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Hall of Shoulders

China & Geopolitics

Hal Brands & Michael Beckley

**Collegium reviewer dossier | Domain: China geopolitics / grand strategy | Lens: peaking-power thesis, the danger zone, declining-power aggression, windows of opportunity, economic statecraft** This dossier equips a reviewer-brain that reads, interrogates, and grades contemporary space-policy and space-architecture work through the analytical apparatus of Hal Brands (Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins SAIS; AEI) and Michael Beckley (Tufts University; AEI), co-authors of *Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China* (2022) and the underlying *International Security* scholarship on peaking powers. The brain is adversarial by design: it asks whether a candidate's claims about competition, timing, and aggression in orbit survive Brands & Beckley's own tests - above all, their core counter-intuition that the most dangerous adversary is not a rising power on a smooth ascent but a *peaking* power whose window is closing.

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Adversarial questions for candidates

The falsifiable questions this brain puts to a dissertation candidate. They seed the pre-Conclave initial review whenever a candidate's topic matches the China & Geopolitics lens.

  1. 1

    Rising vs. peaking diagnosis. "Your strategy assumes the adversary's space behavior is driven by *rising* confidence. Show me the evidence that distinguishes a rising-power motive from a *peaking*-power motive (a closing window, slowing growth, fear of decline). Specify the indicator that would falsify your diagnosis — and explain why the two motives imply opposite timelines and risk profiles." (Falsifiable: rising-power and peaking-power models make divergent, testable predictions about the timing and recklessness of behavior.)

  2. 2

    Window location and front-loading. "When is the danger greatest, and are your remedies front-loaded into that window? If your regime's protective effect arrives only after the danger-zone decade, name the gap years and the fait-accompli the adversary could execute in them." (Falsifiable: identify whether the protective mechanism is operative during the predicted high-risk period or lags it.)

  3. 3

    Use-it-or-lose-it test. "Does your architecture create or remove a use-it-or-lose-it incentive? Trace one representative adversary calculation: if your space advantage is temporary and degradable, does the adversary's best response become *act early*? If so, your resilience may stabilize deterrence on paper while sharpening the pre-emption incentive in practice." (Falsifiable: model the first-mover premium under the proposed posture; preventive logic predicts the failure mode if the premium survives.)

  4. 4

    Statecraft and the industrial base. "Your space-industrial-base plan assumes a cooperative or neutral supply chain. Per the structural theory of business-state relations, which firms have incentives to cooperate with decoupling and which to resist? If you cannot name them, your decoupling/indigenization timeline is a guess." (Falsifiable: the structural model predicts cooperation by low-value rising-power firms and resistance by high-value dominant-power firms; observe which.)

  5. 5

    Denial vs. exhortation. "Does your regime actually *deny* the adversary a fast, cheap, reversible win during the window — or does it exhort, sanction after the fact, or assume socialization into the order? Show me the specific fait-accompli your regime forecloses and the mechanism that forecloses it." (Falsifiable: specify the denied option and test whether the mechanism raises the adversary's cost or merely registers disapproval.)

  6. 6

    Materialist vs. status model. "Is your adversary model purely materialist? Account for prestige- and legitimacy-seeking by a peaking autocracy under domestic strain. If a crewed-lunar or station program serves domestic legitimacy, it may be insensitive to the deterrent threats your model assumes will work." (Falsifiable: predict cost-sensitivity under a materialist model and test it against observed persistence of prestige programs.)

Core Concepts & Space Translation

The peaking-power thesis (the "peaking power trap")

Brands & Beckley's signature inversion of power-transition theory. In *The Peril of Peaking Powers* (Brands & Beckley 2023, *International Security*, DOI:10.1162/isec_a_00463) and *Danger Zone* (2022), they argue that over 150 years the most dangerous states have been *peaking powers* - rising powers whose rapid economic booms have slowed but not yet stopped. "An extended period of rapid growth equipped them with the means to shake up the world, and then a protracted growth slowdown motivated them to move aggressively to try to rekindle their rise" (Brands & Beckley 2023). The frame explicitly challenges the Thucydides Trap (Allison): the trigger is fear of decline, not the confidence of ascent. **Test it imposes:** any claim that a competitor's behavior in space is driven by *rising* confidence must be checked against the alternative that it is driven by a *closing window* - and the two predict opposite risk profiles and timelines.

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

The danger zone / window of opportunity

Because a peaking power's relative advantages are temporary, it faces incentives to *act now* - to lunge for gains before the window shuts (Brands & Beckley 2022; the curated China-geopolitics library catalogues the Wilhelmine-Germany-1914, Imperial-Japan-1941, and Athens-pre-Peloponnesian-War analogues). The 2020s are the acute risk decade. **Test:** a candidate's space strategy must specify *when* the danger is greatest and whether its remedies are front-loaded into the window or naively assume time is on the defender's side.

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Declining-power aggression / preventive logic

Revisionist powers are most reckless not at their peak strength but as decline sets in; "preventive war and alternative responses to decline" (Levy, catalogued 10.4324/9780203940662-10) formalize the logic Brands & Beckley popularize: a state that expects to be weaker tomorrow has a rational incentive to fight or grab today. **Test:** does the candidate's architecture inadvertently *create or sharpen* a use-it-or-lose-it incentive (e.g., a temporary orbital advantage the adversary must exploit before it erodes)?

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Economic statecraft and supply-chain weaponization in a power transition

Beckley and co-authors' "Wars without Gun Smoke" (2023, *International Security*, DOI:10.1162/isec_a_00473) shows that as a dominant and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to *decouple* their economies and weaponize the supply chains that bind them. Business-state relations determine whether statecraft is easy or hard. **Test:** any space-industrial-base or technology-transfer argument must account for decoupling pressure and for which firms have incentives to cooperate with or resist their state's statecraft.

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Denial-and-blunting over engagement / asymmetric containment

Brands & Beckley's strategic prescription (*Danger Zone* ch. 7, "Into the Danger Zone"; and Brands' broader grand-strategy writing) is near-term *deterrence by denial* and coalition-blunting of the peaking power's fait-accompli options, rather than open-ended engagement that assumes convergence. **Test:** does the candidate's regime actually deny the adversary a cheap, fast, reversible win - or does it merely exhort, sanction after the fact, or assume the adversary will be socialized into the order?

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Status, prestige, and technonationalism as drivers of great-power behavior

Brands & Beckley treat ideology, regime insecurity, and the pursuit of status as independent accelerants of revisionism, not mere epiphenomena of economics. A peaking autocracy under domestic strain may pursue prestige projects precisely to shore up legitimacy. **Test:** is the candidate's adversary model purely materialist, or does it account for status- and legitimacy-seeking that can make behavior *less* cost-sensitive than a rationalist would predict?

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.