The shaky new world order we didn’t expect
Remember the Peace Dividend? The Berlin Wallhad fallen, the Soviet Union was no more, history had come to an end, and the United States had won the Cold War — right? Well, if only it were so simple. Here we are, three decades later, and relations among the world’s most powerful countries now more closely resemble those in Europe in 1914 than a century earlier after the Congress of Vienna. And, worse still, the United States is now under attack around the world by the autocratic forces that rule its two principal adversaries, China and Russia, with liberal democracy steadily losing ground within many of its former allies. Jim Sciutto, CNN’s veteran chief national security correspondent, ably explores today’s superpower politics in his new book, The Return of Great Powers. His is a sober and sometimes grim assessment of the prospects for World War III.
SOURCES THAT SPAN THE GLOBE
Sciutto’s book is based almost exclusively on interviews with current and recent past officials in the United States and Europe. He cites dozens in his acknowledgements, but six come most readily to my mind after reading the book.
- General Mark Milley (Ret.), former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden
- Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly
- Former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, now Vice-President of the European Commission
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken under President Joe Biden
- NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
- And former US National Security Advisor and White House Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump, General John Kelly
There are others as well. Taiwanese. British. Finnish. And American. As a group, they cover the ideological spectrum. But Sciutto’s conclusions skew to the right. That may be the result of his emphasis on military affairs and the rising threat of Great Power conflict. Which, after all, is the theme of his book.
THE RETURN OF GREAT POWERS: RUSSIA, CHINA, AND THE NEXT WORLD WAR BY JIM SCIUTTO (2024) 368 PAGES ★★★★☆
FROM THE FRONT LINES TO THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Sciutto approaches his subject with the instincts of a reporter, going directly to the source. For example, in assessing the possibilities for Russia to invade the Baltic countries, NATO’s most vulnerable members, and for China to invade Taiwan, he speaks directly to some of the people who would be most directly affected. Estonia’s outspoken former Prime Minister, who fears that NATO is unprepared to defend her little country. And Taiwanese Air Force and Army officers stationed on the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait, midway between Taiwan and mainland China, who bravely declare their willingness to die in the event of an invasion by the PRC — knowing full well they would be unlikely to survive.
In the end, Sciutto conveys a powerful sense of the contrast between those on the front lines of today’s Great Power standoffs and those removed from immediate danger who might not share their conviction that the prospects for war are great.
THE THREE GREAT POWERS THROUGH THE LENS OF GEOPOLITICS
POPULATION SIZE
As a first step in evaluating the long-term prospects for the three Great Powers, a grand strategist would look to a few basic numbers. Population size, for starters. China, ranked #2 in the world, has a current population of about 1.4 billion. But its median age is 40, its fertility rate 1.0 (far below the replacement level), and its population has declined for the third straight year as I write. The population of the United States (345 million) is only about one-quarter the size of China’s but it has consistently risen for many years (although at a slower rate of growth). And while the American median age at 38 is little different, the country’s fertility rate is 1.6 (closer to the replacement level).
SIZE OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY
The size of the national economy is also a significant factor in grand strategy. With a current GDP of $30.4 trillion, the American economy is considerably larger than that of China, at $19.6 trillion. (For the record, some economists take buying power into account and claim that China and the US are roughly equal economically.) However, the United States has demonstrated considerable economic dynamism in recent years, growing at the rate of 2% and is projected to continue doing so for the balance of this decade. By contrast, China’s vaunted economic growth of recent decades has long since stopped. By some measures, the Chinese economy is shrinking, the result of poor economic policy, an aging population, outmigration, and the collapse of the country’s housing bubble.
THE THREE GREAT POWERS COMPARED
Russia is not in the same league as China and the US in any of these metrics. The country ranks #9 overall, with an aging population of 145 million (about one-tenth the size of China’s and less than one-half that of the US). But that number is shrinking, the result of out-migration, a fertility rate (1.5) below replacement level, and losses in the war in Ukraine. Economically, too, Russia pales by comparison with the other two Great Powers. At $2.1 trillion, its GDP is only one-tenth the size of China’s and one-fifteenth that of the US. Its economy is growing through military spending and social handouts but is likely to slow in the near future.
THE MILITARY
In military terms, the picture looks a little different, but less so than meets the eye. The total number of military personnel on active duty is 2.2 million (China), 1.3 million (US), and 1.2 million (Russia). By all accounts, however, military specialists rank the Chinese and American militaries as highly effective, far more so than the Russian.
By contrast, in sheer numbers of nuclear weapons, Russia (5,899) and the US (5,224) far outpace China (410). The three countries together possess more than 9 out of every 10 nuclear weapons known to be in the world. However, the size of the military and the number of its nuclear weapons are not effective measures of a country’s ability to wage war, as we’ve seen in the poor performance of the Russian army in Ukraine. For one thing, China’s nuclear arsenal is growing, and its weapons are new. And while both Russia and the US have newly designed nuclear warheads, most of the weapons they possess are aged. And in any case, how many warheads would a country need to win a nuclear war? How many could it even use except in a doomsday scenario that might bring civilization to a halt?
WHICH COUNTRY MIGHT WIN THE THIRD WORLD WAR?
Assume, for the sake of argument, that none of the three Great Powers opts for the doomsday scenario. (That would entail releasing all their nuclear weapons in a preemptive move to knock out one of the adversaries.) To my mind, it seems far more likely that nuclear weapons would be used more sparingly.
For example, in a Russian invasion of the Baltics, Poland, or Romania, or in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the US response is far more likely to be to target one of the major Russian or Chinese cities with thermonuclear weapons. Then whichever country is hit would respond in kind, hitting an ever larger city in the US. Might the hostilities escalate into a wider use of nukes? Perhaps. But I don’t believe any of the world’s current or near-future leaders is suicidal and would opt for attempting to destroy an adversary. Why? Because they would expect to be hit in response by highly automated systems.
So, which of the three Great Powers might win the war? None of them. Because any use of today’s supremely destructive nuclear weapons would guarantee deaths in the millions. And even a conflict limited to conventional weapons but which extends into the realms of near space, cyberspace, and applied artificial intelligence to robots or other weapons might achieve the effect of “bombing them back to the Stone Age.” So, a settlement, whether it’s called a truce, an armistice, or a cease-fire, seems likely in any of the most probable scenarios that might be termed the Third World War. Something short of full-blown war.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve read a great deal on these matters, and I’ve been around since the Second World War. So I have some perspective on military affairs. Take it all with a generous dose of skepticism and make up your own mind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Ernest (Jim) Sciutto has been the chief national security correspondent for CNN since 2013. Immediately prior to taking that job, he served as chief of staff to the US Ambassador to China for two years. But he is, above all, a newsman. He had been a senior foreign correspondent for ABC News out of London. He is the author of four nonfiction works about world politics. Sciutto was born in New York in 1970 and studied Chinese history at Yale, graduating cum laude. He married in 2006.
FOR RELATED READING
This book adds new insight to my post Gaining a global perspective on the world around us.
You’ll find additional insight and information at 30 insightful books about China and Good books about Vladimir Putin, modern Russia and the Russian oligarchy.
Two recent novels add more food for thought:
- 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis (The Third World War breaks out in 2034, but not how you think)
- Never by Ken Follett (Is a new world war possible by accident?)
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page of Mal Warwick on Books.
