Territorial Annexation as a “Great Power”

The Roberts Court has recently begun reviving a long-latent structural constitutional principle—that some unenumerated powers are too important to be inferred through the Necessary and Proper Clause. Under this abstractly sensible theory, some powers are too great to have been conferred by implication alone. This structural logic seems poised to command majority holdings in the Supreme Court. But it is largely unclear what results so undertheorized a concept might dictate. Now is the time to survey the domain of great powers in service of developing an appropriately modest and judicially enforceable great-powers doctrine. This Note argues that a power to annex foreign territory is too important to be inferred through the Necessary and Proper Clause. Because the Constitution does not enumerate a territorial-acquisition power, Congress therefore disregarded great-powers limitations in annexing Texas and Hawaii through joint resolution. Congressional Globe debates from 1845 reveal that opponents of annexing Texas boldly anticipated this very argument. This Note explores their forgotten constitutional claim in the course of highlighting annexation\u27s historical pedigree as a great power. Rethinking the constitutional basis for territorial expansion demonstrates that judges cannot apply great-powers principles consistently. And previously overlooked congressional annexation rhetoric supplies fresh diagnostic tools for identifying other great powers, allowing scholars to escape deceptively stale search terms. In fact, this Note marks the first attempt to identify a federal statute struck down on great-powers grounds: the Court\u27s decision in Afroyim v. Rusk can be fairly read as holding that involuntary expatriation is too important a power to be inferred through the Necessary and Proper Clause

Great expectations: The EU's social role as a great power manager

Through the case of EU foreign and security policy we reconsider the concept of great power. According to common wisdom, the EU cannot be a great power, whatever the pronouncements of its top officials may be. We argue that ‘great power’ has been miscast in IR theory as a status rather than as a social role, and, consequently, that the EU can indeed be viewed as playing the great power role. Such a conceptual shift moves analytical attention away from questions of what the EU is ‘big’, ‘small’, ‘great’, and so on to what it is expected to do in international politics. We focus on the expectation that great powers engage in the management of the international system, assessing the EU as a great power manager in two senses: First, in the classical sense of ‘great power management’ of Hedley Bull which centers on great powers’ creation of regional spheres of influence and the maintenance of the general balance of power and second, in light of recent corrections to Bull’s approach by Alexander Astrov and others, who suggest great power management has changed toward a logic of governmentality, i.e. ‘conducting the conduct’ of lesser states

China’s emerging global role: dissatisfied responsible great power

China has (re)emerged as a great power in a world not of its own making. The distribution of power in major organisations and the dominant norms of international interactions are deemed to unfairly favour the existing Western powers, and at times obstruct China’s ability to meet national development goals. Nevertheless, engaging the global economy has been a key source of economic growth (thus helping to maintain regime stability), and establishing China’s credentials as a responsible global actor is seen as a means of ensuring continued access to what China needs. As an emerging great power that is also still in many respects a developing country, China’s challenge is to change the global order in ways that do not cause global instability or generate crises that would damage China’s own ability to generate economic growth and ensure political stability

Great Power Rivalry in a New Asia Pacific Order: Examining the Great Power Concert Model for Asia Pacific

China\u27s rising power in the Asia Pacific region is leading the regional order to face a potential of rivalry between existing great powers in the region. This paper hence seeks to investigate the great power rivalry in a new Asia Pacific order. It argues that while ‘the European great power concert model\u27, as proposed by Hugh White (2008), could potentially be a mechanism for maintaining peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region, it has considerable problems and obstacles to be applied in the region

Russian foreign policy: The return of great power politics

In Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics, Jeffrey Mankoff examines the course of Russian foreign policy since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. He provides a comprehensive over-view of both the continuity and the changes in Russian foreign policy from the end of the Cold War to the Putin era, and analyses Russia’s interactions with major global powers. Throughout the book, the author makes use of various theoretical approaches, including theories of international relations, classical geopolitical theory and Russian geopolitical tradition

Great Power Privilege

Great Power Privilege is well rooted in the United Nations through state practice of permanent members of the Security Council. The forward recognition of Israel by the USA in comparison with lack of recognition of Kosovo by Russia, and the invasion of Iraq without Security Council authorisation provide contrasting examples of Great Power Privilege that arguably does not help international peace. An internal renaissance of the Security Council may be the only route to a more inclusive global decision making mechanism to maintaining international peace and security

How Great is Britain? Power, responsibility and Britain’s future global role

Hedley Bull argued that for a state to be classed as a great power it must be in the first rank in terms of military strength but also recognised by others to have, and conceived by its own leaders and peoples to have, certain special rights and duties. Adopting this approach, this article argues that Britain's great power credentials are far stronger than commonly appreciated and that, while the term is no longer in vogue, within government the idea that Britain is a great power remains an influential factor in determining British foreign and defence policy

Securing guarantees : how nuclear proliferation can strengthen great power commitments

The number of states with nuclear weapons has grown at a much slower rate than many predicted during the early years of the Cold War. Yet the reasons for this slow rate of proliferation are not well understood. What is maintaining the (predominantly non-nuclear) status quo? Other work takes external threats and the credibility of security guarantees as given, but I show how nuclear proliferation can shape and be shaped by both. This approach allows me to show how the decisions of proliferators, their allies, and their adversaries are intertwined. This leads to a previously unexplored effect of proliferation: in addition to the defensive and deterrent capability of nuclear weapons, nuclear possession can also cause great powers to tighten their alliance commitments. Great powers therefore have incentives to dissuade nuclear pursuit through threats of sanctions when they are capable of imposing them and through heightened security guarantees when they cannot.Governmen

Managing Great Power Politics

This Open Access book explains ASEAN’s strategic role in managing great power politics in East Asia. Constructing a theory of institutional strategy, this book argues that the regional security institutions in Southeast Asia, ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions have devised their own institutional strategies vis-à-vis the South China Sea and navigated the great-power politics since the 1990s. ASEAN proliferated new security institutions in the 1990s and 2000s that assumed a different functionality, a different geopolitical scope, and thus a different institutional strategy. In so doing, ASEAN formed a “strategic institutional web” that nurtured a quasi-division of labor among the institutions to maintain relative stability in the South China Sea. Unlike the conventional analysis on ASEAN, this study disaggregates “ASEAN” as a collective regional actor into specific individual institutions—ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, ASEAN Summit, ASEAN-China dialogues, ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus—and explains how each of these institutions has devised and/or shifted its institutional strategy to curb great powers’ ambition in dominating the South China Sea while navigating great power competition. The book sheds light on the strategic potential and limitations of ASEAN and ASEAN-led security institutions, offers implications for the future role of ASEAN in the Indo-Pacific region, and provides an alternative understanding of the strategic utilities of regional security institutions

Orbán’s great power politics

Hungary’s parliamentary election on 3 April is set to provide the biggest challenge to Viktor Orbán’s hold on power since he became Prime Minister in 2010. Zsolt Enyedi reflects on Orbán’s recent ‘state of the nation’ speech, which kicked off the 2022 election campaign and shed light on how the Prime Minister views Hungary’s position within Europe and the world