Richard Rosecrance Research Articles

An Untapped Definition of The State: The Virtual State and Example of Qatar

The facet of territorial and military ambitions began to lose its importance with the states starting to specialize in high value-added and intangible assets. Richard Rosecrance endeavored to formulate a novel development method for these relatively small-scale states. Instead of developing an immense domestic manufacturing capacity with traditional production methods, these 'virtual' states have followed a knowledge, artificial intelligence, and innovation-based development that emphasizes investment, high added value, and the mobility of intangible assets. Although some states did not wholly fit into the virtual state framework within the scope of Rosecrance's definition, they carried some of its characteristics. This study claims that Qatar, which has succeeded in establishing a sphere of influence beyond its borders and population, has some virtual state characteristics by merging its rich hydrocarbon resources with technology and innovation. After a theoretical review, the study claims that Qatar's virtual state characteristics have considerably mitigated the deleterious effects of the embargo imposed on Qatar by four Arab countries in 2017. The final part expands the Qatar-Turkey relationship that comes to the forefront as the field of applying these characteristics from an economic and financial perspective, contrary to the prevailing ideology and politics-based studies in the literature.

Post-cold war era and stability in international system in the perspective of system approach of Richard Rosecrance

Soguk Savas sonrasi donemde Westphalian paradigma sorgulanmaya baslamis ve teorisyenler tarafindan uluslararasi sistemin yeni yapisina dair cesitli gorusler dile getirilmistir. Soz konusu teorisyenlerden biri de Richard Rosecrance’dir. Rosecrance’a gore Soguk Savas sonrasi donemde Amerika Birlesik Devletleri uluslararasi sistemde temel duzenleyici guc olmakla birlikte, Rusya, Japonya ve Avrupa Toplulugu/Birligi uluslararasi politikada guc merkezleri olarak on plana cikma potansiyeline sahiptir. Rosecrance daha sonra bu aktorlere Cin’i de eklemistir. Bu cercevede Rosecrance, Soguk Savas sonrasi uluslararasi sistemde ABD’nin temel duzenleyici aktor oldugu cok-merkezli bir yapi potansiyelinin oldugunu ileri surmektedir. Rosecrance’a gore uluslararasi sistemdeki anarsik yapi, guc dengesi ya da nukleer denge yoluyla degil, merkezi bir koalisyon yoluyla kontrol altina alinmalidir. Her ne kadar Soguk Savas sonrasi uluslararasi sistemde bolgesellesme egilimleri ortaya ciksa da bu durum, Amerika Birlesik Devletleri merkezli bir koalisyon olusumuna engel teskil etmemektedir. Richard Rosecrance soz konusu koalisyona butun buyuk guclerin isbirligi temelinde dahil olmasi gerektigini savunmaktadir. Calismada Rosecrance’in Soguk Savas sonrasi uluslararasi sistemin yapisina iliskin onermeleri ve bu onermeler temelinde sistemin istikrari icin gerekli oldugunu iddia ettigi hususlar analiz edilecektir.

Neorealism Reconsidered: Human Nature or State Behavior?

History and Neorealism. Edited By Ernest R. May, Richard Rosecrance, Zara Steiner . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 394 pp., $35.00 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-13224-4). Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in International Relations. The Resurrection of the Realist Man. By Robert Schuett . Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 237 pp., $89.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-230-62354-5). Neorealism remains the most widely criticized theoretical approach in international relations (IR) today. The literature that attempts to show the conceptual limits, theoretical flaws, and moral obtuseness of Neorealist or post-classical realist theorizing continues to grow, attesting to the ongoing institutional dominance of Neorealist thought just as much as to the sustained dissatisfaction with its intellectual legacy. The two books reviewed here contribute to the three-decade-old critique of Neorealism, but from two different perspectives. While the volume edited by Richard Rosecrance, Zara Steiner and the late Ernest May, History and Neorealism , focuses on Neorealism's, and more generally realism's inability to explain how states actually behave on the international scene, Robert Schuett, in Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in International Relations. The Resurrection of the Realist Man , resurrects realism's philosophical frame of analysis and addresses Neorealism's failure to sustain a coherent reflection on human nature and its role in international behavior. History and Neorealism aims to show “through the use of case histories addressing different countries and covering different periods, that, even in those episodes where power is centrally involved, ‘realism’ characteristically fails to explain what is happening” (p. 6). More specifically, the authors of the volume successfully demonstrate, contra the (Neo)realist balance-of-power/survival-and-hegemony explanatory scheme, that states have historically often made the choice to either “overuse” or “underuse” their power, and that these choices depend on their “different understandings of what power permits or of the elements of which it is composed” (Rosecrance, p. 12). Moreover, they show that states' behavior can only be understood if both non-systemic and systemic factors are taken into account, such as “ideological, economic, and social constraints,”“ideological leadership,”“geography,” as well as “transnational and institutional, economic, and social factors which affect the international environment in which states operate” (pp. 6–7). The ways wherein these …

