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This chapter identifies three main types of regional power nuclear postures, arrayed across a spectrum of capabilities and deployment procedures. This theory, the Posture Optimization Theory, explains why the existing regional nuclear powers have adopted the nuclear postures and strategies they have, and generates testable predictions about what type of nuclear posture future regional nuclear powers might adopt based on a set of readily observable variables. Because of the dearth of regional states that have acquired nuclear weapons, this exercise has inherent limitations. However, by testing the framework against the existing empirical record, we can determine whether it provides a plausible framework with which to explain the choices of existing regional powers and to predict the choices that future nuclear powers might make.

This chapter lays out the volume's main arguments in brief. Contrary to the usual focus on superpowers and Cold War nuclear competition, the chapter proposes a different dynamic. It asks what strategies and choices certain states will make about their nuclear weapons and how those decisions about nuclear strategy can affect international relations and conflict. Examining the decisions that regional nuclear powers—such as China, India, Pakistan, Israel, France, and South Africa—have made about their arsenals thus far, and their resulting behavior, helps address these questions. Regional nuclear powers, for systematic and predictable reasons, choose clearly identifiable nuclear postures and these postures matter to a regional power's ability to deter conflict. These countries' nuclear choices, therefore, provide valuable insight into the crucial challenges of contemporary nuclear proliferation and international stability.

This chapter reiterates the findings explored in this book and discusses their implications. In doing so, the chapter stresses the significance of the posited optimization theory. This theory is the first comparative theory of regional power nuclear postures. Against the full universe of empirical cases involving selection of nuclear posture—a decision that unfolds deliberately over many years and often over many leaders—optimization theory is the most valid theory available. It is also the first broadly comparative theory for why states select the nuclear postures they do, suggesting that states may be rational to sacrifice deterrent power in certain security environments and under particular organizational and relative endowment circumstances. In addition, the chapter closes the volume by detailing some avenues for further research, as well as some concluding insights.

This chapter probes questions regarding how nuclear weapons or nuclear postures affect crisis dynamics, by examining whether there is variation in states' decisions to escalate or de-escalate a crisis as a function of nuclear posture. That is, within a crisis, the chapter considers if some nuclear postures deter states from conflict escalation better than others. In answering this question, this chapter uncovers the mechanisms responsible for the relationship between regional nuclear postures and deterrence outcomes, ensuring that the correlations established in the statistical analysis are not just spurious but are real and causal. To do this, the chapter explores the findings from the large-n analysis in more fine-grained crisis settings.

The chapter seeks to relate the concepts of ‘regional power’ and ‘regional security’ to the relatively unexplored concept of ‘regional leadership’ by comparing the regional security problématiques of Brazil, India and South Africa, the three most visible emerging powers in the global South. While the exercise of regional power is in its essence a control operation, the establishment of regional leadership requires the generation of consent. The chapter also seeks to understand the interplay between policy initiative and regional context. To what extent are the regional policies of Brazil, India, and South Africa conditioned by their respective regional contexts? What is the role of innovative domestic and regional policy in transforming the regional context? Thus, the subject matter of the chapter also gestures to a fundamental issue in social science research, the agent-structure problem.

This book has explored how leading states have responded to power shifts in peripheral regions and why they have accommodated some rising regional powers (RRPs) but opposed others. It has introduced a new theory that explains why leading states differed in their responses to RRPs by emphasizing the interaction between the type of regional order preferred by a leading state and the type of power shift that it believes is taking place. The first step in the theory entails figuring out whether a leading state favors regional parity or regional primacy, or whether it is impartial between these alternative orders. The second step involves determining how an emerging regional power will alter the local status quo and whether the expected consequences of its rise are compatible with a leading state's preferences. This concluding chapter summarizes the book's arguments and evidence and discusses several implications for international relations theory. It also considers what the book's framework would suggest about the United States's relations with two contemporary regional powers: India and Iran.

This chapter analyzes Iran's foreign policy, arguing that the collapse of Saddam Hussein in Iraq accelerated Iran's transformation from a revolutionary regime to a “regional status quo power” in search of creating “spheres of influence,” particularly in southern Iraq. Accordingly, one of Iran's ultimate strategic goals is to become a hub for the transit of goods and services between the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and possibly China. On the other hand, Iran's Iraq policy is directly correlated to Tehran's threat perception regarding the United States. It is argued that a threatened Iran whose legitimate security needs are ignored would act more erratically in Iraq than would a secure Iran. The United States and Iran can conveniently build upon their common interests in Iraq to lay the foundation for improving their turbulent relations. Moreover, any future regional security arrangement that excludes Iran will most likely be “expensive, ineffective, and unsustainable.” The chapter concludes that when the United States, “as the world's hegemonic power,” and Iran, “an emerging regional power,” are not at peace, the region as a whole will suffer; when they are at peace, the region is more likely to enjoy stability.

This book examines how leading states—great powers that occupy a unique position thanks to the sources of their wealth, the types of armed forces they build, and the responsibilities they assume—respond to power shifts in peripheral regions. More specifically, it considers how a leading state reacts when a rising power in the periphery challenges the prevailing regional order. Drawing on a theory that borrows insights from the two main schools of realist theory, balance-of-power realism and preponderance-of-power realism, the book explains why a leading state has accommodated some rising regional powers (RRPs) but opposed others, especially when local power shifts have led to war. It also employs qualitative case studies to elucidate how leading states in different historical eras have responded to RRPs across the globe, with particular emphasis on Great Britain and the United States.

