Hegemony, liberalism and global order: what space for would-be great powers?

ANDREW HURRELL *

In an international system dominated by the United States it is hardly surprising that the actual and potential behaviour of important second-tier states should be a source of recurring interest. This article, and the four that follow, consider some of the ways in which China, Russia, India and Brazil have responded both to US hegemony and to the changing character of international society. In this article I set out some of the major analytical questions that emerge when thinking about the foreign policy options of these countries and some of the principal conceptual and theoretical categories within which those questions may be usefully framed. The first section examines the reasons for taking these countries as a group. The second section provides a brief overview of two of the most common theoretical perspectives from which the systemic pressures on these countries have been understood. The third, and longest, section considers actual and potential strategies and options under five headings: regional preponderance and major power status; international institutions and institutional enmeshment; relations with the United States; the possible emergence of balancing behaviour; and, finally, the links between economic development and foreign policy. The focus is on foreign policy options and understandings of those options, rather than on an assessment of the power resources of these countries or of their economic trajectories. China, Russia, India, Brazil: common factors and distinguishing features Why look at these particular countries? One reason is that they all seem to possess a range of economic, military and political power resources; some capacity to contribute to the production of international order, regionally or globally; and some degree of internal cohesion and capacity for effective state action. Particularly in the cases of China and India, increased attention has followed from
*

This introduction and the articles on Russia, China and India that follow were originally presented at a conference on Hegemony, order and emerging powers at the University of Brasilia in April 2005. I would like to thank those present for their comments and the Centre for Brazilian Studies and the Centre for International Studies in Oxford, as well as the University of Brasilia, for their support of this project.

International Affairs 82, ()

Andrew Hurrell their high levels of economic growth and from projections of their future economic development and its possible (although usually underspecified) geopolitical and geo-economic implications.1 Picking up an old line of commentary, analysts in the late 1990s also identified Brazil as a pivotal state or one of the Big Ten emerging markets, countries like China, India, and Brazil which are acquiring enough power to change the face of global politics and economics.2 Russia is the outlier: as MacFarlane argues in his article in this issue, the reality of the past two decades here has been one of decline and the dissolution of power. Nevertheless, its foreign policy is focused on trying to arrest that decline and seeking to reassert regional and global influence. A second reason is that all of these countries share a belief in their entitlement to a more influential role in world affairs. Aspiration alone, of course, is not enough, and it is easy for the hard-headed realist to scoff at the empty pretensions of those states whose ambitions run ahead of their material capabilities. And yet power in international relations requires a purpose and project, and the cultivation of such a purpose can both galvanize national support and cohesion at home and serve as a power resource in its own right. Think of Nehru or De Gaulle. Moreover, the search for recognition in which these four countries are united is a fundamental part of the politics of hierarchy. Challenges to the legitimacy of international order have rarely resulted from the protests of the weak; they have come more often from those states or peoples with the capacity and political organization to demand a revision of the established order and of its dominant norms in ways that reflect their own interests, concerns and values. Thus a central theme of twentieth-century international history was the struggle of revisionist states for Gleichberechtigungequal rightsinvolving the redistribution of territory, the recognition of regional spheres of influence, and the drive for equality of status within formal and informal international institutions. However much the currency of power or the rules of the powerpolitical game may have changed, this pattern of behaviour remains an important element of global politics. Although the likelihood of military confrontation between major powers may have been lessened, the issue of recognition has been sharpened by the growth of the idea that international society should aim to promote shared values and purposes rather than simply underpin coexistence and help to keep conflict to a minimum. A third reason for considering these four countries together flows from the development of relations between and among them. The articles that follow make reference to many such developments: Chinese and Russian cooperation through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); joint Sino-Russian
1

Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, Dreaming with the BRICs: the path to 2050, Global Economics Paper no. 99 (New York: Goldman Sachs, Oct. 2003). See also Arvind Virmani, Economic performance, power potential and global governance: towards a new international order, working paper no. 150 (New Delhi: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Dec. 2004). 2 Jeffrey E. Garten, The Big Ten: the big emerging markets and how they will change our lives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. xxv; Robert Chase, Emily Hill and Paul Kennedy, eds, The pivotal states: a new framework for US policy in the developing world (New York: Norton, 1999), esp. pp. 16594.

Hegemony, liberalism and global order military exercises; rapprochement between China and India; the emergence of the G20 within the WTO as a new southern coalition lead by Brazil and India; the strengthening of ties between India and Brazil (and South Africa) in the form of IBSA; the expansion of Chinese economic relations with India and Brazil. Such developments are picked up with alacrity by those looking for signs of a coordinated willingness to challenge Washington, or for evidence of emerging multipolarity and a renewed potential for systemic revisionism. The final reason is that these four countries can be differentiated from other second-tier states and middle-sized powers. John Ikenberry has argued powerfully that one of the most important characteristics of the international system in the second half of the twentieth century was the emergence of a US-led order built around the institutional and multilateral structures created in the wake of the Second World War (the UN, GATT, the international financial institutions) and the extraordinarily dense set of transatlantic and trans-Pacific relations and alliance systems.3 This mostly liberal Greater West represented a novel political formation which, although strained by the post-Cold War emergence of the US as the sole superpower and threatened by recent US policies, continues to be a very important feature of the system. But what is important here is the degree to which Brazil, Russia, India and China all lie either outside, or on the margins of, this formation. Unlike Japan, South Korea, Canada, Australia and the major European countries (as a bloc and individually), they are not closely integrated in an alliance system with the United States.4 More broadly, they have all historically espoused conceptions of international order that challenged those of the liberal developed West from the (at least rhetorical) revolutionism of the Soviet Union and China to the hard-revisionist Third Worldism of post-1948 India and the soft-revisionist Third Worldism of Brazil from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. Since the Cold War all four of these countries have been faced not simply by the extent of US power but also by dramatic changes in the character of international societythe exponential increase in the number of international institutions and in the scope, range and intrusiveness of international rules and norms; the increased pluralism of global governance, with the growing role of NGOs, networks of technical specialists, and private and hybrid publicprivate forms of regulation and ordering; the consolidation of the idea that international society should go beyond simple coexistence and should instead embody and reflect a range of internationally agreed core principles such as those relating to human rights and democracy, self-determination, constraints on the use of
3

