Why do some hostile relationships between states last for generations while others eventually give way to cooperation? International politics offers many examples of both outcomes. France and Germany moved from repeated wars to partnership, while the rivalry between India and Pakistan continues despite decades of conflict management efforts. Explaining why some enduring rivalries survive while others transform remains one of the central questions in the study of international conflict (Goertz and Diehl 1993; Diehl and Goertz 2000). Rivalries are among the most enduring features of international politics. They structure how states perceive threats, allocate military resources, form alliances, and pursue foreign policy objectives. Some rivalries endure for decades despite wars, leadership changes, and shifting international circumstances, while others gradually give way to more cooperative relationships.
The question matters because enduring rivalries have shaped some of the most consequential conflicts of the modern era. They have influenced alliance formation, military competition, arms races, territorial disputes, and patterns of regional instability (Thompson 2001; Colaresi, Rasler and Thompson 2007). Yet rivalries are not static relationships. Wars, crises, and political upheavals do not affect rivalries uniformly. Relationships that appear deeply entrenched can sometimes change quickly, whereas others endure despite repeated disruptions. Understanding why these different trajectories occur is important not only for explaining the past but also for making sense of contemporary conflicts.
Research on enduring rivalries has generated valuable insights into the causes of rivalry formation and persistence. Scholars have highlighted the importance of territorial disputes, repeated militarised conflict, power asymmetries, domestic politics, and security dilemmas (Vasquez 1993; Huth 1996; Jervis 1978; Diehl and Goertz 2000). These explanations have significantly advanced our understanding of rivalry dynamics. At the same time, much of the literature implicitly treats rivalry change as a relatively linear process, where major events are expected to produce corresponding changes in rivalry behaviour. Historical experience suggests a more uneven pattern. Similar shocks can produce sharply different outcomes across rivalries. Some rivalries persist despite events that appear transformative, while others end following a combination of developments that may seem less dramatic when considered individually.
Major shocks are often treated as turning points in rivalry histories. Historical experience, however, offers a more complicated picture. Some rivalries survive wars, territorial settlements, and systemic upheavals, while others undergo significant transformation. Understanding this variation requires looking beyond disruptive events themselves and examining the conditions that shape how rivalries respond to them. I argue that rivalry stability is best understood as a bounded range within which rivalries can absorb repeated pressures without fundamentally changing their character. At the same time, Rivalry Tipping Points (RTPs) highlight moments when those pressures may begin to generate more substantial change.
The Limits of Existing Rivalry Explanations
Research on enduring rivalries has generated several influential explanations for why hostile relationships persist over time. One of the most prominent explanations emphasises territorial disputes. Territory often carries strategic, economic, and symbolic value, making such disputes particularly difficult to resolve (Vasquez 1993; Hensel 2001). Rivalries such as India–Pakistan demonstrate how territorial issues can remain politically salient across generations, sustaining competition long after their original causes have evolved. Other scholars emphasise shifts in relative power and changes in the broader international system. From this perspective, rivalry behaviour is shaped by changes in capabilities, alliance structures, and the distribution of power among states. Rivalries may weaken or transform when these conditions alter the incentives for continued competition.
The security dilemma offers a different explanation. States attempting to increase their own security can unintentionally generate insecurity for others, producing cycles of suspicion and military competition that become difficult to reverse (Jervis 1978). Domestic politics also matter. Regime characteristics, leadership choices, and nationalist pressures can all contribute to the continuation of rivalry, even when cooperation might otherwise appear beneficial (Russett 1993). Together, these approaches have improved the understanding of why rivalries emerge and persist. Yet one important question remains unresolved. Rivalries exposed to broadly similar disruptions often experience very different outcomes. Some survive wars, territorial settlements, and major political changes, while others transform or terminate.