History and Neorealism. Edited by Ernest R. May, Richard Rosecrance, and Zara Steiner. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 406p. $99.00 cloth, $39.99 paper.

History and Neorealism. Edited by Ernest R. May, Richard Rosecrance, and Zara Steiner. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 406p. $99.00 cloth, $39.99 paper.

Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State

Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State

The transformation of Turkish foreign policy: The rise of the trading state

AbstractRecently, Turkish foreign policy, compared to the 1990s, has manifested a number of puzzlements. They range from the rapprochement with Greece, the turnabout over Cyprus, mediation efforts involving a series of regional conflicts to a policy seeking an improvement in relations with Armenia and Kurds of Northern Iraq. These puzzlements have increasingly transformed Turkey from being cited as a “post-Cold War warrior” or a “regional coercive power” to a “benign” if not “soft” power. Academic literature has tried to account for these puzzlements and the accompanying transformation in Turkish foreign policy from a wide range of theoretical perspectives. This literature has undoubtedly enriched our understanding of what drives Turkish foreign policy. At the same time, this literature has not paid adequate attention to the role of economic factors shaping Turkish foreign policy as we approach the end of the first decade of the new century. This article aims to highlight this gap and at the same time offer a preliminary conceptual framework based on Richard Rosecrance's notion of the “trading state” and Robert Putnam's idea of “two-level diplomatic games” to explore the impact of economic considerations on Turkish foreign policy.

The Return of Net Assessment

It has been almost two decades since the notion of ‘net assessment’ preoccupied strategic thought during the Cold War. It has not been revisited in a sustained manner since a flurry of articles and...

Where do norms come from? Foundations of Japan's postwar pacifism1

One of the enduring puzzles about Japanese foreign policy since the 1970s has been the gap between the nation’s economic power and its military capability. Despite its status as one of the leading market economies in the world, Japan has been very reluctant to translate its economic resources into military power and has acted in large part as what Richard Rosecrance called a “trading state.”1 Although the absolute amount of Japan’s defense budget is quite substantial, its relative size, measured in relation to gross domestic product (GDP), is one of the smallest among the advanced industrial nations.2

State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century

Journal Article State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century Get access State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Francis Fukuyama. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2004. 160 pp. $21.00. Richard Rosecrance Richard Rosecrance Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 120, Issue 2, Summer 2005, Pages 307–308, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2005.tb01359.x Published: 25 March 2013

Singapore: Surviving the Downside of Globalization

When John Maynard Keynes discovered that in the long term we are all dead, he stumbled on an excellent piece of economic news. It enables plebes and patricians to make love and laws while they can and leave the future to its own devices. Yet, Keynes the metaphysical economist was only half right. Individuals and even their habits of thought turn to dust, but generations arrive, to go on imagining and inventing the future. Keynes has even less currency in Singapore. Here, in an unlikely country that willed itself into being, time is not a fact of nature but an act of will. While intimations of immortality, inherited from thousands of years of self-affirming survival, drive civilizations such as China and India to seek greatness, mortality is the city-state's stalking companion. In characterizing Singapore as a trading emporium, Philippe R?gnier, for example, refers to the chronic fragility of an emporium, which has no agrarian base or large internal market.1 For Michael Leifer, Singapore is an exceptional state in economic performance but also in an innate sense of vulnerability.2 Leifer encapsulates Singapore's reality neatly. The country's character derives from the fact that it is, exceptionally, a product of globalization. Singapore saw itself as a global city long before it became fashionable to either lubricate or jam the wheels turning the world into a single factory. Ejection from Malaysia ? the basis of an unwanted independence in 1965 ? meant the loss of a natural economic hinterland. Therefore, argued former Singa pore Minister S. Rajaratnam in 1972, it could no longer be the Change Alley of Southeast Asia but would have to find a role as a global city. What favoured its quest was the trading world of post-World War II international relations. In a book on the subject published in the mid-1980s, Richard Rosecrance saw the world since 1945 as poised between two historic possibilities: a territorial sys tem of power which went back to the landscape of Louis XIV and was now presided over by the Soviet Union and to some extent the United States; and an oceanic or trading system of power left as a legacy by Britain in the 1850s