G. John Ikenberry, Liberalism and empire: logics of order in the American unipolar age, Review of International Studies 30: 4, Oct. 2004, pp. 60930; and After victory: institutions, strategic restraint and the rebuilding of order after major war (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 4 Brazils membership of the OAS and Rio Pact makes it a partial exception. However, as we shall see, for most of the period since 1945 its relationship with Washington has not been particularly close. It is also an exception in cultural and historical terms, although its foreign policy has long been characterized by a tension between those espousing terceiro-mundismo (Third Worldism) and those favouring closer integration with the industrialized world.

Andrew Hurrell force, and environmental sustainability; and, finally, increased demands that more effective teeth be given to the norms of international society, involving both collective enforcement action by the United Nations and increased delegation to international tribunals, as well as a wide and expanding range of multilateral sanctions and conditionalities. These moves from a traditional pluralist view of international society to one characterized by greater solidarism have undoubtedly represented a substantial challenge to countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. They challenged the strong, albeit varying, preference of these states for the older pluralist norms of sovereignty and non-intervention.5 They interacted in problematic ways with the complex processes of economic and political liberalization taking place in all of these statesand, more importantly, with the limits and contested character of that liberalization. And they challenged traditional modes of conducting foreign policy, privileging new kinds of soft power and rewarding new kinds of diplomacy. This is a further point of differentiation from liberal modernist middle powers such as Canada or Australia, whose foreign policies have been built around the promotion and exploitation of these very changes. Finally, the changing norms of international society have had a significant impact on the character of the great power club. Being a great power has never been solely about the possession of large amounts of crude material power. It has been closely related to notions of legitimacy and authority. A state can claim great power status, but membership of the club of great powers is a social category that depends on recognition by others: by your peers in the club, but also by smaller and weaker states willing to accept the legitimacy and authority of those at the top of the international hierarchy. One of the difficulties facing potential aspirants to the great power club is that the criteria for membership may militate against themas Japan found in 191819 over the issue of racial discrimination. Or the criteria may change in ways that work against their particular interests. For example, for much of the Cold War the possession of nuclear weapons was widely seen as a necessary qualification for a seat at the top table; but in the years since its end, acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability has come to be seen as a sign of unacceptable behaviour and potential status as a rogue state. If, as Foot argues in her article in this issue, China is intent on being seen as a responsible great power, how those understandings of responsibility have shifted is very much to the point. There are, of course, substantial differences among these countriesin terms of their power and geopolitical importance; in terms of their economic weight and degree of integration into the global economy; in terms of their
5

Although it is common to read off attitudes to international order from domestic characteristics (the degree of political liberalization or the extent of economic reform), we should not discount the large country syndrome. Brazil, Russia, India and China have shared a preference for hard conceptions of national sovereignty and, although sometimes professing a liking for multilateralism, have tended to resist the effective delegation of authority to international bodies. In this, of course, they have much in common with the United States. Within this company the European preference for more elaborate forms of institutionalized global governance represents the outlier.

Hegemony, liberalism and global order distinctive cultural and historical trajectories; and in terms of their domestic political systems. Yet considering them together provides one useful way of opening up a series of questions about the pathways to power that have been, or might be, available to them, and about the explanatory factors that might shed light on these varied pathways. Theoretical perspectives There are two theoretical narratives that constantly recur in discussions of how the international system influences the foreign policies of Brazil, Russia, China and India. The first focuses on the distribution of power and on the patterns of power politics that inevitably result. For neo-realists, the crucial feature of any system is the distribution of material power, and hence the dominant political reality of the post-Cold War order is the preponderance of the United States. Military power and war are central to understanding how power is distributed and what counts as a great power: Great powers are determined on the basis of their relative military capability. To qualify as a great power, a state must have sufficient military assets to put up a serious fight in an all-out conventional war against the most powerful state in the world.6 From this perspective, the puzzle of the post-Cold War period, and even more of the post-September 11 period, has been the absence of overt balancing behaviour against the United States. Some explain this simply as a reflection of the overwhelming power of the United States.7 Others suggest that whether or not balancing behaviour occurs reflects not just the fact of US power but rather how the US uses that power. US predominance will be stable to the extent that Washington plays to its soft power strengths and its reputation for non-expansionist intentions.8 Thus the US will get more of what it wants if it recognizes the extent and potential of its soft power and acts judiciously on that recognition. Yet others argue that stability depends on the idea of self-restraint and on US willingness to engage with international institutions as a means of signalling that strategic restraint. A rational hegemon will engage in a degree of self-restraint and institutional self-binding in order to undercut others perceptions of threat.9 The most important implications of this mode of analysis are, first, that it sees the concentration of power itself as an important determinant of foreign policy and, second, that it casts the foreign policy options available to second6

John J. Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 5. For a historical survey of the idea that the self-revelation of a great power is completed by war, see Martin Wight, Power politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin/RIIA, 1979), ch. 3. 7 William C. Wohlforth, The stability of a unipolar world, International Security 24: 1, 1999, pp. 541. 8 Joseph S. Nye, Soft power: the means to success in world politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). As Joffe notes, one of the advantages of soft power is that it complicates the notion of counterbalancing: Against soft power, aggregation does not work. How does one contain the power that flows not from coercion but from seduction?. See Josef Joffe, Gulliver unbound: can America rule the world?, the John Bonython Lecture, Sydney, 5 Aug. 2003. 9 G. J. Ikenberry, American grand strategy in the age of terror, Survival 43: 4, Winter 2001/2, pp. 1934.

