Wars of Global Succession and Regional Hegemony

• In Event: Rising Power and Power Transitions

Abstract

We have a long list of wars involving great powers over the last 500 years that we tend to treat as little more than a sequence of similar events differentiated only by the severity of resulting deaths. However, embedded within this sequence is an alternating pattern of wars of global succession and regional hegemony. To recognize the pattern, one must first assume that all great powers are not more or less equivalent actors. Some specialize in long-distance trade and attempt to evade struggles over territorial control in the home region. Others eschew commercial activities and emphasize expanding territorial control in the home region. Still others wobble back and forth between these emphases. However, great power activity becomes fused when regional control efforts periodically jeopardize the security of the long-distance traders. Coalitions combining major powers from both groups are organized to suppress the attempts at regional hegemony, leading to wars of global succession when the postwar concentration of the sea powers is revitalized. In between these wars of global succession, moreover, are a number of wars between contending regional hegemony aspirants and declining regional hegemons fighting off challengers and sometimes mixed and/or fused with preliminary but inconclusive bouts between global powers. Structurally then, the long list of great power wars since the 1490s can be reduced to a fairly simple pattern that captures the most prominent cases of interstate violence and re-interprets them as largely regional events with occasional global implications.

Author

• William R. Thompson