Toward a Dynamic Theory of International Politics: Insights from Comparing Ancient China and Early Modern Europe

This article examines why international relations theories presume checks and balances but universal domination triumphed in ancient China. I argue that one should not presume the European experience as the norm and treat ancient China as a deviant case. I propose a dynamic theory of international politics that views international competition as processes of strategic interaction and that allows for alternative trajectories and endogenous transformation. Realist theories of international politics tend to focus on structural mechanisms and overlook agential strategies. At the same time, these theories focus on causal mechanisms that check attempts at domination and overlook mechanisms that facilitate domination. It is true that attempts at domination are checked by the mechanisms of balance of power and rising costs of expansion. But domination-seekers may overcome such obstacles by pursuing divide-and-conquer strategies, ruthless tactics, and self-strengthening reforms. From this strategic-interactive perspective, universal domination is no less possible than the balance of power.I would like to express my gratitude to Jack Snyder, Ira Katznelson, Charles Tilly, Thomas Bernstein, Michael Davis, and David Kang for their extensive comments on multiple drafts. I also want to thank Fiona Adamson, Bear Braumoeller, E. Bruce Brooks, Lars-Erik Cederman, Thomas Christensen, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Charles Cogan, Timothy Crawford, Julian Franklin, Taylor Fravel, Robert Goodin, Yoav Gortzak, A. Iain Johnston, Edward Kolodziej, Andrew Kydd, Mark Lewis, Daniel Nexon, Richard Rosecrance, Stephen Rosen, Peter Rutland, Mark Sheetz, Erik Voeten, R. Harrison Wagner, R. Bin Wong, and the editor-in-chief and two anonymous reviewers of International Organization for their thoughtful and critical comments. In addition, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University sponsored various phases of this project.

How to Win Friends and Influence People: Japanese Economic Aid Linkage and the Kurile Islands

For more than fifty years the dispute over the southern Kurile Islands has soured Japanese-Russian relations. The fate of these four small islands has great emotional and legal significance for Japan, despite the Kuriles' relatively limited economic and security importance. Japan firmly believes that the islands were seized illegally by the the Soviet Union in 1945. Postwar arrangements called for Japan to give up all conquered territories. Yet, Tokyo argues, while the rest of the Kuriles had long been disputed between the two countries, the southern islands had always legally been part of Japan--and thus should not have been taken away. As part of the core Japanese territory, their loss also resonated with the Japanese people in a much deeper way than did the loss of more distant colonial territories such as Sakhalin, Korea, or Taiwan. Therefore, since 1945 regaining those islands has been a key national objective for Japan. Japan is often held up as one of the clearest examples of what Richard Rosecrance called a trading state, that is, a state whose influence in the world is based mainly on its wealth.' Hence it is not surprising that Japan has long pinned its hopes for recovering the disputed islands on its economic influence. Clearly Japan had an economic advantage over the the Soviet Union-and now has one over Russia. Yet how can Japan best use its economic strength to buy back the disputed territory? Two possible strategies can be discerned. Until the early 1990s Japan refused to grant economic favors to Moscow unless it agreed to return the islands. By the

Development and the Liberal Peace: What Does it Take to be a Trading State?

This article investigates the liberal idea that trade between two states reduces the likelihood of militarized conflict between them. Richard Rosecrance's argument that industrial-technological developments have made peaceful trading strategies more efficient today is examined in connection with the empirical literature on trade and conflict. Development affects the utility calculations of states: since the costs of seizing and holding a territory increase with increased development, and the relative utility of occupying the territory decreases, the chance that the expected utility of occupation will exceed the expected costs decreases with increased development. Likewise, since the utility of trade increases with increased development, then increased development also makes it more likely that the expected costs of breaking the trade bonds will exceed the gains to be expected from occupation. Consequently, the relationship between trade and conflict is contingent on the level of development. Using Cox regression, and introducing a new measure of interdependence based on a gravity model of trade, I demonstrate that there is a clear negative relationship between trade and conflict. However, this relationship is basically restricted to dyads consisting of two developed dyads. Development itself is strongly associated with peaceful behavior. The results also suggest that the democratic peace requires a minimum level of development to be efficient.