Andrew Hurrell tier states in binary terms: balancing against the dominant state on the one hand, or bandwagoning with it on the other. Although there are significant differences between the defensive and offensive versions of neo-realism, both consider that the emergence of new powers will naturally tend to create power-political tensions. Neo-realist theory has generated an enormous and sophisticated literature with many subtheories and competing diagnoses. It is, however, limited in a number of important ways. In the first place, most of this literature is written from the perspective of the United States and is implicitly or explicitly preoccupied with the strategies that the US has adopted, or should adopt, to sustain its advantageous position in the system. Second, the foreign policy choices of second-tier states are arrived at deductively, irrespective of whether or not they correspond particularly closely either to policy options that have actually been adopted or to understandings of those choices within second-tier states themselves. Third, the options are underspecified: What precisely does bandwagoning consist of, and what determines the choice among the very different forms that alignment with the hegemon might take? Does bandwagoning describe a pattern of behaviour or a conscious policy choice? Is it useful to distinguish between hard and soft forms of balancing? What of other options such as hiding or hedging? Finally, neo-realism sees the system only in terms of the distribution of power. Systemic forces are indeed crucial; but, as foreign policy analysis of the countries under consideration here clearly demonstrates, there is much more in the system than is contained in neo-realist theory, and this matters not just for accurate empirical analysis but also for the development of successful theory. A second cluster of theoretical approaches highlights not the continuity of conflict and power-political competition but rather powerful changes under way in both international and global society, especially those associated with globalization. The central claim is that new kinds of systemic logic have gathered a force that will enmesh and entrap even the most powerful. A new raison de systme is developing that will alter and ultimately displace old-fashioned notions of raison dtat. Since the end of the Cold War liberal versions of these well-established arguments have dominated the field. For institutionalist liberals, globalization and ever denser networks of transnational exchange and communication create increasing demand for international institutions and new forms of governance. Institutions are needed to deal with the ever more complex dilemmas of collective action that emerge in a globalized world. As large states expand their range of interests and integrate more fully into the global economy and world society, they will be naturally drawn by the functional benefits institutions offer and pressed towards more cooperative patterns of behaviour. Institutions are important in helping to explain how new norms emerge and are diffused across the international system, and how state interests change and evolve. Institutions may play an important role in the diffusion of norms and in the patterns of socialization and

Hegemony, liberalism and global order internalization by which weaker actors come to absorb those norms. Institutions may be the locations where state officials are exposed to new norms (as on the environment); they may act as channels or conduits through which norms are transmitted (as neo-liberal economic ideas have been through the IFIs); or they may reinforce domestic changes that have already begun to take place (by means of either state strategies of external lock-in or pressures exerted through transnational civil society). Systemic liberals build on many of the same core ideas but develop a broader Kantian image of the gradual but progressive diffusion of liberal values, as a result partly of liberal economics and increased economic interdependence, partly of a liberal legal order coming to sustain the autonomy of a global civil society, and partly of the successful example set by the multifaceted liberal capitalist system of states. Some lay particular emphasis on the intrinsic rationality of economic liberalization: statist economic models having clearly failed, rational behaviour on the part of Brazil, Russia, India and China will produce a growing foreign policy convergence to maximize the opportunities presented by economic globalization. Others suggest that there was little option but to accept the intrinsic superiority of the ideas that have conquered the world. Others stress the role of the third wave of democratization, sweeping away authoritarian nationalist governments and the statistnationalist coalitions that had often supported them. And still others stress the role of transnational movements, advocacy networks and epistemic communities in reshaping understandings of state interest. For the proponents of this view, these developments serve to shift the currency of power, in particular devaluing hard, military power. They also alter the dynamics and effects of aggregations of power. Instead of being seen as threatening and prompting balancing responses, concentrations of liberal power will create a liberal version of bandwagoning. Just as the example of a liberal and successful EU has created powerful incentives towards emulation and a desire for membership, so, on a larger scale and over a longer period, a similar pattern will be observed in the case of the liberal, developed world as a whole. In any case, to resist the liberal order is to risk being categorized together with rogue regimes and with the enemies of economic and political freedom. Finally, the role of power will depend on which version of liberalism holds sway in the core states, especially the United States: defensive liberals, who believe that history is on their side and that, as Kant argued, it is the power of example that is most critical and that will ultimately prove decisive; or offensive liberals, who believe that history needs a helping hand and that processes of economic and political liberalization should be actively promoted through the exercise of state power, including the use of military force.10
10

On this distinction see Benjamin Miller, The rise of offensive liberalism and the war in Iraq, paper delivered at International Studies Association, Montreal, March 2004. The influence of offensive liberalism is likely to reinforce the view, visible in all four of these countries, that the ideologies and practices of economic globalization and of liberal solidarism are intimately connected to the hegemonic power of the US and its closest allies.