This chapter examines how leading states respond to rising regional powers (RRPs). More specifically, it asks why leading states have accommodated some emerging powers in peripheral regions but opposed others. Before discussing the different strategies employed by RRPs to deal with power shifts in peripheral regions, the chapter proposes a theory that addresses a pair of issues: the type of regional order that a leading state prefers and the type of power shift that appears to be taking place. It also considers the two main risks that determine whether a leading state will favor regional parity, regional primacy, or both: the risk of access denial and the risk of containment failure. Finally, it explores the relationship between a leading state's risk assessment and its preferred regional order.

This chapter studies arguments on regional power and European integration. It first discusses the concept of ‘regional power’ before focusing on the arguments about the impact of European integration on regional power. Next, the discussion tries to determine why European integration and regional power contradict each other and it examines a theoretical framework that is designed to study the different proposals about European integration and regional power. This chapter also studies the effect of European integration.

This chapter examines the South China Sea (SCS) dispute from the point of view of South Korea. It argues that while South Korea is far from the immediate region under analysis and in which tensions continue to rise, the implications of rivalry between China, the United States, and other SCS claimant and non-claimant states have dangerous consequences on the peace and order of the broader area. It also illustrates South Korea's position as a regional middle power interested in balanced and constructive policies with the ultimate aim of de-escalating tension between those states that have brought all others closer to physical conflict. The chapter elaborates how the problems of the SCS have a wider destabilizing effect upon East Asian maritime security, posing strategic issues for other regional states, such as South Korea. It characterizes the SCS situation as a “grey zone” conflict or as “hybrid competition” between the parties involved.

The Federal Power Act, New Deal legislation that regulated wholesale electric rates, did not require the nation’s utilities to interconnect or coordinate their activities. The government could not order one utility to wheel power for another. A vertically integrated utility could therefore protect the electricity it generated from competition by denying third parties access to its transmission lines. Utilities were not common carriers. By the 1970’s, the industry was seen by critics to be an inefficient monopoly enterprise, protected by regulation from price competition except for limited application of the antitrust laws, until an obscure provision of the National Energy Act of 1978, Carter-era legislation, changed the field of play by requiring utilities to purchase power from cogenerators and small power generators at long-run avoided cost, freeing the sellers, called qualifying facilities, from onerous regulation as utilities, giving them transmission rights, and creating out of whole cloth an independent generating sector. Insull’s regulated monopoly model now confronted irreversible change. Free-market economists, among them Paul Joskow of MIT, believed the old order was ripe for deconstruction. Shortly after the WPPSS fiasco, in 1983, together with Richard Schmalensee, an MIT colleague, Joskow co-authored a ground-breaking book, Markets for Power – An Analysis of Electric Utility Regulation, that was sharply skeptical of the industry’s protected monopolies and regulated prices. To create competition in the wholesale market for electric power, the authors found, transmission access was essential. They envisaged a regional power pooling and transmission operator that would own and operate the high voltage transmission network and independent generation companies that would sell power into an unregulated market at marginal prices. The operator would dispatch generation in merit order and make financial settlements. It was a bold model that eventually reshaped the power industry through rulings of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and legislation that gave third-party independent power producers the right to require a transmitting utility to wheel power to a wholesale buyer and authorized regional transmission organizations to provide open access and self-scheduled transmission while also running a free and competitive market, including an energy auction. Deregulation also gained momentum at the state level, notably in California, which implemented a flawed restructuring scheme that froze retail rates and caused the state’s utilities to sell their generation assets and rely on a spot market in electricity for supply. The California market invited manipulation, shortages, and price gouging and eventually imploded. But Joskow’s vision took operative form on a regional basis as a work in progress and continues to define a restructured power industry.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on Turkey's involvement and handling of intertwined conflicts in the 1990s. The analysis reveals that Turkey's political and strategic status seems to be solid, and suggests that the country's leadership should be complimented for avoiding becoming embroiled in the conflicts around it. The chapter also analyses the prospects for Turkey in the twenty-first century and comments on its depiction in the media as a rising Middle Eastern power, emerging regional superpower and multi-regional power.

This chapter focuses on Tiwanaku, the first state in the Titicaca Basin region. In the seventh century ad Tiwanaku represented the first fully developed archaic state in the Titicaca Basin. It expanded rapidly after the collapse of Pucara in 400 ad Tiwanaku incorporated or added several areas to its territories and by 800–900 ad, it dominated a large area across the south-central Andes. By 1100 ad, Tiwanaku had declined as a regional power, a process that set the cultural stage for the rise of the Aymara señoríos.

This chapter discusses the nature of revisionist probing and the form that it takes in various regions. Drawing on historical examples of imperial Germany's use of low-intensity colonial crises to challenge Britain and its allies in the early twentieth century, it argues that rising powers are employing similar techniques in the global periphery to test America's resolve in the twenty-first century. Over the past few years, and with greater frequency and brazenness, regional powers opposed to the United States have been engaging in probing. Russia, Iran, and China in their respective regions have been working under the hypothesis that the United States is retreating, out of choice, fatigue, or weakness, or all three combined.

This chapter recounts the most radical, most puzzling, and least understood organizational reform launched by Nikita Khrushchev. It examines Khrushchev's proposal to cleave the regional party-state in two, which entailed not only dividing the obkoms, the obkom buros, and the obkom bureaucracies but also having two obkom first secretaries in each region. It points out how Khrushchev's reform struck at the nerve center of the regional power network and the regional party apparatus. The chapter traces the effects of the reforms on regional leaders and their networks in order to see what they can reveal about the nature of their power. It also emphasizes how the institutional reforms of 1962 became a genuine test of the cohesiveness and resilience of the regional networks that had formed in the 1940s.