The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition (2025) offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary framework for understanding geopolitical rivalries. The volume examines how major powers exert influence through military, economic, and ideational means, making it a critical reference for navigating the return of great power politics.

FULL SUMMARY

About the Author:
Various authors for each chapter, and the main editors are:

Brian C. H. Fong is a Full Professor at the College of Social Sciences, National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan). He specializes in international relations, governance, and U.S.–China rivalry. Fong is also the founder of the Great Power Competition Research Network and the author of US–China Rivalry: Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific.

Ja Ian Chong is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on state formation, external intervention, and East Asian security. He is the author of External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893–1952.

Intro: We’re Back With Great Power Competitions

After the end of the Cold War, the USA and the West focused on the enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies.

The belief was that we had entered a new stage of world cooperation and limited competition.
But, alas, it was not the case:

Washington elites from both Democratic and Republican parties perceived great power competition as “a thing of the past” (Colby and Mitchell, 2020: 118).

(…) the post-Cold War period of the 1990s and 2000s witnessed the marked decline of great power competition studies as many people in the West frmly believed that they had “entered a world in which there is little chance that the major powers will engage each other in security competition, much less war” (Mearsheimer, 2001: 1).

Subsequent developments however showed that the decline of great power competition— and relevant scholarly research—in the 1990s and 2000s was historically abnormal, rather than normal

Chapter 1: Great Power Competition – An Analytical Framework

In Chapter one Brian C. H. Fong lays the intellectual foundation for the entire volume by introducing a structured framework for analyzing great power competition in today’s shifting global order.

The Context: From Post-Cold War Optimism to Strategic Rivalry

Brian Fong begins by tracing the arc of great power studies:

• After the Cold War, many scholars believed the era of great power conflict had ended, giving way to a liberal international order led by the U.S.
• But the rise of China and Russia as assertive actors—along with regional powers like Iran—has ushered in a new era of strategic rivalry since the 2010s.
• This shift was formalized in U.S. doctrine by the 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which declared “great power competition” the central challenge to American security.

Fong argues that far from being an aberration, competition between great powers is the historical norm, not the exception.

Two Conceptual Lenses on Great Power Competition

Fong outlines two major ways scholars define great power competition:

1. Rivalry Short of War:
   Competition is antagonistic but stops short of open conflict. States seek relative gains in influence, wealth, and status through military posturing, economic tools, and ideological soft power (Mazarr et al., 2018; Brands & Nichols, 2020).
2. Spectrum of Relations:
   Rather than a binary of peace vs. war, great power relations exist along a continuum—from cooperation → collaboration → competition → confrontation → full-scale war (Burkhart & Woody, 2017; Lynch III, 2020).
   On this spectrum, competition represents conflicted interests that haven’t yet escalated to violence.

Fong adopts this second view, arguing it offers greater analytical precision for understanding modern international behavior.

The Framework: Three Core Dimensions

Fong’s framework organizes great power competition around three key questions:

1. Who competes? — Actors

• Great Powers: e.g., U.S., China, Russia
• Middle Powers: e.g., Italy, Japan, Australia, South Korea
• Small States: like Estonia and Finland
• Quasi-State Entities: such as Greenland, Okinawa, and Taiwan
• Non-State Actors: including terrorist groups, militias, and transnational crime networks

Modern great power competition is not purely state-centric. Power is negotiated through an interactive game involving multiple levels and players.

2. How do they compete? — Mechanisms

Fong highlights three primary influence tools:

• Military Mechanisms: deterrence, force posture, proxy warfare, arms sales
• Economic Mechanisms: trade agreements, sanctions, foreign investment, financial systems
• Ideational Mechanisms: soft power (culture, diplomacy) and sharp power (disinformation, ideological campaigns)

These tools reflect both material and symbolic power, operating across visible and invisible domains.

3. Where do they compete? — Domains

Competition occurs in both territorial and non-territorial spaces:

• Territorial Domains: regions (e.g., Indo-Pacific, MENA), subregions (e.g., South Asia), contested zones (e.g., Taiwan, Ukraine)
• Non-Territorial Domains: cyberspace, outer space, supply chains, global finance, and international institutions

This spatial expansion shows that power projection is now about standards, connectivity, and systems, not just land or borders.

