The Iron Cage of International Anarchy
2026-08-12
Great power competition has been endemic to the modern system of industrialized nation-states that began emerging in Europe around 1800. This article seeks to describe and explain the principal features of that competition over the past 226 years, paying special attention to how it has evolved during the fifty-year history of International Security (1976–2026). The focus is on both security competition, which is a constant feature of great power politics, and war, which is not. The article shows that although security competition is pervasive, the shape of that competition has varied markedly over time, depending largely on the polarity of the system—the number of great powers—and the distribution of power among them. Those same two factors, coupled with the coming of nuclear weapons, have had a pronounced effect on the likelihood of great power war, including conflicts that involved all the great powers, such as the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II. Finally, the article considers the likely contours of great power competition in the next fifty years, focusing on determining which countries are likely to be great powers, what is the likely distribution of power among them, and what are the prospects for a future great power war.