The Trilemma of Hegemonic Order Competition

Current debates over the rise of China center on three questions: Will the United States preserve its influence over the international order? Will the future order promote American interests? Finally, will change be peaceful? Unfortunately, scholars broadly address only one or two of these questions at a time. The problem is that their answers are logically connected in what, I argue, constitutes the trilemma of order competition. Broadly stated, when powerful states compete over international orders, they are confronted with three desirable, yet jointly unattainable, objectives: 1) to maximize their influence over other states while minimizing the cost of order governance; 2) to promote an order that advances a set of interests aligned with their interests, and 3) to avoid war. The central takeaway is that only two out of these three objectives can be mutually consistent, and order-makers must decide which one to give up. Two case studies—the 1895 Venezuela Crisis and the recent 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine—illustrate this trilemma.