Chapter 2: Mainstream Theories

Mainstream theories of great power competition draw from three dominant paradigms in International Relations (IR): realism, liberalism, and constructivism.

• Realism sees the international system as anarchic, with states pursuing survival and power.
  “Realist theory naturalizes great power competition as a logical and inevitable outcome of states’ quest for relative power”
  Key subtypes include:
  • Offensive realism, emphasizing power maximization (e.g., Mearsheimer)
  • Defensive realism, stressing balance and restraint (e.g., Waltz)
  • Power transition theory, which warns of war when rising powers approach parity with hegemons (Organski & Kugler)
  • Hegemonic war theory, positing systemic war as an inevitable result of shifting power balances (Gilpin)
  • Neoclassical realism, blending systemic factors with unit-level variables like leadership perception and domestic politics
• Liberalism argues internal characteristics of states matter more than structural pressures. State preferences emerge from domestic and transnational social forces.
  • It emphasizes cooperation, institutionalism, and peace through interdependence and democratic governance.
• Constructivism challenges materialist assumptions, highlighting the role of identity, ideas, and norms in shaping state behavior.
  • Different identities lead to diverging threat perceptions.
  • The concept of “great power” is not fixed but socially constructed.

Each paradigm provides distinct insights:

• Realism explains power struggles well but lacks normative context.
• Liberalism emphasizes cooperation but underestimates realist behavior.
• Constructivism captures ideational factors but can underplay material constraints.

A pluralist synthesis is often necessary to fully understand the dynamics of great power rivalry.

Two Conceptions of Power

There are two conceptions of power:

1. Power as capabilities (resources)
2. Power as influence (outcome)

The author says that power as influence makes it difficult to assess the balance of power a priori since the balance can only be observed after the outcome. And it can also lead to absurd observations, like North Vietnam being more powerful than the USA because the latter failed to influence the outcome of the Vietnam War.
This is why most realists adopt the first conception of power as capabilities, which emphasizes its material aspect (Gilpin, 1981, p.13; Mearsheimer, 2001, pp.57–60; Waltz, 1978, pp.191–192).

My note: outcome remains a valid measure
And it’s not ‘absurd’ that Vietnam was more powerful than the USA in that specific context, and related to that specific outcome.
Vietnam was willing to commit and sacrifice more. Given these constraints, Vietnam was more powerful in influencing the outcome.

Security Dilemmave: How Defensive Moves Precipitate Wars

The security dilemma is one of the most important contributions of the realist paradigm to IR theory.

One cannot properly understand great power competition without considering the security dilemma, which says that, in anarchy, measures taken by one state to increase its security will decrease the security of other states (Herz, 1950; Jervis, 1978).

For instance, NATO sees its eastward expansion after the Cold War as defensive and non-threatening, but Russia sees it as a security threat. China sees its arms build-ups as “purely defensive”, but the United States and others view them as threatening.

At the heart of the security dilemma is uncertainty about intentions.
States cannot be certain about the present intentions of another state, and even if they are, there is no guarantee that its intentions will not change in the future (Mearsheimer, 2001, p.31). This uncertainty in an anarchic environment triggers the security dilemma.

Chapter 3: Critical Theories

Critical theories in IR, rooted in the thought of Robert Cox, Antonio Gramsci, and Karl Marx, question the foundational assumptions of mainstream IR.

Critical theories argue that power inequalities are embedded in the system, and true change requires systemic transformation—not just balancing or cooperation.

• Cox distinguishes between “problem-solving” theories (which accept the status quo) and “critical” theories (which challenge it).
• Critical theorists view power as both material and ideational—requiring consent, not just coercion (Gramsci’s hegemony).

