International Primacy: Is the game worth the candle

Journal Article · · International Security; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2307/2539021· OSTI ID:6328689

Jervis, R

Does international primacy matter In the past, this question was not worth asking. The great powers- and the term is suggestive-always struggled for position, and the top two or three of them, with the glaring exception of the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, sought to be the leading state. Disagreements about who had succeeded and who was slipping were common and usually of more than academic interest, as was true of the debates in the 1980s about whether the United States was or would remain number one. Today, however, the important argument is whether the United States needs to strive to maintain its primacy. One could take more than an article to define this concept, but I think that for most purposes a simple definition will do: primacy means being much more powerful than any other state according to the usual and crude measures of power (e.g., gross national product; size of the armed forces; lack of economic, political, and geographic vulnerabilities). This in turn implies that the state has greater ability than any rival to influence a broad range of issues and a large number of states.

• OSTI ID: 6328689
• Journal Information: International Security; (United States), Journal Name: International Security; (United States) Vol. 17:4; ISSN INTSDR; ISSN 0162-2889
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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