Consortium’s “Rise of Regions” foretells global power shifts

  School of Business  

Claremont, Portland State, La Sierra scholars offer roadmap to key regions across the globe

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- By mid-century, China and India will dominate the globe. Whether these two competing giants collide and plunge the world into war or cooperate peacefully hinges today on how American and western leaders manage the changing of the guard.

Rise of Regions: Conflict and Cooperation serves as a guidebook for analysts, policy makers, corporate developers, students and others in understanding coming shifts in global power and the potential for war or peace.

Rise of Regions: Conflict and Cooperation serves as a guidebook for analysts, policy makers, corporate developers, students and others in understanding coming shifts in global power and the potential for war or peace.

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Dr. Jacek Kugler, founding member of the TransResearch Consortium is past president of the International Studies Association and is the Elisabeth Helm Rosecrans Professor at Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Jacek Kugler, founding member of the TransResearch Consortium is past president of the International Studies Association and is the Elisabeth Helm Rosecrans Professor at Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Ronald L. Tammen, founding membr of the TransResearch Consortium and a former associate dean of the National War College in Washington D.C., serves as professor emeritus at and was Founding Director of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University.  He also is a Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. 

Dr. Ronald L. Tammen, founding membr of the TransResearch Consortium and a former associate dean of the National War College in Washington D.C., serves as professor emeritus at and was Founding Director of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University.  He also is a Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. 

Dr. John Thomas, founding member of the TransResearch Consortium, dean of the Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University and the Bashir Hasso Chair of Entrepreneurship and Political Economy. (Photo: Natan Vigna)

Dr. John Thomas, founding member of the TransResearch Consortium, dean of the Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University and the Bashir Hasso Chair of Entrepreneurship and Political Economy. (Photo: Natan Vigna)

These are among the intriguing forecasts set forth by top scholars of the TransResearch Consortium, a world politics educational nonprofit whose research over six decades has resulted in their latest book, Rise of Regions: Conflict and Cooperation. Published in September by Rowman & Littlefield, the book describes world politics as shifting away from traditional global powers and resting with the world’s regions as the development gap narrows. Written in an easily understood format, the book reads like a documentary movie in print and presents a forecast of global political and economic trends by analyzing key regions – East Asia, North America, Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East Levant and Northern Tier, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.

The book argues that regions are directly linked to prospects for war and peace as the world’s long-standing, technology-based great power centers of the United States and the European Union wane. The book performs regional analyses from a 30,000-foot view through the integrating principles of power transition theory that posits that national power is defined by gross domestic product and governmental efficiency.  It lays out the basic cause of conflict—when rapidly developing nations are dissatisfied with the values or the style of the global leader.

“What happens in the relationship between India and China will determine future global stability in the last half of the twenty-first century."- Drs. Jacek Kugler and Ronald Tammen, Claremont Graduate University and Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University

Rise of Regions is a fascinating guidebook for analysts, policymakers, corporate executives, students of international relations and others interested in determining which regions and nations will rise or fall in the coming decades.

“You can pick up any page of this book, read about one of 30 or 40 countries, and understand whether or not there's going to be conflict with that country or in that country's region. That’s very unusual in the academic world, to get policy prescriptions out of a rigorous academic book,” said Dr. Ronald L. Tammen, one of two editors and an author of Rise of Regions.

The TransResearch Consortium was created by schools at three universities -- Portland State University, Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., and La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif. Its worldwide members work to expand the horizons of power transition theory which over 60 years has attracted a loyal community of students and scholars. Rise of Regions is the fifth major book in a long list of academic and popular publications. It is edited and includes chapters by TransResearch Consortium co-founders Tammen and Dr. Jacek Kugler, with contributions by other noted scholars from   international relations and national security communities.

Tammen, a former associate dean of the National War College in Washington D.C., serves as professor emeritus at and was Founding Director of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University.  He also is a Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. Kugler, past president of the International Studies Association, is the Elisabeth Helm Rosecrans Professor at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. John Thomas, dean of the Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University and the Bashir Hasso Chair of Entrepreneurship and Political Economy is also a consortium founding member and a contributing author for Rise of Regions.

Rise of Regions predicts that China and India, preeminent powers within the regions of East and South Asia, will respectively rise to reorder the international system in the mid and latter half of this century.  This will occur because of the population explosion in India coupled with a dramatic rise in economic productivity there. This will create two vastly dissimilar power brokers in the same general area, India and China.

“What happens in the relationship between India and China will determine future global stability in the last half of the twenty-first century…,” write Kugler and Tammen. They also note that residual effects of the current global pandemic will not alter the forecast of global events.

“U.S. and E.U. strategists must begin thinking now about how to influence and subtly persuade China and India to join the status quo,” write Chapter 16 co-authors Thomas and Fredrick Clarke, Zapara business school associate economics professor.