Key Streams of Critical Theory:

• Marxism:
  • Emphasizes class struggle and capitalist exploitation.
  • Views the state as a tool of the ruling class to preserve inequality.
  • Critiques realist use of “great power competition” as ahistorical and power-serving.
• Frankfurt School:
  • Max Horkheimer and others promote “immanent critique”—exposing contradictions within the current system to enable change.
  • Criticizes realism for legitimizing the status quo.
• World-Systems Theory (Wallerstein, Arrighi):
  • Divides the world into core, periphery, and semi-periphery zones.
  • Sees global capitalism as the driving force behind competition.
  • Power is embedded in global class relations, not just state capabilities.
• Neo-Gramscianism:
  • Views neoliberalism as a transnational hegemonic order.
  • Suggests that today’s “great power competition” operates within and reproduces this capitalist order.
  • Promotes counter-hegemonic struggles through civil society and “war of position.”
• Post-structuralism: The goal is to show how meaning is constructed and how power is exerted through the ascription of meaning as well as how such meaning-making is context-dependent
  • ⚠️ Careful of great power competition as a frame: as Machiavelli stated, the very concept can serve to justify a perception of threat that allows state elites to extract resources from the population for the purpose of building up military power

Chapter 4: Actors

This chapter expands the concept of “actors” in great power competition beyond just great powers to include middle powers, quasi-states, and non-state actors.

• Great Powers: Defined by capabilities, ambitions beyond borders, and recognition by others.
• Middle and Small Powers: Often navigate between great powers, sometimes aligning, sometimes resisting.
• Quasi-States: Entities with partial sovereignty or limited recognition (e.g., Taiwan), whose actions can shift competitive dynamics.
• Non-State Actors:
  • Terrorist groups, MNCs, and tech firms can influence geopolitics.
  • Influence depends on how much attention states pay to them and whether they affect key competitive interests.

Actions and Behavior:

• Great powers use institutions, norms, and military/economic tools to shape global rules in their favor.
• Lesser actors sometimes aggregate influence or become flashpoints (e.g., Ukraine, Palestine, Taiwan).

Smaller Power As Allies Are Crucial

Great powers whose designs have more support from larger numbers of smaller powers can limit the challenges presented by rivals, shape rules that they can force rival great powers to accept to some degree, or even exclude adversaries from certain geographic or issue areas.

And:

Collective smaller power compliance may provide a great power with the gains of being able to dominate an area without having to pay the costs of administering a territory and its population from day-to-day.

Conversely, ‘smaller’ players can cause lots of troubles, especially if they ally:

Collectively, smaller powers can help facilitate or severely complicate the ambitions and plans of even great powers.

And smart smaller powers can play bigger powers against each other in a bidding war that benefits them.

Chapter 5: Military Influence Mechanisms

Military Influence Mechanisms (MIMs) are tools used by Great Powers to influence others below the threshold of war. These include:

• Deterrence (central concept): Requires credible force posture, readiness, and communication.
  • Deterrence by punishment: Threatening retaliation.
  • Deterrence by denial: Making success prohibitively costly.
• Compellence: Forcing an actor to change behavior via threat or limited use of force.
• Assurance and Reassurance: Calming allies or adversaries to shape behavior or reduce escalation.
  • Assurance: (AKA alliance-related assurance) aimed at allies, to persuade them of the solidity of a defence commitment (Knopf, 2012; Brooks and RappHooper, 2013).
    Often takes the form of public declarations of ongoing commitment to defend allies (ie.: American pledges of Nato’s Article 5)
  • Reassurance (AKA deterrence-related assurance (Knopf, 2012)): is aimed at a potential adversary.
    Can go together with deterrence because Schelling “any coercive threat requires corresponding assurances” (Schelling, 2008, 74). This involves a choice: harmful consequences (deterrence) or no cost if the opponent refrains (reassurance)
• Force Posture: Strategic deployment and readiness to demonstrate capability and resolve.
• Military Readiness: Ability to rapidly deploy effective forces.
• Alliances and Military Aid: Used to shape alignments and build influence.
• Proxy Wars and Limited Interventions: Project power and test adversaries without full-scale war.
• Cyber and Space: Emerging domains for competition, particularly for intelligence and deterrence signaling.

Military influence is not just about brute force but about shaping perceptions and calculations. MIMs support both coercive and cooperative strategies, depending on context.

Chapter 6: Economic Influence Mechanisms

This chapter explores how states use economic power to shape international outcomes, drawing on both classical theories and contemporary strategies.