The contrast between the Franco–German and India–Pakistan rivalries illustrates this puzzle. Both experienced repeated wars, territorial disputes, and periods of crisis. Yet one eventually evolved into a cooperative relationship, while the other remains active. Likewise, World War I failed to terminate the Franco–German rivalry, whereas the combination of developments after 1945 contributed to a very different outcome. Existing explanations identify important influences on rivalry behaviour, but they provide less guidance on why comparable disruptions can produce such different consequences. This puzzle suggests that rivalry outcomes depend on more than major shocks alone. Equally important is the extent to which rivalries are able to absorb disruption without losing their underlying competitive character. It is this issue that motivates the Rivalry Stability Range framework developed below.
The Rivalry Stability Range Framework
One striking feature of many rivalries is their ability to survive events that appear capable of transforming them. Yet these same rivalries can sometimes transform rapidly when particular combinations of events occur. The more difficult task may be explaining why rivalries survive repeated disruption in the first place. Much of the rivalry literature has tended to treat stability as an implicit condition rather than an object of analysis in its own right. Rivalries are often classified as active or terminated, while the processes that sustain them between these outcomes receive less attention (Diehl and Goertz 2000; Thompson 2001). The framework begins from a simple observation: rivalry stability is often taken for granted, even though it requires explanation. Instead of treating stability as something states either possess or lack, the framework views it as a range within which rivalries can absorb pressure without becoming something fundamentally different. Rivalries are therefore neither permanently stable nor inherently unstable. Instead, they occupy positions within a range of resilience that reflects their capacity to withstand disruption. Some rivalries possess broad stability ranges and can survive repeated crises. Others operate within narrower ranges and may be more vulnerable to transformation when exposed to major shocks.
In practice, some rivalries prove remarkably resilient, while others begin to unravel when exposed to similar pressures. Some survive wars, crises, and political upheavals while remaining fundamentally competitive. Others prove far less resilient, with similar shocks producing more substantial change. The concept of a Rivalry Stability Range is intended to capture these differences in resilience across rivalries. A similar pattern can be observed across many areas of political life: long periods of continuity are often interrupted by relatively brief moments of significant change (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). Although originally developed to explain policy change, similar dynamics are visible in interstate rivalries. Long periods of rivalry persistence are frequently interrupted by moments of rapid escalation, transformation, or termination. The crucial question becomes why some disruptions remain contained while others produce lasting change.
RTPs are major disruptions that reconfigure the strategic environment in which rivalries operate, rather than routine crises or episodic disputes. Looking across the historical record, five types of disruptive events appear repeatedly at moments when rivalries emerge, change direction, or come to an end. The first consists of system-wide wars, such as the two World Wars, which fundamentally restructured patterns of power and security across the international system. The second involves shifts in systemic polarity, including transitions between multipolar, bipolar, and post-Cold War orders, which alter the broader strategic context within which rivalries unfold (Ikenberry 2020). A third category is territorial reconfiguration, including recognised border changes and major territorial settlements that reshape longstanding disputes. The fourth consists of national independence processes, which create new states, redefine political boundaries, and often generate new forms of strategic competition. Finally, civil wars can spill across borders, alter regional balances of power, and create opportunities for rivalry emergence or transformation (Goertz and Diehl 1995; Hensel 1999; Fazal, Kreutz and Quinn 2018).
Yet RTPs do not automatically produce rivalry change. One of the clearest findings from existing research and the historical case studies is that rivalries frequently survive major disruptions. World War I did not terminate the Franco–German rivalry. Multiple wars failed to terminate the India–Pakistan rivalry. Likewise, numerous crises occurred during the Cold War without ending the strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. RTPs matter less because they occur and more because of the strategic environments in which they occur. Some RTPs occur within environments that continue to support rivalry persistence. Others emerge alongside systemic changes that weaken the foundations upon which rivalries depend. Whether a rivalry transforms depends less on the existence of a single disruptive event than on how multiple pressures interact within a particular historical context. Not every disruption places a rivalry on the path to transformation. Rivalries can often absorb considerable pressure while preserving their basic competitive character. Change becomes more likely when several pressures begin to reinforce one another and weaken the foundations that sustain the rivalry. Such outcomes may include rivalry onset, major transformation, or termination, depending on the nature of the pressures involved and the systemic environment in which they occur.