Andrew Hurrell These systemic arguments have implications for the analysis of Brazil, Russia, India and China. First, they imply that these countries will come under increasing pressure to adapt, and that the theoretical logic of this adaptation can be best captured either by notions of rational adaptation, learning and technical knowledge, or by notions of emulation, normative persuasion, socialization and internalization. Second, they imply that the sources of resistance to change are likely to be found within these societies in blocking coalitions, made up of the interest groups that grew powerful under previous economic and political models, or in the continued power of older ideas and ideologies, often embedded within state institutions. Strategies and options

Regional preponderance and global power

There is something intuitively logical about the idea that regional preponderance should represent an important element of any claim to major power status. A state may promote itself, or may be seen by others, as the representative of a particular region that in turn might be defined geographically, linguistically, or in cultural or civilizational terms. This (contested) notion of representativeness has been an important element in the debates over Brazilian and Indian permanent membership of the Security Council. A state may see the region as a means of aggregating power and fostering a regional coalition in support of its external negotiations (as with Brazil and Mercosur in the face of the Free Trade Area of the Americas). A state may seek to play an active and assertive role in regional crisis management both to underpin its own claim to regional power and also to ensure that it cannot be excluded from forms of crisis management that are undertaken by outside players (as with China and North Korea). Finally, a state may be seen as a major power to the extent that it fulfils a managerial or order-producing role within its region. This, in turn, may become an important element in its own relationship with international institutions or with the United States. And yet the cases of Brazil, Russia, India and China all bring out the complexity of the regionalglobal nexus. In all four cases foreign policy is heavily shaped by the regional contextby evolving regional balances of power (especially within South Asia and East Asia); by changing patterns of regional insecurity (especially in the form of new categories of threat); and by increasingly dense patterns of social and economic regionalization. Regions are also central to historic self-understandings. Both Russia and India see themselves as the natural leader of a closed region in which outside interference is deeply resented. And yet, on balance, it is the image of the region as constraint rather than as opportunity that emerges most strongly from the four articles that follow. In the first place, the region can be a source of weakness either because of unresolved regional conflicts (for example, Taiwan or Kashmir) or because of regional instability and the sheer difficulty of maintaining influence, as is most 8

Hegemony, liberalism and global order obviously the case with Russia. The need to maintain regional power and to prevent its further erosion has been a central feature of Russian foreign policy. And yet the difficulties and costs of doing so have been, and remain, extremely high. Its defeat in Chechnya in 19945 and its subsequent failure to secure stable control provide the clearest illustration of what MacFarlane sees as the increasing incapacity of Russias armed forces to maintain internal sovereignty. In addition, the methods that Moscow has used to maintain or recover its influence have led to tensions in other important international alignments, most notably in the case of Europe. Lima and Hirst note how Brazil under the Lula administration has expanded the range of its political interests in South America and has been prepared to assume a more assertive political role; but in relation to the Andean region, it is becoming entangled in a crisis-prone area without clearly being in possession of the economic or military resources to play such a role. In the case of India, regional/global power balances and sources of insecurity have interacted in particularly problematic ways. The contrast with the United States is instructive. Much is made of the unique position of the United States and the degree to which, unlike all other modern great powers, it faced no geopolitical challenge from within its region and was able to prevent, or more accurately contain, the influence of extraregional powers. This is certainly true (even if the rise of the US to regional hegemony is often dated too early and its extent exaggerated). But the other important regional aspect of US power is the ability to avoid excessively deep entanglement or involvement and, for the most part, to escape from ensnaring and diverting lower-level conflicts within its backyard. It has been able to take the region for granted and, for long periods, to avoid having a regional policy at all (as has arguably been the case since 2001). It is this fact that, perhaps counterintuitively, provides Brazil with some capacity to develop a relatively autonomous regional role. Second, attempts to develop a global role can easily stir the animosity, or at least raise the concerns, of regional neighbours. This has been particularly evident in the reactions of regional second-tier states to the attempt by India and Brazil to obtain permanent seats on the UN Security Council, and to Brazils more assertive regional policy within South America more generally, especially on the part of Argentina. Third, the dominant power in the system may take the opportunity to exploit regional conflicts to its own advantage and to engage in offshore balancing in precisely the way in which neo-realist theory would predict. A similar, but less often noted, logic applies to regional arrangements: the United States maximizes its power by promoting forms of regionalism so loosely institutionalized that they do not tie down or constrain the US but, at the same time, work to undercut or forestall the emergence of other, smaller regional groupings that could emerge as effective challengers to the US. This pattern has been visible in the cases of both the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas.

