Great Power

One of the hallmarks of contemporary great power status is permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council.

A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural strength, which may cause other, smaller nations to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions of their own.

The term "great power" was first used to represent the most important powers in Europe during the post-Napoleonic era. Since then, power has been shifted numerous times, most dramatically during the First and Second World Wars. While some nations are widely considered to be great powers, there is no definitive list, leading to a continuing debate.

History

Different sets of great, or significant, powers have existed throughout history; however the term "Great power" has only been used in scholarly or diplomatic discourse since the post–Napoleonic War Congress of Vienna in 1815.^[1] The Congress established the Concert of Europe as an attempt to preserve peace after the years of Napoleonic Wars.

Lord Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, first used the term in its diplomatic context, in a letter sent on February 13, 1814. He stated that:

It affords me great satisfaction to acquaint you that there is every prospect of the Congress terminating with a general accord and Guarantee between the Great powers of Europe, with a determination to support the arrangement agreed upon, and to turn the general influence and if necessary the general arms against the Power that shall first attempt to disturb the Continental peace.^[2]

The Congress of Vienna consisted of five main powers: the United Kingdom, Habsburg Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia. Spain, Portugal, and Sweden were consulted on certain specific issues, but they were not full participants. Hanover, Bavaria, and Württemberg were also consulted on issues relating to Germany. These five primary participants constituted the original Great powers as we know the term today.^[3]

The Congress of Vienna by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1819.

Over time, the relative power of these five nations fluctuated, which, by the dawn of the 20th century had served to create an entirely different balance of power, particularly concerning the rise of the United States and Japan, which were minor powers at best in 1815. Some, such as the UK and Prussia (as part of the newly-formed German state), experienced continued economic growth and political power.^[4] Others, such as Russia and Austria-Hungary, slowly ossified.^[5][6] At the same time, other states were emerging and expanding in power, largely through the process of industrialization. The foremost of these emerging powers were Japan after the Meiji Restoration and the United States after the Civil War. By the dawn of the 20th century the balance of world power had changed substantially since the Congress of Vienna. The Eight-Nation Alliance (the five Congress powers plus Italy, Japan, and the United States), formed in 1900 represented the Great powers at the beginning of 20th century.

Shifts of international power have most notably occurred through major conflicts. ^[7] The conclusion of World War I and the resulting Treaty of Versailles witnessed the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and the United States as the chief arbiters of the new world order.^[8] The end of World War II saw the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union emerge as the primary victors. The importance of China and France was acknowledged by their inclusion, along with the other three, in the group of countries allotted permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council.

Since the end of the World Wars, the term "Great power" has been joined by a number of other power classifications. Foremost among these is the concept of the superpower, used to describe those nations with overwhelming power and influence in the rest of the world. Middle power has emerged as a term for those nations which exercise a degree of global influence, but are insufficient to be decisive on international affairs. Regional powers are those whose influence is confined to their region. Major power and global power have emerged as synonyms of "Great power".

Characteristics

There are no set and defined characteristics of a Great power. Largely the question has been treated as 'an empirical one, and common sense can answer it'.^[9] This approach does have the obvious disadvantage of subjectivity. As a result, there have been attempts to derive some common criteria and to treat these as essential elements of Great power status.

Early writings on the subject tended to judge nations by the realist criterion, as succinctly expressed by the historian AJP Taylor: "The test of a Great power is the test of strength for war".^[10] Later writers have expanded this test, attempting to define power in terms of overall military, economic, and political capacity.^[11] Kenneth Waltz the founder of Neo-realism uses a set of five criteria to determine Great power: population and territory; resource endowment; economic capability; political stability and competence; and military strength. ^[12] These expanded criteria can be divided into three heads: power capabilities, spatial aspects, and status.^[13]

Power dimension

Leopold Von Ranke was one of the first to attempt to scientifically document the Great powers

As noted above, for many, power capabilities were the sole criterion. However, even under the more expansive tests power retains a vital place.