These examples suggest that the consequences of a shock depend heavily on the wider strategic context in which the rivalry operates. Seen in this way, stability and change become part of the same process rather than opposing outcomes. This perspective helps explain why some rivalries persist despite repeated shocks while others ultimately cross the thresholds that sustain them.
Why Rivalries Respond Differently to Similar Shocks
One of the recurring puzzles in rivalry research is that similar disruptions often produce very different outcomes. Wars, territorial changes, political upheavals, and shifts in the international system do not affect all rivalries in the same way. Some rivalries survive repeated crises with their core dynamics largely intact, while others experience significant transformation or termination. This variation suggests that major events alone cannot adequately explain rivalry outcomes.
Few cases illustrate this variation more clearly than the Franco–German rivalry. The rivalry experienced some of the most destructive conflicts in modern history, including both World Wars. Yet the outcome of these wars differed markedly. World War I imposed severe costs on Germany, returned Alsace-Lorraine to France, and reshaped the European balance of power through the Treaty of Versailles. Despite these changes, the rivalry persisted. Even World War I proved insufficient to end the rivalry. French concerns about German power remained, German resentment towards the post-war settlement deepened, and the strategic antagonism that had characterised the relationship since 1871 survived into the interwar period (Kennedy 1989; Hensel 1999).
The post-1945 experience unfolded very differently. The war itself did not automatically terminate the rivalry, but it coincided with a broader transformation of the strategic environment. The collapse of Germany, the emergence of a bipolar international order, the American security presence in Western Europe, and the gradual institutionalisation of economic cooperation through the European Coal and Steel Community altered the foundations upon which the rivalry had long rested (Milward 1992; Dinan 2004). What distinguishes the post-1945 period is not simply the scale of destruction but the interaction between military defeat, systemic restructuring, and institutional integration. The rivalry ended not because one event occurred, but because several developments reinforced one another and produced a fundamentally different strategic context. Equally important, the post-war settlement created institutions that tied French and German interests together in ways absent after 1919.
South Asia presents a useful contrast. Since partition in 1947, India and Pakistan have experienced multiple wars, recurring military crises, periods of diplomatic engagement, and significant domestic political change. The rivalry survived the wars of 1947–48, 1965, and 1971, as well as the Kargil conflict in 1999. It has also persisted through changes in government, shifts in military capabilities, and efforts at confidence-building (Ganguly 2002; Paul 2005). Viewed through many conventional explanations of rivalry change, several of these developments should have altered the relationship far more dramatically than they ultimately did. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 represented a major geopolitical shock. Likewise, nuclearisation in the late twentieth century altered the strategic environment in profound ways. Yet neither development terminated the rivalry. Instead, the relationship adapted to new circumstances while preserving its underlying competitive character. Territorial disputes, security concerns, and entrenched perceptions of threat continued to reproduce the rivalry despite repeated attempts at de-escalation.
The India–Pakistan case shows that even significant disruptions do not necessarily produce fundamental strategic change. Several developments that might reasonably be expected to transform a rivalry instead became incorporated into the rivalry itself. The relationship adapted to changing circumstances without becoming fundamentally different. Unlike the Franco-German case, no comparable institutional or political settlement emerged capable of redefining the relationship. The contrast becomes even clearer when examining a rivalry that did eventually terminate. The Cold War provides a useful contrast because, unlike the India–Pakistan rivalry, it eventually reached a point where continued competition could no longer be sustained. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the rivalry endured numerous crises that carried the potential for escalation. The Berlin crises, the Cuban Missile Crisis, proxy conflicts, and repeated arms competitions all generated moments of acute tension. Yet none of these events terminated the rivalry (Gaddis 2005).