Historical sociology and systems theory in international relations

With good reason scholars of international relations have been partial to systems theorizing. They have long understood that decisions of states to engage in war, to raise tariffs, to deter in one area and appease in another, hinge on what other actors are doing or how the other actors might interpret those states' actions. Units (states or other types of actors) are 'interconnected so that changes in some elements of their relations produce changes in other parts of the system, and the entire system exhibits properties and behaviors that are different from those parts' (ervis, 1997: 6).1 International relations theory has suggested not only that actors engage in complexly organized, mutually influencing behavior but also that they interact with each other in relatively stable and identifiable configurations. Several decades ago, Richard Rosecrance recognized roughly nine patterns of international practice (Rosecrance, 1963). Rather confusingly, but in conformity with the structural functionalist logic of the times, he added notions of disequilibrium, system inputs and outputs to his model, but the logic of his analysis was basically premised on an inductive analysis of state behavior. The established patterns of practices (balancing behavior, management of conflict through such international organizations as the League of Nations) were the defining traits of the international system. It was these patterns that provided constraints and opportunities to individual actors in the system. Similarly, in the systems theorizing of Morton Kaplan (1969), one could likewise distinguish structural functionalist overtones, but also a mode of systems theorizing that bore the stamp of nineteenth-century European balance-of-power politics. Scholars in the British school used a more explicit sociological understanding of the international system by infusing it with a study of international society (Buzan, 1993; Bull, 1977; Jackson, 1990).

Turning point: the Gulf War and U.S. military strategy

Part 1 The strategic context: the context for military strategy, Edward Luttwak post-Cold War US national interests and priorities, Richard Rosecrance - what is it? how can we best use it?, Joseph S. Nye Jr. Part 2 The Gulf and its lessons: American air power - the legacy of the Gulf War, Eliot A. Cohen the ground war, John Keegan implications for future military strategy, John H. Cushman. Part 3 Elements of future military strategic thought: the role of nuclear weapons, Thomas C. Schelling what do we want to deter and how do we deter it?, Robert Jervis force projection/crisis response, Jeffrey Record command and control, Kenneth Allard US military strategy in Europe, Larry D. Budge US military strategy in the Middle East, Edward B. Atkeson US military strategy in Asia, Thomas L. mcNaugher. Part 4 Summing up: military strategy for an era of transition, Martin van Crevald.

The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy. Edited by Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. 230p. $36.50 cloth, $13.95 paper.

The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy. Edited by Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. 230p. $36.50 cloth, $13.95 paper.

America's Changing Role in a Transforming World

AMERICA'S CHANGING ROLE IN A TRANSFORMING WORLD Charles F. Doran The rise and decline ofstates is not simple. This is as true for the global power of the United States, Russia, China, and Japan today as it was for Britain, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany a century ago. This is also why confusion permeates much ofthe contemporary discussion about the future power and role ofthe United States and other leading countries. Concept mustguide historical interpretation andpolicyassessment. Unless the concept of change in relative power and ofthe trajectory ofthat power are sound, interpretation is likely to continue to go awry. The contemporary debate about U.S. decline, involving the future trajectory of U.S. power and its foreign policy, is part of a larger scholarly dialogue about the structure ofthe international system and the dynamics of international politics. Structural theories focus on the distribution of power in the system—the hierarchic order, and changing relative power, or systemic share, ofthe member states. Statesmen think in relative terms because a state's power; its capacity to create and sustain a foreign policy role, is always relative to the other major states in the international system. To talk about a state's rise or decline, whether the source ofrelative change is internal or external to the state or both, is to talk about changes in the structure of the international system itself. Surely no analyst doubts that the international system today is undergoing monumental transformation. Charles F. Doran, Andrew W. Mellon Professor ofInternational Relations at SAIS, is writing a book about strategic policy and international political economy. This article builds upon a lecture he presented at the 1992 Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium , "America in Decline: Crisis or Illusion?" 69 70 SAISREVIEW The issue ofU.S. decline becomes re-focused: What is the future power and role of the United States in an international system whose structure and modus operandi are changing? Neither power nor role can be isolated from the particular international context in which the United States finds itself. In this transforming world, is the United States "bound to lead," as Joseph Nye has argued?1 Or, as Robert Gilpin has warned, is the United States a declining hegemon, whose weakened leadership invites challenge from a rising state seeking to establish a new system ofrules and benefits?2 Shouldthe United States accept itsso-called "endofempire"and"gracefully retreat" from its leadership role, as Paul Kennedy has advised?3 What is an appropriate grand strategy for the United States—appropriate both to U.S. interests and, since this is what leadership is all about, to the interests ofthe international system as a whole? A separate, albeit related, question underlies and further complicates the debate: isthere opportunityforAmerican economic resurgence, or is decline so aggravated as to preclude this possibility?4 This essay addresses these questions from the perspective of a form of analysis known as power cycle theory.5 The principles ofthe power cycle (of the structure of changing systems) show how absolute power changes in the system set in motion the relative power changes described as the rise and decline ofstates. Encompassing state and system in a single historical dynamic, power cycle analysis shows that relative power change is sometimes insidiously counterintuitive. The shifting tides of history are structural undercurrents that can counter even the largest growth in absolute power terms. Since role expectations are tied to change on the power cycle, incomplete understanding of relative power change supports dangerous fantasies about future power and role throughout the system. Intuitive 1.Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature ofAmerican Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990). 2.Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Robert Keohane, AfterHegemony: Cooperation andDiscord in the WorldPolitical Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 3.Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1988); "The End of Empire: Can We Decline as Gracefully as Great Britain?," Washington Post, Outlook section (24 Jan. 1988). 4.Richard Rosecrance, America's Economic Resurgence: A Bold New Strategy (New York: Harper & Row, 1990). Henry R. Nau, The Myth ofAmerica's Decline: Leading the World Economy into the...