Key Theoretical Approaches:

• Marxian Theory of Imperialism:
  • Capitalism drives imperial rivalry as states seek markets and resources (Lenin, Luxemburg).
• Gramscian Theory of Hegemonic Cycles:
  • Economic power must be legitimated ideationally; hegemonic orders mix material dominance with ideological consent.

Economic Tools in Practice:

• Trade Policy: Market access and trade agreements can incentivize or punish.
• Sanctions: Deny adversaries critical resources and financial flows (e.g., U.S. sanctions on Iran and Russia).
• Investment and Aid: Promote dependencies and shape preferences (e.g., China’s Belt and Road).
• Currency and Finance: Control over global currency systems (e.g., dollar dominance) creates leverage.
• Supply Chains and Technological Standards: Setting global rules on digital infrastructure or rare earths is a form of structural power.

Economic tools often have dual-use potential—they can build cooperation or deepen rivalry depending on how they’re wielded and perceived.

Chapter 7: Ideational Influence Mechanisms

This chapter reframes great power competition as a contest not only over resources or territory, but also over ideas, values, and legitimacy.
It introduces a conceptual framework distinguishing between:

• Soft power (legitimation): attracting others through values, culture, and diplomacy
• Sharp power (delegitimation): undermining others’ credibility through disinformation or ideological warfare

Four types of ideational tactics:

• Promotion: using soft power externally (e.g. cultural exports, global media)
• Renewal: using soft power internally to reinforce domestic legitimacy
• Containment: using sharp power externally to discredit rivals
• Fortification: using sharp power internally to defend against foreign influence

The chapter argues that great power status depends not only on material capabilities, but also on the ability to shape meaning, legitimacy, and narratives in both domestic and international arenas.

Modern Geopolitical Dynamics

We skipped the chapters on regional power dynamics.

They were the most interesting to read and I learned a lot, but they’re also the most time-sensitive.
And since we write for timeless wisdom that applies to millennia past as much as for the millennia to come, we skipped them (with the exception of the chapter below).

But get the book if you’re interested in geopolitics because they’re very worth it!

Chapter 15: Central and Eastern Europe

This chapter focuses heavily on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the restructuring of European security.

Historical Roots:

• Region was under Soviet dominance during the Cold War.
• NATO and EU expansion into former Soviet bloc countries triggered Russian anxiety and eventual confrontation.

Key Themes:

• Russia seeks to reclaim a sphere of influence, especially over Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus.
• The West views Ukraine as essential to the post–Cold War liberal order.
• NATO enlargement, although framed as democratic choice, is seen by Russia as an existential threat.

The war in Ukraine is more than Putin’s ambition—it reflects deep Russian elite consensus. Going forward, a new Iron Curtain may divide Europe politically, economically, and militarily.

USA Expanded NATO to Keep EU Divided

Just like we wrote in our article on American leadership, the US ‘defended’ Europe also to maintain its influence on the continent:

In the early 1990s, eforts to “Europeanize” European defense gained steam.

France wanted to turn the Western European Union (WEU), the nascent military arm of the European Community (the forerunner of the European Union), into a full-fedged security organization. Policymakers in Washington viewed this as an attempt to lever the Americans out of Europe.

The Clinton administration thus decided that NATO (in which the USA played the dominant role) ought to remain the lynchpin of European security.

And:

In other words, NATO enlargement served two central objectives of American foreign policy: to promote democracy and to sustain US infuence over European security and political affairs (Layne 2000; Shifrinson 2020; Schake 1998

The West Shares Some Blame In Ukrainian Conflict

This is a highly contentious thesis I’ve held, and I recognize the good reasons why many may find distasteful.

However, the book confirms that, seeing it from Putin’s perspective, the West ‘forced his hand’ to act.
Note that this does not justify Putin’s action of course, and it’s now best for EU to do its best to win that war.

