The Trilemma of Hegemonic Order Competition

Great powers engaged in hegemonic order competition can pursue three desirable objectives: to maximize their influence abroad, to advance an international order that promotes their interests and values, and to avoid war. How do these pursuits interact? I argue these objectives and their associated costs produce a trilemma for decision-makers. The central takeaway is that only two out of these three objectives can ever be mutually consistent, and order-makers must forsake one. This trilemma emerges from the interplay between two features of hegemonic competition: that competition is zero-sum and that a fundamental tension exists between maximizing influence and advancing an order that promotes one’s interests. Three cases illustrate how different order-makers—Britain during the 1895 Venezuela Crisis, Russia regarding Ukraine post-Cold War, and then again after Euromaidan—navigated this important yet thus far unidentified limit on the international ambitions of great powers.