Geographic Perspectives in History

Editors' Preface 1. D.W. Meinig: A Geographical Transect of the Atlantic World 2. William H. McNeill: The Eccentricity of Wheels, or European transportation in Historical Perspectives 3. Martin Bernal: First by Land, Then by Sea: Thoughts about the Social Formation of the Mediterranean and Greece 4. John V. Murra: High Altitude Andean Societies and their Economics 5. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese: Social Classes and Class Struggles in Geographic Perspective 6. Robert Wuthnow: Towns, Regimes, and Religious Movements in the Reformation 7. David Ringrose: Towns, Transport, and Crown: Geography and the Decline of Spain 8. Leonard Hochberg: The Atlantic Revolution? The Crises of England, The United States and France 9. P. S. Seaver: A Geographic Perspective in Microcosm: An Artisanal Case Study 10. Emmanuel LeRoi Ladurie & Oreste Ranum: The Scribe-etnnographer, Pierre Prion of Aubais 11. Forrest McDonald: Cultural Continuity and the Shaping of the American South 12. James E. Vance, Jr: Transportation and the Geographical Expression of Capitalism 13. Charles Tilly: The Geography of European Statemaking and capitalism Since 1500 14. Immanuel Wallerstein: France, A Special Case? A World-Systems Perspective 15. G. William Skinner: Yet Another France: Regional Systems in the 19th Century 16. Traian Stoianovitch: The Segmentary State and `La Grande Nation' 17. Elias Mandala: Commodity Production, Subsistence, and the State in Colonial Africa: Peasant Cotton Agriculture in the Lower Tchiri (Shire) Valley of Malawi, 1907-1951 18. Richard Rosecrance: The Commercial Society and International Relations Epilogue: Edward Whiting Fox.

By Land or by Sea, the Merchant shall Inherit the Earth

Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern WorldHoward M. Wachtel. The Money Mandarins: the Making of a Supranational Economic Order

Neorealism and Neoliberalism

The classic dialectic between Realist and Liberal theories of international politics, as expressed by Robert O. Keohane, ed., in Neorealism and Its Critics and Richard Rosecrance The Rise of the Trading State, can be transcended. Neither paradigm singularly explains international behavior: Realism is the dominant approach, but liberal theories of transnationalism and interdependence help to illuminate how national interests are learned and changed. Keohane and fellow critics argue that Neorealism—articulated definitively in Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979)—elegantly systematizes Realism, but concentrates on international system structure at the expense of system process. Focused tightly on the concept of bipolarity, Waltz's theory tends toward stasis; the unit (state) level unproductively becomes an analytical “dumping ground.” As a Neoliberal counterpoint, Rosecrance's argument does not go far enough. In the tradition of commercial liberalism, he argues that an open trading system offers states maneuverability through economic growth rather than through military conquest. He tempers his argument with Realist considerations of prudence, but fails to clarify Realist-Liberal links in his theory, or to explore fully the connections between power and non-power incentives influencing states' behavior. A synthesis of Neorealism and Neoliberalism is warranted: a systemic theory using the former to analyze at the level of structure, the latter more often at the level of process.