That being said, I believe that a war at European’s doorstep was at least foreseeable, and likely avoidable:

The leadership of the newly independent Russian Federation suggested that the Central and Eastern European states should assume a role similar to that of Finland during the Cold War: politically independent and militarily neutral.
(…) policymakers in Moscow made it clear that the post-Soviet space was considered to be Russia’s own exclusive sphere of infuence.
It is important to stress that this position was shared not only by hawkish nationalists and neo-communists, but also by many of the more liberal members of the Yeltsin administration (Götz 2022, 1736–1740)

After all, there are good military-strategic reasons for states to exert some form of control over their geographical vicinity.
Moreover, Russia’s ruling and intellectual elite continued to think of their country as a great power with a legitimate right to a regional sphere of infuence and a major say in the formation of Europe’s post-Cold War order (Radchenko 2020; Götz & Staun 2022, 485–486).

Yeltsin demanded “to get a clear understanding of your [Clinton’s] idea of NATO expansion because now I see nothing but humiliation for Russia if you proceed” (Memcon 1995)

Moreover, in 2002, the Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and announced plans to deploy ground-based ballistic missile interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar base in the Czech Republic (Stent 2014, 72–75).
(…) Seen from Moscow’s perspective, the US missile defense infrastructure threatened to undermine Russia’s second-strike deterrent capability. In response, Russia started to engage in a large-scale modernization program of its nuclear arsenal (Götz 2019c, 812–814)

the Bush government worked energetically for Georgia and Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
(…) This was opposed by several NATO states (…) out of fear that it might provoke Russia.
The summit ended with a half-baked compromise, declaring that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO” (…)
This was probably one of the biggest diplomatic blunders of modern times. NATO efectively signaled its intent to enlarge at some unspecifed point in the future, yet it failed to provide any concrete security guarantees for Georgia and Ukraine. As a result, Russia was emboldened to act sooner rather than later.

Rightly or wrongly, the color revolutions came to be seen by Moscow as part of a broader US-led efort to remove pro-Russian regimes from power and to replace them with Western-oriented leaders (German 2020). Some in Moscow even speculated that the color revolutions were a “dress rehearsal” for a regime change in Russia.

As a result, tensions were near a boiling point in late 2021 and early 2022. Given Ukraine’s civilizational and geostrategic importance for Russia, any government in Moscow would have most likely increased its pressure on Kyiv—though not necessarily embarked on a largescale invasion.

If avoiding a major war was a priority, and I believe it was, then EU should have better thought on how to go about its eastward expansion while ‘showing more respect‘ for Russia.
And maybe consider when/how/if to expand to Ukraine.

Contemporary Multipolarity Started With The Financial Crisis

The USA, China, and Russia are presently engaged in a struggle for dominance within the international order.

Layne has argued that unipolarity enabled China to reap economic growth by bandwagoning with the USA, but its long-term goal was not to maintain the status quo of the US-led system; instead it sought to ‘convert its economic gains into military capabilities that would allow Beijing to contest American preponderance’ at a future time (2012, p. 205).

By the 2010s, years of speculation over a US decline, combined with the economic impacts of the Global Financial Crisis, signalled to China and Russia that unipolarity was over and the time had arrived for them to challenge US power and the liberal world order.
So convinced that China’s time had arrived, Xi Jinping walked away from Deng Xiaoping’s cautionary approach of ‘Hide your strength; bide your time; never take the lead’ and in 2021 told provincial and party leaders that ‘time and momentum are on our side’ (cited in Rudd 2022, p. 9).

This has occurred despite US–China Strategic Engagement being built on the belief that by bringing China into international institutions it would be socialised into the established liberal world order (Goddard 2020).

Chapter 23: International Institutions

My Note: We must defend democratic international institutions to promote global cooperation
This was one of my favorite chapters, and I consider it of crucial importance for the future of humanity to preserve global cooperation.

In this chapter Anna Hayes analyzes how great power competition unfolds in the arena of international institutions—the global rules-based systems, organizations, and norms that structure international politics.

These include institutions like the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and a range of norm-setting forums in digital governance, arms control, and development.

Rather than viewing institutions as neutral platforms, the chapter reveals them to be arenas of contestation, where rising powers like China, Russia, and India seek to challenge or reform the existing liberal order, while established powers—primarily the United States and its allies—seek to defend and preserve it.

