Great-Power Subversion in the Power-Political Repertoire

• In Event: International Order and Repertoires of Power Politics

Abstract

Most of what scholars of international politics know about their subject is based on the study of external, government-to-government statecraft: diplomacy, coercion, alliance-formation, institution-building and the like. A new wave of scholarship seeks to understand what might be called subversive statecraft, which reaches across borders to affect domestic processes within a target state in a manner that undermines its government. Subversion runs the gamut from overthrowing the target state’s government forcefully or via covert action, supporting armed separatists, to subtler actions such as electoral interference and disinformation. A core question is how governments resolve the trade-off between external and subversive statecraft, a trade-off that must center on the meaning and strength of the sovereign norm and its non-intervention corollary. Thus far, most research on this question centers on interactions between major and minor powers. Why do great powers choose to violate each other’s sovereignty in peacetime? In this paper, I test a rationalist, power-centric answer against a normative one. The aim is to better understand the trade offs between sovereignty-respecting and sovereignty-violating statecraft at a time when technology is altering the strategic landscape, governments are testing the limits and possibilities of subversive statecraft, and great power relations are becoming more rivalrous.

Author

• William C. Wohlforth, Dartmouth College