The Return of Great Powers Offers a Warning
BOOK REVIEW: The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War
By Jim Sciutto / Dutton
Reviewed by: Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret)
The Reviewer: Admiral Stavridis (Ret.) was the 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and 12th Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he earned a PhD in international affairs. He is currently partner and Vice Chair, Global Affairs at The Carlyle Group and Chair of the Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. A Cipher Brief expert, Admiral Stavridis is the author of thirteen books. His latest book, 2054: A Novel, was released on March 12.
REVIEW – Veteran CNN analyst Jim Sciutto opens his new book, The Return of Great Powers with two conversations and a pronouncement. One conversation is with the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, former Ambassador and Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns. As CIA Director, Burns oversees the largest spy organization on the planet, but at his core he remains a deeply experienced diplomat. And he puts his finger on the central challenge of our times: the return of great power competition, saying simply, “we are playing without a net.” The other discussion is with the longest serving Secretary General of NATO, former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who says in essence that we were all hoping after the fall of the Berlin Wall that freedom and democracy would sweep the planet. As he says, “We thought it would just continue.”
Sadly, the spread of freedom and democracy has not continued, and the rise of aggressive authoritarian regimes in both Beijing and Moscow is at the heart of Sciutto’s powerful book, whose subtitle sums up the danger: “Russia, China, and the Next World War.” Which brings us to his pronouncement, direct and chilling: “For the U.S. and its allies, this is a 1939 moment.” As the book explains, this refers to a hinge moment in history in which the United States will have to decide how to face Russian tanks rolling west toward NATO in their illegal invasion of Ukraine. It also means whether we will coherently face China’s determination to conquer Taiwan and control the entire vast South China Sea, a body of water half the size of the continental U.S., which Beijing claims as territorial waters. In 1939, the United States refused to face Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, sinking into unproductive isolationism sometimes called the “America First” movement. By 1941, of course, we were in a full-blown two-front world war.
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In addition to his work as Chief National Security Analyst for CNN, Sciutto has particular expertise in Asia. Just over a decade ago, he spent two years in Beijing as Chief of Staff to the U.S. Ambassador. His major at Yale was Chinese history, and the analysis in this book, his fourth, is particularly acute in his discussions of China. Of particular note are his comments on the “no limits” partnership of President Xi of China and President Putin of Russia. As he says, the two are “strikingly similar in their worldview.” These are two superpowers (at least as measured by military capability) who share a sense of aggrievement with the west and resentment at the U.S.-constructed system of global economic and diplomatic structure that emerged at the end of the Second World War.
Sciutto is also particularly strong on the details of what an open conflict – a global war, not to mince words – would look like. He has depth of experience working with the U.S. Department of Defense, and his descriptions of the impact of new military capabilities from AI to unmanned vehicles of all stripes is superb. Likewise, his time around the U.S. intelligence community has given him keen insight into how the military and intelligence (and cyber) elements of a war might unfold. Sciutto talks knowledgably about “Russia’s Next Targets,” including NATO member Estonia and its fellow Baltic states, targeted by Moscow because they were once part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In Asia, his analysis of potential outcomes in the event of a Taiwan crisis are informed by two decades of experience in the issues. And he correctly assesses Beijing will seek to fully dominate the nations surrounding the South China Sea.
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The final section of the book looks to the future, and it is not a hopeful picture. It begins with analyzing the chances of a nuclear exchange (not insignificant), especially in the context of a Russian collapse in Crimea. He bemoans (appropriately), the collapse of the system of nuclear arms control treaties, particularly between the U.S. and Russia. Sciutto also describes in excellent technical detail the challenges the west will face in both space and cyber. And in this final section, he describes the potential of a second term by former President Donald Trump as a “fundamental catastrophe,” quoting Trump’s former Chief of Staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly. He also quotes former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton saying: “I just don’t think he has enough of a brain to have an articulated view, because he thinks everything through the prism of “How does this benefit Donald Trump.” Trump, in Scuitto’s view, would potentially pull out of NATO (many legal questions would arise); draw close to autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jung Un of North Korea; and pursue his characteristically unpredictable (and therefore dangerous) approach to China.
Sciutto concludes by summoning one of the most cautionary books ever written on geopolitics: Barbara Tuchman’s 1962 masterpiece, The Guns of August. It is a book I’ve read many times and often recommend, and it was very much in my mind when I wrote a novel about a war between the U.S. and China, set a decade from now (2034: A Novel of the Next World War.) Tuchman lays out brutally the stupidity, venality, arrogance, and short-sighted qualities of the European royalty and military-industrial complex in August 1914 – which resulted in millions of dead in the First World War. It was also a book much on the minds of President John F. Kennedy and the famous EXCOM group that managed, barely, to avoid a nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. While The Return of Great Powers is hardly an optimistic book, it is, much like The Guns of August, a powerful and well-written warning to us all. Our leaders will need all the wisdom and intelligence they can muster to avoid the next world war that Sciutto sketches before our, thus-far, blinkered eyes. This could happen, folks, he is saying in clear, decisive words – wake up.
The Return of Great Powers earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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