The chapter grimly paints China and Russia and anti-democracy, autocratic states that the West must defend against if it wants to uphold multilateralism, global trade, and the rule of law.

In a subsequent chapter, noticing the differing values of Western powers and China/Russia, the authors write:

Hence, it is imperative that the defenders of the liberal world order seek to strengthen and reinvigorate the very things that make it so appealing: fairness, efectiveness, and democratic principles within operational structures. In addition, they must ensure international institutions remain both sites for and agents in international cooperation.

I couldn’t agree more.

Theoretical Foundations

International institutions are not just background infrastructure. They:

• Reflect power structures, especially Western dominance since WWII.
• Serve as mechanisms of soft power, where norms, rules, and practices reflect the interests and values of dominant actors.
• Are strategically used and contested by both status quo and revisionist powers.

Approaches to Changing International Institutions

Rising powers employ a range of strategies to reshape international institutions to better reflect their interests.

These strategies fall into three main categories: power bargaining, distributive strategies, and integrative strategies.

Each has varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the context, credibility of the actor, and alignment with the interests of defender powers.

Power Bargaining
• Uses threats and pressure to force defender states to accept reforms
• Most common in classic power transition theory
• Can succeed in gaining concessions but often escalates tensions and creates backlash

Rhetorical Coercion
• Publicly shames defenders by highlighting their hypocrisy or violations of shared norms
• Effective when norm violations are clear and the shaming actor is credible
• Fails when the challenger is seen as self-interested or hypocritical

👉🏼 States claiming lack of voice or unfairness often do so strategically, not out of genuine concern, to extract concessions through delegitimation.

Principled Persuasion
• Argues that reforms will improve institutional legitimacy and efficiency
• Can work when challenger and defender preferences already align
• Rarely successful in high-stakes or politically contested domains

Strategic Co-optation
• Offers material benefits or side payments in exchange for support
• Helps build coalitions and reduce resistance
• Often costly for the challenger and can backfire if seen as transactional or manipulative

Revisionist powers (e.g., China, Russia) typically prefer power bargaining and rhetorical coercion, especially when seeking major institutional change.

Reformist powers (e.g., India, Brazil) tend to use persuasion and co-optation to seek incremental adjustment.

China Is A Revisionist Power, But Prepared A Fallback Plan

The text paints China as agreeing with some of the current world order, especially the one based on trade.

However, China’s angle is ‘state above individuals’, so it pushes back against free market and individual rights.
It’s an authocratic approach to trade.

So while China seeks to reform (or distort) contemporary institutions, it’s also crafted its own institutions and alliances to set its technology and values as the baseline for a new order:

If China cannot recalibrate existing, American-supported, international political and security organization norms and procedures, then it will move onto these new organizations where its defnitions and norms serve as the baseline

How to Maintain Cooperation & Rule of Law

Hence, Tallberg and Verhaegen concluded that rather than trying to reshape institutions based on the many voices of the emerging powers, instead enhancing the legitimacy of international institutions is best achieved by ensuring they are underpinned by good governance and enshrine the principles of fairness, effectiveness, and democracy.
Such an approach ensures that there is open discussion and inclusion of all voices (remembering that those voices are typically representing the interests of their home state, not necessarily what is best
for all member states), and that decision-making is carried out via consensus

Later in the chapter, the authors state that this approach also works best because it’s more attractive for the smaller powers that prefer to gravitate around the richer and open democracies, rather than the autocratic powers.

MORE WISDOM

War makes a good case for world governance

States can function like small tribes, in part cooperating, but also competing and sometimes, unfortunately, going to war.

If humanity is to move beyond war, especially important in an era of greater capability for destruction, supra-national bodies to arbiter disputes are fundamental:

War is always a possibility in a system without a central government that exists above states to arbitrate disputes. In this environment, military force becomes the ultimate arbiter of disputes. At the heart of great power competition is the pursuit of power

Multipolarity With Squabbling Power Can Frustrate Global Cooperation

(…) wrangling over foundational differences between rivalrous great power norms and ideals frustrates international consensus, neuters joint policy (…) and fragments once cohesive systemic global arrangements.

