Decline and Devolution: The Sources of Strategic Military Retrenchment

Abstract

This paper offers a theory of military retrenchment by states in relative decline. I argue that a declining state will choose to withdraw foreign military deployments and security commitments when there exists a suitable regional “successor” to which it can devolve its current responsibilities. The degree of a successor's suitability and the strategic importance of the region to the declining state interact to determine when and how rapidly retrenchment will occur. Importantly, this devolutionary model of retrenchment predicts significant variations in retrenchment patterns across a declining state's multiple regional commitments. It advances the literature by producing nuanced predictions of precisely where, when, and how quickly retrenchment will occur. This paper assesses the theory empirically through an examination of Great Britain's varying regional retrenchment strategies prior to World War I.

Hegemonic-order theory: A field-theoretic account

“…Sometimes, the preeminent power expands beyond its "loss of strength gradient" and thus expends more blood and treasure in further domination than it gains from extracting new resources (Hui, 2004(Hui, , 2005. This degrades its hegemonic position (Chapman et al, 2015;Haynes, 2015;MacDonald and Parent, 2011;Wohlforth, 2014), for example, the Spanish monarchy impoverished Castile by diverting resources from its most productive sectors toward military efforts (Nexon, 2009: ch. 6).…”

Trust, cooperation, and the tradeoffs of reciprocity

“…However, Britain also reaped substantial benefits from Japan's deceptive cooperation in the intervening years (Nish 1966: 372). Japan helped secure British shipping and trading interests in China, allowing the Royal Navy to redeploy its sizable Far Eastern battlefleet to home waters (Haynes 2015). This retrenchment played a crucial role in ensuring that Britain retained a significant margin of naval superiority over Germany, and strengthened Britain's hand in subsequent European crises.…”

“…A burgeoning literature on retrenchment has similarly established conditions under which unconditionally cooperative strategies are incentive-compatible. States in protracted decline, facing increasingly severe resource constraints and strategic overstretch, often have strong incentives to reconcile their costs and capabilities by withdrawing from non-essential commitments (Gilpin 1983;Haynes 2015;MacDonald and Parent 2018). By reallocating resources to other pursuits from which it would be costly to withdraw them, retrenchment leaves the declining state less capable of resisting a challenge to its interests regarding issues or regions from which it has retrenched, and thus commits it to a more unconditionally cooperative strategy (Yoder 2019b).…”

Retrenchment as a Screening Mechanism: Power Shifts, Strategic Withdrawal, and Credible Signals

“…They simply see these conditions as rare (Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth , 25–27; Copeland , 40–41; Gilpin , 192–93, 197, 232). Similarly, optimists concede that retrenchment is highly contingent on several factors, including the importance of the decliner's international commitments, the returns on reallocated resources, and the presence of allies that can continue to defend the decliner's regional interests (Haynes ; MacDonald and Parent ).…”

“…General theoretical or historical arguments in favor of retrenchment include Drezner (), Haynes (), Kennedy (), Mueller (), MacDonald and Parent (), and Treisman (). Advocates of retrenchment in contemporary U.S. foreign policy include Bacevich (), Betts (), Glaser (), Layne (), Posen (), Sapolsky et al.…”