Andrew Hurrell

International institutions and institutional enmeshment

Whatever their undoubted role as facilitators of common interest and promoters of shared values, institutions are sites of power, and unequal power has played a consistently important role in both their construction and their operation. Thus, for example, the Cold War order and the long peace of 194589 were constructed in very traditional fashion around attempts to regulate the balance of power between the superpowers (through arms control agreements, summits and mechanisms of crisis management) and through the exploitation of hierarchy (through the mutual, if tacit, recognition of spheres of influence and through the creation of an oligarchical non-proliferation system designed to limit access by emerging powers to the nuclear club). Moreover, even as the idea of sovereign equality gained ground and as international institutions expanded so dramatically in both number and scope, hierarchy and inequality remained central to both their conception and their functioning. Sometimes the ordering role of hierarchy was formalized, as in the special rights and duties of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, or the weighted voting structures of the IMF or World Bank. More often it can be seen in powerful political norms, as in the practice of ad hoc groupings and contact groups to deal with particular security crises, or the role of the G8 in attempts to manage not just global economic issues but a great deal more besides; or the way in which international financial management is dominated by closed groups of the powerful (as in the Bank for International Settlements or the Financial Stability Forum). Against this background it is no surprise that aspiring major powers should devote so much attention to playing the game of institutionalized hierarchy. Hence we see Russias preoccupation with the Security Council and its keenness to participate in G8 summits. Hence what Foot calls the Chinese fixation with the UN, and its resistance to any reform of the UN Security Council that would add new permanent members. As Lima and Hirst indicate, Brazils campaign for a permanent seat on the Council has played a central role in the countrys determination to expand relations with the South more generally, as well as on individual policies (as with its leading role in the UN mission in Haiti or its voting pattern on human rights). It is also unsurprising that, for Brazil and India, nuclear non-proliferation should have been such an important issue. For Brazil, from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, the Non-Proliferation Treaty was one of the clearest examples of what it termed the freezing of world poweralthough it moved steadily through the subsequent period towards rapprochement with Argentina and membership of the major arms control regimes including, in 1998, the NPT.11 In the case of India, the non-proliferation regime epitomized the impediment posed by a hierarchically organized regime to its foreign policy. It exemplified
11

Brazil remains concerned both to continue its technological development in this area and to protect its autonomous enrichment and reprocessing capabilities from further international restriction.

10

Hegemony, liberalism and global order discrimination between the haves and have-nots and represented a block on both upward mobility and technological progress. But the nuclear case also illustrates the way in which the countrys size and geopolitical importance enabled a successful challenge to the regime. Although the costs were significant (regionally and in terms of relations with Washington), India has been able to gain implicit acceptance as a nuclear power. Having achieved that goal it is, of course, anxious to be seen as a responsible nuclear power and has a shared interest in blocking further proliferation. The fact that these four countries are second-tier states also means that their policies towards international institutions inevitably have a double-sided quality. On the one hand, they may be pressed to use institutions to fulfil some of the classic power-related functions, above all to signal reassurance to weaker states, especially within their regions. The clearest example of this is the shift in Chinese policy towards regional security institutions and its desire to use institutions to provide reassurance to weaker states, especially with regard to its relations with ASEAN. On the other hand, their continued status as second-tier states faced by a very powerful United States means that they share an interest in institutions as a means of taming the power of the most powerful. In the first place, institutions can constrain the powerful through established rules and procedures. The fundamental goal is to tie down Gulliver in as many ways as possible, however thin the individual institutional threads may be. It is therefore not surprising that Brazil and India should be the fourth and fifth most active complainants under the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. Nor is it especially puzzling that Brazil, China and India should wish to use international institutions to resist attempts by the US to promote new norms on the use of force or the conditionality of sovereignty, or the right to use force to promote regime change. Second, institutions provide weaker states with political space to build new coalitions in order to try to affect emerging norms in ways that are congruent with their interests, and to counterbalance or at least deflect the preferences and policies of the most powerful. The activist coalitional policies of Brazil and India within the WTO, highlighted by Narlikar, provide a very good example, most notably in terms of the G20 coalition created at Cancn in 2003. Third, institutions open up voice opportunities that allow relatively weak states to make known their interests and to bid for political support in the broader marketplace of ideas. For much of the 1990s, all these countries adopted generally defensive positions in relation to the liberal norms being pressed by the industrialized West: all four in relation to humanitarian intervention; Brazil and India in terms of ever more far-reaching norms of economic liberalization, especially within the context of the WTO. Narlikar lays particular emphasis on Indias reputation for defensiveness and its tradition as a tough, inflexible and, in the view of some, ideological negotiator. The balance struck between genuine internalization, pragmatic accommodation and resistance has varied by issue, by country and across time. What is notable is the way in which these

11

Andrew Hurrell countries have become more proactivefor example, using the language of democracy and representativeness to push for the reform of international institutions; or using the language of economic liberalism as a stick with which to attack US and European protectionism. Both Brazil and India have mobilized claims for greater representational fairness (as with membership of the Security Council or decision-making within the WTO) and distributional justice (as with Brazils promotion of a global hunger fund). However, it is much less clear how far any of these countries have moved in terms of becoming producers of the ideas that will shape conceptions of global order in the future. This matters for many reasons, not least because, while state-based power is undoubtedly hegemonically structured around the US, the power of ideas, values and culture is potentially more open and contested.

Relations with the United States: bandwagoning or pragmatic accommodation?

As we have seen, some analysts believe that the sheer extent of US power not only precludes effective opposition but also increases the incentives to bandwagon with Washington. As Wohlforth puts it: The only options available to second-tier states are to bandwagon with the polar power (either explicitly or implicitly) or, at least, to take no action that could incur its focused enmity.12 There are three motives behind bandwagoning:13 first, by aligning with the dominant state, a weaker state hopes to avoid challenges or to divert them elsewhere; second, a state aligns with the dominant state in order to share in the spoils of war or of other forms of conflict (for example, securing access to Middle East oil on the back of support for US policy); and third, a state aligns with the dominant state in order to secure other political or economic advantages (for example, Russia trading support on counterterrorism in return for muted criticism of its domestic or regional policies). The logic of bandwagoning has played a major role in recent US foreign policy thinking and practice. Hard unilateralism and the emphasis on the threat and use of military power can make sense only on the assumption that the dominant response of weaker states and other actors will be straightforward submission (shock and awe) or the desire to negotiate. But the cultivation of bandwagoning, especially towards important second-tier states, remains important as the failures of a hard, unilateralist we can do it alone policy become ever more evident. As we enter a period of hegemonic decompression, what options are available to Washington? One (very unlikely) one is a wholehearted embrace of liberal multilateralism. A second is to re-engage with institutions but at the same time to try to reshape those institutions in ways that more closely reflect current US interests. The third is to refocus attention on a long-standing element of US foreign policy, namely the construction of a hub12 13

Wohlforth, The stability of a unipolar world, p. 25. Stephen M. Walt, The origins of alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 1921.