The USA Opted For Freedom & Mutual Benefits to Retain Soft Power

Hence, while one might believe that a unipolar state has free reign to do as it pleases, the period of US unipolarity was not one of unregulated US hegemony.

Instead, due to the constraints of the rational-legal authorities built into the global order by the USA in the postWorld War II period, unipolarity saw US foreign policy goals centred upon the promotion of democratic values and the continuation of the rules-based order (Finnemore 2009).

Martha Finnemore has argued that the USA took such an approach to ‘induce acquiescence or support from others, thereby legitimating their power and policies’ (2009, p. 62). Therefore, the USA sought to increase its influence and appeal via enticement and persuasion, not coercion (Jervis 2009)

This ‘pull approach’ worked, and smaller powers wanted to follow USA’s leadership, strengthening the whole system:

Moreover, under US unipolarity, international institutions played a critical role in advancing openness and interconnectedness via globalisation, further advantaging US interests but also the interests of other states that shared similar values and global outlook (Ikenberry et al.2009).

Hence, the appeal of the free-market system and democratic model drew much support from other states, due to the benefts they derived from them, which in turn reinforced the legitimacy of the US-led system (Finnemore 2009)

It’s Unsure Whether Unipolar, Bipolar, or Multipolar Are Safer

Some realists focus on the static indicators of the balance of power to assess the likelihood of war.

Many argue that bipolarity (two great powers) is less war-prone than multipolarity (three or more great powers).
In a bipolar system, balancing is more efficient because each pole can be laser-focused on the other; there is less chance of miscalculation (Mearsheimer, 2001; Waltz, 1978).

Others assert that multipolarity is less war-prone because more states can join forces to balance the aggressor and because there is less hostility among the great powers (Deutsch & Singer, 1964; Morgenthau, 1978).

Still others argue that unipolarity is the most peaceful because there is only one great power in the system and other states will avoid confronting the behemoth (Wohlforth, 1999).

Unfortunately, to me this is a further reminder that International Relations as a field still more based on theories, rather than evidence.

Comtemporary Great Power Competition Is Between Democracy & Authoritarianism

USA, China, and Russia are the contemporary great powers, and they stand for very different values and visions for humanity:

Both China and Russia are revisionist powers, they are illiberal, and they both regard liberal values such as democracy, freedom of expression, and human rights as threats to their continued existence (Ikenberry 2022).
(…)
Ikenberry has characterised both Russia and China as being opposed to the existing international order, undergirded by openness, multilateralism, and a rules-based order, arguing that they seek an international order ‘hospitable to regional blocs, spheres of infuence, and autocracy [that] protects authoritarian rule from the threatening forces of liberal modernity’ (Ikenberry 2022, p.58)

Discussing the ‘space race’, the authors write:

Competition between great powers is likely to result in the opening of frontiers on the Moon and other celestial objects rich in mineral resources and to force development of new technology with unforeseen “knock on” economic effects.

It is also a contest between different visions of the human future, one liberal and the other authoritarian.

What humanity becomes or fails to become over the next century will be determined in great part by the outcome

Europe Must Unite For Freedom, & Its Own Good

First off, the authors correctly highlight that Europe has the potential to become a great power, but isn’t there yet:

Many wonder whether Europe might soon rise as a great power in the emerging international order.

Variants of this question have been asked for decades as post-World War II European integration fowed from the romantic vision of a Europe transcending confict and forming an ever-closer union.

But the crowning jewel of the European integration (…) struggled to present a cohesive whole.

From 1993 to 2022, the EU never cleaved together politically, militarily, or even economically to the degree necessary to meet the three-feature defnition of a global great power.(Lynch, 2020) It has remained an important, but lesser-tier, player in the emerging new era of great power competition shaped by the USA, China, and Russia

I believe that a federal EU is good for European states, and good of the world.

For example, when Trump’s first presidency started pulling away from free world leadership, other Western countries stepped in:

Despite the Trump-era turbulence, or rather because of it, the European Union and Japan stepped up to preserve the multilateral global order, defending interdependence and international institutions; mini-lateralism then grew across the Indo-Pacifc region (Fogarty & Park 2019; Tirkey 2021).

