, but its effects are uneven across indicators of military capacity, and it has a smaller effect on military capacity in comparison to positional rivalries. We conclude that not all types of rivalries have a uniform effect on military capacity and that competition over regional dominance, that is, positional rivalries, are the most impactful on military capacity. This study offers a more nuanced test of Tilly's bellicist theory and Thies’ modified predatory theory on state capacity.