12

Hegemony, liberalism and global order and-spoke system of cultivated relations with major emerging or regional powers.14 It is certainly the case that for Brazil, Russia, India and China, the concentration of power in and around the United States has been central in shaping their views of the system and of the options available to them. It is also true that this concentration has created strong incentives to avoid the focused enmity of the US and to seek coincidences of interest when availableout of a concern for both issue-specific advantages and power-related interests. And yet it is not clear that their behaviour overall can be usefully characterized in terms of bandwagoning. On the one hand, the category incorporates a range of policies from clear alignment to pragmatic accommodation. On the other, the salience of bandwagoning as a motivation for policy is fluid and varies across time and issue area. Among the four states under consideration, Brazilian policy is the furthest away from such a policy. It is true that bandwagoning behaviour has been a feature of USBrazilian relations at particular periods (notably from 1942 to 1945 and from 1964 to 1967). But for most of the post-1945 period the relationship has not been especially close and has been characterized both by real clashes of interest (especially over economic and trade issues), by deep and persistent divergences in the way in which the two countries view the international system, and by a recurrent sense of mutual frustration.15 As Lima and Hirst argue, more recent policy has aimed at prudent coexistence, possible collaboration and minimal collision, but has shied away from any kind of special relationship. There is a striking parallel in the overall character of USIndian and US Brazilian relations through the Cold War, especially in terms of the role of mutual misperception. Cohens summary characterization of USIndian relations could certainly be applied to Brazil:
The United States and India have clearly grown distant over the years, not only because of abundant misperceptions on both sides but also because of fundamental differences on the best way to peacefully organize the international system, the nature of the Soviet Union, the virtue (or sins) of alliances, and above all, the degree to which in Indian eyes the United States resisted Indias emergence as a major power.16

Differences between Washington and Delhi continued through the 1990s and moves towards rapprochement were hindered both by the 1998 nuclear test and by the closeness of US relations with Pakistan, strengthened of course by
14

This pattern has been consistently dominant in US policy towards Asia. It was also central to US foreign policy in a previous period of imperial overstretch, namely the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the idea that US interests could be protected through the devolution of responsibility to regional influentials in the form of the Nixon Doctrine. See Robert Litwak, Dtente and the Nixon Doctrine: American foreign policy and the pursuit of stability 19691975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 15 For a fuller analysis see Andrew Hurrell, The United States and Brazil: comparative reflections, in Mnica Hirst, The United States and Brazil: the long road of unmet expectations (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 73108. 16 Stephen P. Cohen, India, emerging power (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2001), pp. 28798.

13

Andrew Hurrell the demands of the so-called war on terror. Against this, we have seen the recent emergence of a language of natural allies and strategic partnership as well as a number of concrete agreements, most notably the July 2005 nuclear agreement and Indias vote to report Iran to the UNSC. However, it is far too early to talk of any fundamental realignment; there are obvious advantages to India of developing and exploiting a wider range of foreign policy relationships, and, as Narlikar notes, there are also important continuities in the pattern of Indias foreign policy thinking and conduct. It has certainly not dropped its engagement with developing countries, bilaterally and collectively. In the case of China, Foot highlights the diversity of positions within the country and argues that pragmatic accommodation best characterizes Chinese policy towards the United States. On the one hand, China has sought to accommodate itself to US power and to seek coincidences of interest. It has criticized but acquiesced in US policies with which it has fundamentally disagreedIraq most notablyand has been less strident than Brazil and India in opposing US preferences within the WTO. But this has been counterbalanced by a broadening range of stances designed both to retain flexibility if relations with Washington should deteriorate and to lay the groundwork for a more active foreign policy in the future. MacFarlane notes the move in the period since 2001 away from an emphasis on the importance of re-establishing multipolarity and towards an acceptance of the unassailability of US primacy. This has led to a hard-headed recognition of the need to avoid confrontation on matters of vital interest to the US (as with Iraq), combined with a willingness to engage in hard bargaining and issue linkage, to cultivate as broad a range of ties as possible, and to defend immediate interests wherever possible, especially in relation to its immediate neighbourhood. Assessments of Americas threshold of tolerance have become one of the most crucial elements of foreign policy (best illustrated in the case of Russian policy towards Iran). Two final points should be noted. Bandwagoning is sometimes seen as an unproblematic option. And yet it is notable how few countries in the world possess the resources and even the potential capacity to make such a special relationship work in their favourdense administration-to-administration ties (including in the military and intelligence sectors), an embedded habit of consultation, and a broad structure of social interconnections. In the present context, one of the most interesting signs of potential change is the growth of transnational ties with the Indian American community, and the attempt by the Indian government to exploit these as part of the relationship (including, for example, in the aftermath of its nuclear test). Second, whatever the incentives to seek productive bargaining with Washington, all of these countries have experienced the difficulties of accommodating themselves to this particular hegemon. The United States has never been an easy country with which to bandwagon, and this is especially true in the period since 2001a period in which it has emphasized its own inalienable right to security even at the cost of the insecurity of others; upheld a traditional rigid conception of its own

14

Hegemony, liberalism and global order sovereignty, while at the same time arguing that the sovereignty of others should be conditional; and proclaimed a strident moralism and a profoundly revisionist attitude to the structure of international society.