However, the text was written before Trump’s second term, which has moved closer towards authoritarianism and a ‘law of the jungle’ approach to politics.

And to uphold a global order based on win-win, trade, and the rule of law, it’s best to have a united EU.
Several beacons of freedom are better than only one.

QUOTES

A quick historical excursus:

From Athens–Sparta rivalry in ancient Greek times, Rome–Carthage rivalry in the 3rd century BC, French–Habsburg rivalry in the 16th to 18th centuries to Britain–Germany rivalry before World War I, Britain– Germany rivalry before World War II, and USA–Soviet Union rivalry throughout the Cold War, diferent great powers have competed against each other in diferent historical contexts. Great power competition is therefore a norm—rather than an exception—in international politics (Brands, 2017)

Power wins, not rationality:

Power inequalities are always already stacking the game. That is also why liberals are naive in expecting rational interests to prevail, unless they are the interests of the powerful

Ideas are about power:

Ideas are not neutral. Instead, the way we think and the way in which we communicate our thoughts has efects in the real world and becomes ammunition in struggles of power

Theories are also part of power dynamics and influence:

While all theory may not be ideology, all theories can be used in the service of ideology

On the danger, but NOT inevitability of war:

War between great powers during times of relative transition is not inevitable, but it is a persistent threat.

🙋🏼‍♂️ Lucio’s Analysis

Note on the Importance of Preserving Global Cooperation

While this volume focuses on the dynamics of great power competition, it is essential to emphasize that the future of humanity depends on managing that competition, and on sustaining meaningful global cooperation.

Major existential challenges—climate change, pandemic preparedness, nuclear proliferation, and AI safety, among others—cannot be addressed unilaterally, or by squabbling states or blocs.
These require collaborative governance and effective international institutions capable of aligning diverse interests toward shared goals.

As technological advancement accelerates and ambitions such as space colonization become more feasible, we cannot export tribalist mindsets and behaviors to new frontiers.
Without a foundational value of cooperation, we risk replicating the same cycles of conflict in more dangerous or irreversible contexts.

Researchers, scientists, and intellectuals have a particular responsibility to remind us of all of this imperative. If we analyze competition without this reminder, we risk normalizing destructive competition as the status quo and, even more worrisome, ‘unavoidable’.

Long term, cooperation will determine whether we survive and thrive as a species.

I hope the authors will add a similar note to their already excellent work.

Other Suggestions

• I’d suggest removing any references to historical exceptionalism that may overlook similar patterns in earlier eras or regions.

For example, change sentence structure like ‘contemporary great power competition is no longer monopolised by the great powers‘, because it never was and smaller tribes and marauders always played a role.

Or ‘the USA enjoyed an unprecedented unipolar moment‘, which I don’t think is unprecedented—Rome after Carthage’s destruction and some periods of the Han dynasty were unipolar in their regions.

• International relations and potentially political science in general seems more theoretical and less empirical (reduce philosophers’ mentions)

This is not a criticism of the book, which is excellent, but more about the state of international politics as a field.

For example, take this paragraph:

Others assert that multipolarity is less war-prone because more states can join forces to balance the aggressor and because there is less hostility among the great powers (Deutsch & Singer, 1964; Morgenthau, 1978). Still others argue that unipolarity is the most peaceful because there is only one great power in the system and other states will avoid confronting the behemoth (Wohlforth, 1999).

In my opinion, when theories dominate with little mention of empirical support for one or another—or even the mention of future research to gain more clarity, then you have a field that’s more theoretical than empirical.

I’d suggest the authors consider reducing the amount of space dedicated to philosophers.

REVIEW

The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition is a fantastic exploration of geopolitical power dynamics, starting from general theories and moving to historical and contemporary events.

I enjoyed reading it, I learned a lot, and I’m grateful to the authors.
In 2025 it even made our ‘best books on power’ list.

Finally, it also helped us improve some of our articles on soft power and geopolitics, and also indirectly confirmed several of our Power University strategies.

Check the:

• Best books to read
• Best books on power and power dynamics
• Get this book on Amazon.