How do interstate conflicts start, spread and escalate? Not all local or regional rivalries develop into devastating multistate wars, but those that do cause upheaval across the world. It is important, therefore, to study causal chains and pathways that can trigger a conflict of international proportions. Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes analyzes the factors and processes that have historically ignited wars among the great powers and applies the resulting insights to examine the potential for contemporary Sino-American competition to flare into conflict. Distinguished political scientist Steve Chan emphasizes the importance of considering multiple enabling conditions for system-level conflict, including power shifts, armament races, alliance dynamics, and enduring rivalries. But these conditions in themselves do not always lead to war. Chan introduces the idea of a catalyst--or fuse--that ignites the combustible mixture produced by these variables' interactions. He traces the origins of many large conflagrations to local feuds-such as the dispute across the Taiwan Straits--which in turn invite intervention by third parties--like the United States. By analyzing possible causal pathways to interstate war and applying this historical, empirical context to the present-day relationship between the US and China, Chan hopes to help us learn from the past and avoid future catastrophe.
| ISBN: | 9780197812860 |
| Publication date: | 9th September 2025 |
| Author: | Steve Chan |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press an imprint of OUP USA |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 220 pages |
| Genres: |
Espionage and secret services Geopolitics |
How do interstate conflicts start, spread and escalate? Not all local or regional rivalries develop into devastating multistate wars, but those that do cause upheaval across the world. It is important, therefore, to study causal chains and pathways that can trigger a conflict of international proportions. Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes analyzes the factors and processes that have historically ignited wars among the great powers and applies the resulting insights to examine the potential for contemporary Sino-American competition to flare into conflict. Distinguished political scientist Steve Chan emphasizes the importance of considering multiple enabling conditions for system-level conflict, including power shifts, armament races, alliance dynamics, and enduring rivalries. But these conditions in themselves do not always lead to war. Chan introduces the idea of a catalyst--or fuse--that ignites the combustible mixture produced by these variables' interactions. He traces the origins of many large conflagrations to local feuds-such as the dispute across the Taiwan Straits--which in turn invite intervention by third parties--like the United States. By analyzing possible causal pathways to interstate war and applying this historical, empirical context to the present-day relationship between the US and China, Chan hopes to help us learn from the past and avoid future catastrophe.
Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes features in the following genres: Espionage and secret services, Geopolitics
Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes is available in Hardback, Paperback
Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes was written by Steve Chan and published by Oxford University Press an imprint of OUP USA
Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes has 220 pages
£57.60