This is best accomplished through business-to-business relationships with China and by building coalitions to achieve satisfaction among power players, and in particular through a strong U.S.-India partnership, Rise of Regions authors say.

Challenging Views

China’s Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013 involves plans for a massive network of road and maritime routes intended to substantially bolster economic transactions and influence, and create political and military ties with China’s neighbors in Central and Southeast Asia. It is fueling China’s effort to directly compete with the United States for dominance. “In effect it represents an aggressive new grand strategy for China and has the potential to be nothing short of an explosion onto the world stage – if fully implemented,” write the authors of Chapter 3.

India and China could have joint global dominance once India’s population surpasses China’s around 2025-2030, write Thomas and Clarke. Scholars further predict that India will emerge as the “prize” going forward into the latter part of the century. The World Bank projected that India will be the fastest growing economy through 2021 and may overtake China by 2075.

“U.S. and E.U. strategists must begin thinking now about how to influence and subtly persuade China and India to join the status quo.”  - Drs. John Thomas and Fredrick Clarke, Zapara School of Business, La Sierra University

In Chapter 15, Thomas and Claremont Graduate University Senior Fellow Marina Arbetman Rabinowitz further note that the United States must keep watch over its interests in Southeast Asia where presently Australia and Indonesia are the dominant players and where economic growth across its nations will exceed that of western regions. Chinese influence and investments have steadily increased and if the U.S. wishes to maintain its stake in the region and avoid the region’s complete allegiance shift to China, it must reinforce its partnerships with Southeast Asian nations that have been eroded in recent years.

The book’s writers caution that the U.S will be uncomfortable with China’s expanding role over the next 25 years. “A path to peace is open, but a second path, fraught with the danger of another global confrontation, cannot be ignored,” the book warns.

Rise of Regions also challenges popularly held views on global politics. For instance:

  • Conflict in Eurasia over Ukraine is underappreciated and equally as dangerous as conflict with North Korea or war in the Middle East.
  • Russia is no longer a great power, contrary to appearances, but its cooperation with China threatens western interests.
  • The game of power in the Middle East is centered on Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia rather than Israel.
  • Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and perhaps even Bangladesh will replace Britain, Japan and Russia as powerful, populous nations of productivity.

Note Tammen and Kulger, “Our hope is that this work will motivate colleagues to move beyond the great powers and explore the implications of power transitions within regional hierarchies to account for civil and international conflicts but above all to seek paths to peace.” The TransResearch Consortium is now focusing its attention on a sixth book that delves into the future of India as a global power in the last half of the 21st century.  

Deep impact

Kugler and Tammen met approximately 40 years ago in Washington D.C. while students of A.F.K. Organski, the originator of the power transition theory concept. “We’ve been friends ever since and working [together] ever since,” Kugler said. He has served as the primary author of works based on the theory and its applications following Organski’s death. As Tammen, Kugler and others expanded upon and modernized Organski’s work, generations of students and scholars were attracted to the power transition theory movement which they adopted for their scholarly work and as a dynamic way of thinking about the world. “It has an institutional being in the TransResearch Consortium,” Tammen said.

“I’m fortunate to be part of their team,” said La Sierra’s Thomas. He met Kugler around 1997 while a doctoral student at Claremont Graduate University from which Thomas earned a Ph.D. in economics and politics. He met Tammen through Kugler. Around 2007 the scholars formalized their research interests in the TransResearch Consortium with an articulation agreement signed by the three universities’ provosts and naming La Sierra’s Zapara School of Business as the consortium’s headquarters. Including Thomas, three Zapara business school professors are presently involved in the consortium’s research and three others have participated through editing and research of various peer reviewed papers.

“This agreement allows a small institution like La Sierra University to participate with tier one institutions on research and collaboration and in particular on power transition theory and its applications,” Thomas said. “It allows La Sierra’s business faculty to brainstorm with scholars and colleagues from different institutions and work toward finding better answers to questions that could influence global policies.”

Since Organski’s first publication in 1958, power transition theory scholars have produced about 500 articles and books and presented at numerous conferences.

“This has been a 60-year research effort, which is extraordinarily unusual in the academic community,” Tammen said. The movement will survive, he added “out of loyalty. People that work together over long periods of time and they’re loyal to each other meaning that they sacrifice, they’re not just in it for themselves but for the organization’s future role,” he said.

“We are really trying to get systematic analysis both at the decision-making level and at the macro level to understand the evolution of the international political system,” Kugler said.

Accurate forecasting of national power shifts over decades will be the primary way in which power transition theory remains relevant and ongoing, added Kugler. “I think continuous accurate predictions, both at the policy level and at the macro level are the ways in which the theory survived,” he said. “The key question is, is the argument that you have postulated consistent with reality. Does the evidence support it? On both of those we are as close I believe as any other group that’s attempted to do it.”

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