THE RETURN OF GREAT POWERS

A grim analysis of the “new order of three great powers.”

It’s fittingly Orwellian that the three great powers today roughly correspond to the prophesy of 1984—namely, the U.S., Russia, and China. The U.S. and Russia are in more or less direct conflict today, writes CNN national security correspondent Sciutto, author of The Madman Theory and The Shadow War, in Ukraine. China is watching carefully, notes the author, as it refines plans for a blitzkrieg war on Taiwan “while the world was preoccupied elsewhere.” Taiwanese military planners see the war in Ukraine as similar to their own, though in at least some sense they’re better equipped to defend their territory. As the author notes, military doctrine holds that an attacker needs to outnumber a defender by three to one, yet Ukraine’s costly counteroffensive has been close to parity, which explains what now appears to be an unbreakable stalemate. The conflict in Ukraine has had an immediate effect in reinvigorating NATO and making it more relevant, “reoriented…to its original mission, defending Europe against Russia and, now, a second strategic adversary in China.” Ukraine has done a good job of bleeding Russia’s army nearly dry, but that does nothing to diminish Russian naval and nuclear power, the former being exerted vigorously in the Arctic, the latter a constant looming threat. Another variable is the continued presence of Trump on the scene, a man who represents Sciutto’s observation that “today’s world is as rich in accommodationists as the world of the late 1930s.” Cleareyed without sensationalism, Sciutto’s text closes with the suggestion that China can be seen as the larger long-term threat and that dealing with Beijing will require clear negotiations on areas of both competition (semiconductors) and cooperation (climate change).

A knowledgeable, sobering assessment of one of the most consequential geopolitical situations in the world.