The Cold War did not end because of one decisive breakthrough. Rather, the conditions that had sustained the rivalry gradually began to erode. Economic stagnation within the Soviet Union, political reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev, changing patterns of international competition, and the weakening of Soviet influence across Eastern Europe interacted over time to erode the foundations of the rivalry (Brown 2009). By the late 1980s, these cumulative pressures had altered the strategic environment to such an extent that the rivalry could no longer be sustained in its existing form. The Soviet collapse did not simply end the rivalry; it represented the culmination of a broader process of transformation already underway. In contrast to both the Franco-German and India-Pakistan cases, rivalry termination was closely linked to the erosion of one side’s capacity to sustain competition.
The three cases suggest that the meaning of a shock depends on the context in which it occurs. Similar shocks may produce different consequences because rivalries vary in their capacity to absorb disruption. The Rivalry Stability Range approach seeks to capture this variation by focusing on the interaction between disruptive events and the conditions within which they occur. Rivalries characterised by wider stability ranges may survive events that appear transformative, while rivalries operating within narrower ranges may become vulnerable when exposed to cumulative pressures. Seen in this way, the more useful question is not whether a particular event caused rivalry change, but why the same event can have very different consequences across rivalries. A more productive question is whether the event occurred within conditions capable of pushing the rivalry beyond the limits of its existing stability range. This perspective helps explain why some rivalries endure despite repeated shocks, while others ultimately experience transformation or termination.
Implications for International Relations Research
Although developed to explain enduring rivalries, the framework speaks to a broader question in International Relations: why some competitive relationships prove remarkably resilient while others change quite rapidly. Explanations that focus exclusively on either international structures or political agency often struggle to capture this variation. Rivalry outcomes emerge through the interaction of both. Systemic conditions shape the environment within which states operate, but political actors and disruptive events influence whether existing patterns are reinforced or challenged.
The approach also highlights an issue that has often received less attention in rivalry research: persistence itself. Much of the existing literature has understandably focused on rivalry onset and termination, seeking to explain why rivalries begin and how they end (Goertz and Diehl 1995; Thompson 2001). Yet persistence is itself an outcome that requires explanation. Rivalries often survive events that appear capable of transforming them, suggesting that stability should not be treated simply as the absence of change. By focusing on the conditions that sustain rivalry continuity, the RSR framework places persistence alongside onset and termination as a central object of analysis.
This perspective contributes to wider debates concerning conflict recurrence and strategic stability. Research on conflict has long recognised that violence frequently re-emerges after periods of apparent resolution (Collier et al. 2003; Walter 2004; Walter 2022). However, less attention has been devoted to understanding why some competitive relationships repeatedly regenerate despite efforts at conflict management. The concept of a stability range provides one way of examining how rivalries adapt to crises without necessarily transforming. It also offers a perspective for understanding why similar shocks generate different outcomes across cases.
Rivalry termination also appears somewhat differently when viewed through the lens of stability ranges. Existing studies often identify factors associated with rivalry endings, including military victory, territorial settlements, political change, and shifts in the international distribution of power (Diehl, Goertz and Gallegos 2006). The cases examined here suggest that such factors are often most consequential when they interact with broader systemic transformations rather than operating in isolation. Rather than searching for a single decisive cause, attention shifts to how multiple developments accumulate over time and gradually weaken the foundations of a rivalry.
Although the framework is primarily intended as an analytical tool, it carries practical implications. Policymakers often assume that major crises or diplomatic breakthroughs will fundamentally reshape adversarial relationships. The cases discussed here suggest greater caution. Rivalries differ in their resilience, and developments that appear transformative in one context may have limited effects in another. Understanding the conditions that sustain or weaken rivalry stability may therefore provide a more realistic basis for assessing opportunities for conflict reduction and long-term change.