A move towards soft balancing?

It is not difficult to find recurrent statements, albeit varying in intensity, expressing unhappiness with the unipolar structure of global politics and the desirability of a more balanced systemto increase, if only by a margin, the degree of multipolarity in the world, as the Brazilian foreign minister recently put it.17 Theorists are correct to stress the absence of balancing behaviour in a hard traditional sense, and practitioners would no doubt add that any such behaviour runs counter both to their interests and to any realistic understanding of viable policy. But what of more subtle forms of balancing behaviour such as soft or constrained balancing? Such behaviour does not involve direct attempts to confront or constrain the dominant state through the creation of military alliances (external balancing) or through the build-up of military power (internal balancing). Instead, as Paul notes, it involves other forms of cooperation: ententes, informal understandings, ad hoc cooperative exercises or collaboration in regional or international institutions.18 Its purpose is to complicate and raise the costs of US policies in international institutions (especially by denying legitimacy), to challenge dominant US preferences, and to withhold the effective (as opposed to formal or rhetorical) cooperation on which the fulfilment of US foreign policy goals depends. For Pape, its purpose is to use non-military tools to delay, frustrate and undermine aggressive unilateral US policies.19 It is by no means a new phenomenon; indeed, it is familiar to anyone who has studied the foreign policy options of states within a great power sphere of influence.20 To what extent is it accurate or useful to view the recent policies of Brazil, India, China and Russia, and especially the growth of different forms of relations among them, in terms of soft or constrained balancing? The critics of soft balancing are correct in arguing that not all behaviour that looks like balancing is in fact driven by balance-of-power motivations. There may be many good economic, regional or domestic political reasons why second-tier states seek to collaborate with each other. Unless their actions are in some way responses to US power, then it certainly does not make sense to invoke balance-of-power theory. It is also important to highlight both the degree of accommodation with the United States (as noted in the previous section), the limits to the cooperation among second-tier states (as in Chinas
17 18 19 20

Celso Amorim, interview in Folha de So Paulo, 16 May 2005. T. V. Paul, Soft balancing in the age of US primacy, International Security 30: 1, Summer 2005, pp. 589. Robert A. Pape, Soft balancing against the United States, International Security 30: 1, Summer 2005, p. 10. See Andrew Hurrell, The United States and Latin America: neorealism re-examined, in Ngaire Woods, ed., Explaining international relations since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 163.

15

Andrew Hurrell resistance to reform of the Security Council or the relative thinness of the allegedly strategic ties between India and Brazil), and the continuation of underlying suspicion among such states (as in the case of Russia and China). However, those who take a sceptical view of soft balancing risk setting the bar too high and underplaying the role of US power and US policies in shaping policy across a range of apparently very diverse issue areas. The relevance and utility of balance-of-power theory are not limited to those cases where unbalanced power poses a direct security challenge to other states.21 The problem of unbalanced power is not that it leads inexorably to a military threat; it is rather that radically unbalanced power will permit the powerful to lay down the law to the less powerful, to skew the terms of cooperation in its own favour, to impose its own values and ways of doing things, and to undermine the procedural rules on which stable and legitimate cooperation must inevitably depend. It is for this reason that the perceived need to contain the power of the United States does form a very important element of the policies of Brazil, Russia, India and China in many areas and on many issues that sceptics would like to consign to the arena of normal diplomatic bargaining. The politics of Brazil and India in the WTO is very directly related to the systemic concentration of power and is not simply a product of issue-specific interests. Finally, much of the argument depends on the significance that one attaches to questions of legitimacy and symbolic action. For the sceptics, soft balancing is not an argument about symbolic action. It applies only to policies that promise to do something to increase constraints on or shift power against the United States.22 It is, however, only a very narrow and inadequate view of power that can so easily dismiss the degree to which sustained US power depends on the successful cultivation of legitimacy. As Aron noted: Either a great power will not tolerate equals, and then must proceed to the last degree of empire, or else it consents to stand first among sovereign units, and must win acceptance for such pre-eminence.23 Legitimacy and symbolic action are central to the winning of such acceptance.

Economic development and foreign policy options

In all of the four cases, the imperatives of economic development are starkly evident, both in their relative salience within overall government policy and in the importance of specific objectivesthe importance of raw materials and energy in Chinese foreign policy; Brazils desire to diversify export markets; the importance of increasing US and western foreign investment in India; or the role of energy exports as one of the most crucial bargaining tools within Russian foreign policy. In the case of China, economic success has been built
21

Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, Hard times for soft balancing, International Security 30: 1, Summer 2005, p. 103. 22 Brooks and Wohlforth, Hard times for soft balancing, p. 82. 23 Raymond Aron, Peace and war: a theory of international relations (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), p. 70.

