The Price of Prestige

88 chapter three

“for a nation that has always felt profoundly insecure, nothing makes more

sense than a spanking new aircraft carrier as a symbol that it has made it”

(Kristof 1993 , 70 ). This symbol, however, comes at a cost. With limited

resources, China has to divert assets from other programs and services in

order to fund carrier construction. Moreover, the same positional quali-

ties that make the carrier so attractive also make it potentially dangerous.

An assertive Chinese carrier program can be seen as a direct challenge to

American status. Yet China’s interest in a carrier is not motivated only by

comparisons with the United States. With a reinvigorated Indian carrier

program and the Thai purchase of the Chakri Naruebet, China’s status as

a regional power was also challenged (Diamond 2006 , 44 ). Before China’s

procurement decision, Ross ( 2005 , 86 ) echoed these sentiments: “Thus far,

China’s leadership has resisted the temptation to acquire this prestigious

symbol of great- power status. It apparently concurs with analysts who ar-

gue that China’s geopolitical constraints and the costs of dealing with the

U.S. response would be punishing.” The Chinese are therefore facing a di-

lemma. Given the prominence of the carrier as a status symbol, they cannot

establish themselves as a great power without building one. However, doing

so can trigger consumption externalities and with them a spiral of further

expenditure and excess.

Conclusions

The analysis presented in this chapter has direct bearing on all four com-

ponents of the conspicuous consumption argument. In particular, the dis-

cussion focused on the roles of conspicuousness, cultivation, and cost in

establishing military symbols of prestige and affecting patterns of pro-

curement. This enables us to identify the fingerprints of conspicuous con-

sumption and differentiate between primary- utility explanations, such as

deterrence or bureaucratic politics, and secondary- utility ones. A study

of the historical role of the large battleship, especially in the context of

the Anglo- German naval competition, and a review of contemporary air-

craft carriers demonstrate the tension between the symbolic value of the

large ship as a bearer of prestige and its questionable value as a strate-

gic asset. For deterrence theory, this tension presents a puzzle. For the

Veblenian framework, this persistent tension is not a puzzle but rather a

predictable indicator of conspicuous consumption. As the carrier survey

demonstrates, carrier procurement is often accompanied by a discourse