The Power-Benefits Ratio: Change and Adjustment in Global Security.

For Edward Hallett Carr in his seminal work, The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939), "the true problem of peaceful change is, in national politics, how to effect necessary and desirable change without revolution and, in international politics, how to effect such changes without war." This work will establish a 'power-benefits ratio' which reflects the changing dynamics of international power created by differing rates of economic growth among great powers. When the rising and increasing power of one political entity, relative to other members of an international system, is not adequately reflected in an increase in benefits conferred, that power tends toward dissatisfaction. Left without recourse to address a perceived injustice, the rising power, given the differential in economic rates of growth, soon becomes powerful enough to force change. Hence, as the rising power becomes dissatisfied and now in possession to do something about it, the probability of systemic conflict increases. A hypothesis is that the creation of a peaceful mechanism for international change begins with the acknowledgement of the changing power-benefits ratio and the need for effective and peaceful adjustment. A stable international system requires what E. H. Carr called 'a common feeling of what is right,' and as a result establishing morality as a guiding principle of the newly emerging global order. Necessary, but for Carr insufficient, the nature and significance of power must also be incorporated into the peaceful change mechanism. Incorporating these ideas, the paper will present a political policy spectrum based on power transition theory and leading toward the establishment of a mechanism for effective change in global politics and security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]