16

Hegemony, liberalism and global order around integration into the global economy, and this success has provided many opportunities for bargaining and has acted as a restraint on US power. In addition, over time, the Chinese model may be seen increasingly as a soft power resource.24 In other cases, it is the economic constraints that are most crucialas with the heavy focus on domestic consolidation in Russia under Putin and the overriding imperative of regenerating the economy and restoring the effective role of the state; or the continued high level of external economic vulnerability faced by the Brazilian government. It is, however, difficult to establish any clear-cut and consistent connections between specific models of economic development, or even degrees of economic liberalization, on the one hand, and the choice of particular foreign policy options on the other. First, for all the talk about the imperatives of globalization and the pressure to adapt to those imperatives, it is the continued variation of development trajectories that is most striking. In all of these cases powerful external pressures for change have come up against very deep-rooted sets of domestic social, political and economic structures and very distinctive national traditions, leading to developmental trajectories that continue to vary very significantly. In the 1990s many discussions of globalization concentrated on a stark and unhelpful dichotomy between fusion and fragmentation, or between convergence and revolt. Although the systemic pressures associated with globalization are very powerful, it is crucial to unpack and deconstruct the complex processes of breakdown and adaptation that are occurring within individual societies, especially large and complex societies. When this is done, the intuitively powerful idea of homogenization itself breaks down as it becomes clear that outcomes conform neither to anything resembling a simple liberal model nor to a simple rejection of that model. Again, the large and complex country category is relevant: while external norms are indeed being internalized, this process results not in conformity with some general model but rather in new configurations of national beliefs and new patterns of national self-understanding. In terms of foreign policy, this reinforces the argument that policy choices cannot be read off as a simple function of systemic pressures. Second, in all of these four cases, we should note the continued degree of state control over foreign policy. A clear implication of liberal theory is that economic and political liberalization should lead to greater pluralism. We should expect to see a significant move away from the strong statism that previously characterized all of these countries. Foreign policy strategies should be influenced, if not shaped, by the increasing societal pluralism that has accompanied economic and political liberalization (generating industrial groups, political parties, social movements and NGOs, scientific and academic communities). Narlikar examines this claim explicitly in the case of India, but concludes that the actual influence of interest groups, even on trade policy, is limited. Lima and Hirst
24

See Anthony Payne, The global politics of unequal development (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 95100.

17

Andrew Hurrell highlight the increased politicization of foreign policy in Brazil. But, thus far, it is the limits to greater pluralism that are their most evident aspect. Third, although inwardly oriented development models were strongly associated with nationalist foreign policies in the years after 1945, the move towards economic liberalization and greater integration in the global economy does not appear to have a clear foreign policy correlate. In Brazil, Lulas assertive and activist foreign policy has gone hand in hand with an extremely orthodox macroeconomic policy at home. In their different ways, both India and China indicate how nationalism and economic liberalization can coexist whether spontaneously or as a result of active cultivation on the part of government. A strongly nationalist foreign policy may be consciously used to bolster legitimacy at home (as with China), or to compensate for the absence of radicalism at home (as in Brazil). In the case of India, Narlikar highlights the importance of a domestic political culture that supports grandstanding and naysaying abroad. Success is arguably what matters most. The goals of seeking greater influence and a more prominent role in the world or in the region remain; liberal economic integration provides a means of achieving those goals. Hence a willingness to challenge comes from the renewed confidence that economic success brings. To argue in this way does not imply acceptance of the neo-realist belief that all economic power will inevitably be tied to a politico-military challenge. Rather, it is to suggest that all states, but especially very large states, balance economic welfare and development with considerations of power and autonomy. Power matters because, even within the context of continued market-liberal economic reform within a mostly market-liberal global economy, the scope for real clashes of interest and of values remains very wide. Who gets how much? Who sets the rules of the global economy? Whose values are embodied in those rules? Conclusion At the start of this article, I suggested various reasons for taking Brazil, Russia, India and China as a group. Two other similarities need to be stressed. The first is a shared sense of uncertainty, especially about the behaviour of the United States. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that hedging should be a very visible characteristic of the foreign policy behaviour of second-tier states. A second, and maybe more surprising, characteristic is a shared sense of vulnerability. Size may increase options, and each of these countries may have a belief in its natural right to an influential international role. But all of them remain acutely aware of their vulnerability. The precise character of the problems varies from case to case, as does the balance between vulnerabilities rooted respectively in the system as a whole, in the nastiness of regions and neighbourhoods, and in domestic cohesion and state capacity. On the other side, the articles that follow serve to highlight that this is an extremely disparate group of states. Russia is a power that has been in decline

18

Hegemony, liberalism and global order for at least the past 20 years, and whose foreign policy has centred on trying to arrest that decline. It is far from clear whether it will succeed. China is in a league of its own. It is not simply that its power resources and potential development are of a different order; it is also that its power has been combined with a long-term sense of where it would like to be and that, as a state, it has to date maintained a significant degree of strength and coherence. It has also shown awareness of the degree to which its rising power is potentially viewed as threatening by others. For the foreseeable future India and Brazil may be best seen not as great powers but as increasingly activist and influential intermediate states. Brazil and India are in a different category for a further reason. On the one hand, they can be seenand like to see themselvesas potential major powers, both within their regions and more generally. But on the other hand, they have identified themselves more specifically as developing countries and have understood their foreign policy options through the prism of North South relations. This has been a persistent theme in the case of India; in the case of Brazil it has been a more ambiguous one, but one that is clearly in the ascendant under the present government. But is the language of Third Worldism and southern solidarity simply a hangover from the past? Or is it an interest-driven strategy that reflects a particular set of contingent interests (as on trade issues within the WTO)? Or is it reflective of a deeper set of beliefs, interests and commitments? If so, what happens if that developing country identity comes into conflict with the aspiring great power identity? In both cases this duality speaks to the tension between an aspiration to international influence and a continued sense of vulnerability, and to the difficulty of having to defend oneself against an increasingly intrusive world that challenges oldestablished national ways of acting and thinking. It also speaks to the contested, and as yet unfinished, debates as to how far these countries should embrace a liberal, globalized order and what the actual space for autonomy might be in the face of the changing character of the global economy on the one hand, and US hegemonic power on the other.

19