This aspect has received mixed treatment, with some confusion as to the degree of power required. Writers have approached the concept of Great power with differing conceptualizations of the world situation, from multi-polarity to overwhelming hegemony. In his essay 'French Diplomacy in the Postwar Period', the French historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle spoke to the multi-polarity conceptualization. He wrote:

'A Great power is one which is capable of preserving its own independence against any other single power.' ^[14]

This differed from earlier writers, notably from Leopold von Ranke, who clearly had a different idea of the world situation. In his essay 'The Great Powers', written in 1833, he wrote:

'If one could establish as a definition of a Great power that it must be able to maintain itself against all others, even when they are united, then Frederick has raised Prussia to that position.' ^[15]

These positions have been the subject of criticism.^[16] For Duroselle's definition to result in more than one Great power, major world powers must be equal in power—each able to resist one another. This fails to take into account the general state of international relations in which amongst Great powers there are nations which are stronger than others.

Spatial dimension

All nations have a geographic scope of interests, actions, or projected power. This is a crucial factor in distinguishing a Great power from a regional power; by definition the scope of a regional power is restricted to its region. It has been suggested that a Great power should be possessed of actual influence throughout the scope of the prevailing international system.

Great power may be defined as a political force exerting an effect co-extensive with the widest range of the society in which it operates. The Great powers of 1914 were 'world-powers' because Western society had recently become 'world-wide'.- Arnold J Toynbee^[17]

Other suggestions have been made that a Great power should have the capacity to engage in extra-regional affairs and that a Great power ought to be possessed of extra-regional interests, two propositions which are often closely connected.^[18]

Status dimension

Formal or informal acknowledgment of a nation's status as a Great power.

The status of Great power is sometimes confused with the condition of being powerful, The office, as it is known, did in fact evolve from the role played by the great military states in earlier periods ... But the Great power system institutionalizes the position of the powerful state in a web of rights and obligations.- George Modelski^[19]

This approach restricts analysis to the post-Congress of Vienna epoch; it being there that Great powers were first formally recognized.^[3] In the absence of such a formal act of recognition it has been suggested that Great power status can arise by implication, by judging the nature of a state's relations with other Great powers.^[20]

A further option is to examine a state's willingness to act as a Great power.^[21] As a nation will rarely declare that it is acting as such, this usually entails a retrospective examination of state conduct. As a result this is of limited use in establishing the nature of contemporary powers, at least not without the exercise of subjective observation.

Another important criteria throughout history is that great powers have enough influence to be included in discussions of political and diplomatic questions of the day, and to have influence on the final outcome and resolution. Historically, when major political questions were addressed, several great powers met to discuss them. Before the era of groups like the United Nations, participants of such meetings were not officially named, but were decided based on their great power status. These were conferences which settled important questions based on major historical events. This might mean deciding the political resolution of various geographical and nationalist claims following a major conflict, or other contexts. There are several historical conferences and treaties which display this pattern, such as the Congress of Vienna, the Congress of Berlin, the discussions of the Treaty of Versailles which redrew the map of Europe, the Treaty of Westphalia, and so on.

The Great powers

GDP is an indicator of a state's economic power.

Military expenditure is a factor in a state's military power.

In the past, the term Great power was mostly restricted to powers within Europe (see history above). Ever since the term was first academically used in 1815, numerous powers have rotated between the statuses of Great power, middle power and superpower. These are listed below. Major power shifts occurred in the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars. Austria-Hungary collapsed after the first world war; after the second, the United States and the Soviet Union became the two superpowers.

After the second world war, the European powers of the United Kingdom, Germany and France managed to rebuild their economies. Two Asian giants, China and India have built up to Great power status during the post-war period, with large economic and military growth. There is debate on whether Italy should be considered a 'Great power': it is a member of the G-8, and can be described as a major power in economic contexts;^[22]Germany in comparison is considered by experts ^{[23] [24] [25] [26]}, chancellor Angela Merkel^[27] , former president Johannes Rau^[28] and leading media of the country ^[29] as a middle power in Europe. In addition, in Asia, Japan is considered by many to be a great power.

After the dissolution of the USSR, the newly formed Russian Federation emerged on the level of a Great power, leaving the United States as the sole superpower.

See also

• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

References

Further reading

• The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John J. Mearsheimer
• Theory of International Politics by Kenneth N Waltz
• World Politics: Trend and Transformation by Eugene R. Witkopf
• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy
• France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 by Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Introduction by Anthony Adamthwaite (Enigma Books, ISBN 1-929631-15-4)

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