Conclusion
The persistence of enduring rivalries presents a challenge for many conventional explanations of international conflict. If major wars, territorial settlements, political change, and systemic upheaval are capable of transforming interstate relationships, why do some rivalries survive repeated disruptions while others eventually come to an end? The historical record suggests that rivalry outcomes cannot be understood by examining major events in isolation. Taken together, these cases suggest that major shocks matter, but rarely in straightforward ways. World War I failed to terminate the Franco–German rivalry, while the combination of World War II, systemic restructuring, and post-war integration produced a very different outcome. The India–Pakistan rivalry has endured despite multiple wars and recurring crises. The end of the Cold War similarly emerged through a process of cumulative transformation rather than a single decisive event. In each case, rivalry outcomes reflected the interaction between disruptive events and the wider conditions within which they occurred.
The argument developed here begins from a simple observation: rivalries do not respond to disruption in uniform ways. Events that appear transformative in one rivalry may have surprisingly limited effects in another. What matters is not only the shock itself, but also the wider strategic environment in which it occurs. Rivalry Tipping Points draw attention to moments when that environment changes, while the idea of a Rivalry Stability Range helps explain why some rivalries absorb such pressures and others do not. Persistence deserves equal analytical attention to rivalry onset and termination. International Relations scholarship has generated important insights into how rivalries begin and how they end, yet many rivalries persist far longer than they transform. Understanding why rivalries survive wars, crises, and political change may therefore be just as important as understanding why they eventually terminate. If rivalry persistence is treated as a phenomenon requiring explanation in its own right, scholars may gain a clearer understanding of both the resilience of long-standing conflicts and the conditions under which meaningful transformation becomes possible.
References
Baumgartner, Frank R., and Bryan D. Jones. 1993. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brown, Archie. 2009. The Rise and Fall of Communism. New York: HarperCollins.
Colaresi, Michael P., Karen Rasler, and William R. Thompson. 2007. Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Position, Space and Conflict Escalation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Collier, Paul, V. L. Elliott, Håvard Hegre, Anke Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, and Nicholas Sambanis. 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy. Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press.
Diehl, Paul F., and Gary Goertz. 2000. War and Peace in International Rivalry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Diehl, Paul F., Gary Goertz, and Yahve Gallegos. 2006. “The Dynamics of Enduring Rivalries.” Journal of Peace Research 43 (6): 653–671.
Dinan, Desmond. 2004. Europe Recast: A History of European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fazal, Tanisha M., Joakim Kreutz, and J. Michael Quinn. 2018. “The Future of Interstate War.” In The Oxford Handbook of International Security, edited by Alexandra Gheciu and William C. Wohlforth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gaddis, John Lewis. 2005. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Press.
Ganguly, Sumit. 2002. Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947. New York: Columbia University Press.
Goertz, Gary, and Paul F. Diehl. 1993. “Enduring Rivalries: Theoretical Constructs and Empirical Patterns.” International Studies Quarterly 37 (2): 147–171.
Goertz, Gary, and Paul F. Diehl. 1995. “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries: The Impact of Political Shocks.” American Journal of Political Science 39 (1): 30–52.
Hensel, Paul R. 1999. “An Evolutionary Approach to the Study of Interstate Rivalry.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 17 (2): 175–206.
Hensel, Paul R. 2001. “Contentious Issues and World Politics: The Management of Territorial Claims in the Americas, 1816–1992.” International Studies Quarterly 45 (1): 81–109.
Huth, Paul K. 1996. Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conflict. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Ikenberry, G. John. 2020. A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Jervis, Robert. 1978. “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics 30 (2): 167–214.
Kennedy, Paul. 1989. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Vintage Books.
Milward, Alan S. 1992. The European Rescue of the Nation-State. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Paul, T. V., ed. 2005. The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Russett, Bruce. 1993. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Thompson, William R. 2001. “Identifying Rivals and Rivalries in World Politics.” International Studies Quarterly 45 (4): 557–586.
Vasquez, John A. 1993. The War Puzzle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Walter, Barbara F. 2004. “Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurring Civil War.” Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 371–388.
Walter, Barbara F. 2022. How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them. New York: Crown.
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Further Reading on E-International Relations
